Holiday of the Dead

by David Dunwoody

  "I do. What can I do for you gentlemen?" Again, the disarming white teeth came out.

  The knocker smiled back, just for a moment before catching himself. He then carried on in his carefully crafted, easygoing formality.

  "Well, first of all, we were wondering who you are? Do you know this is private property?"

  "Yes. It's mine. Or rather, it was my husband's parents. So now … I mean there is no will or anything. But I have a right to be here, I think. I'm Mira Effayant."

  The knocker looked at her extended hand carefully; trying to judge its pliability and warmth. Finally, he smeared his palm down his pant leg to rid it of most of the damp and deftly took her hand.

  "Sheriff … Well, just Roger Wilkins, now. Pleased to meet you Mrs. Effayant. You understand, of course, that we want to check on anybody who shows up suddenly on this island. Given …"

  "Yeah,” she agreed. "Understood."

  "So, if I might ask. How did you get here? I've been watching what’s happening from the church bell tower with a telescope. Tough to tell from this distance but, I was fairly sure that there’d be nobody coming from the mainland anymore. Are there any more survivors?"

  She inhaled deeply, and then let it out rather sharply. "Maybe. But not with me. I arrived alone."

  He nodded, giving her time to elaborate. Instead she turned to more immediate matters.

  "Having survived this long, I'd really appreciate not being blown to bloody ribbons by your friend." Her eyes glanced over his shoulder to the left.

  He turned and snapped his fingers at the heavy kid, who shifted the muzzle of the gun a little, but didn't lower it.

  "I dunno. She don't look too good to me."

  Briefly, Mira's eyebrows knitted. I don't look good! The fourth horseman just passed the Norman Rockwell painting of my life through its digestive tract, and you don't think I look good! At least I once looked good, fat boy.

  "She's fine, you damn dolt! She can talk. She hasn't attacked us. Put it up."

  The kid gritted his teeth, clearly not happy about being dressed down in front of Mira, and he slid into an even more specific notch in Mira's mental Rolodex. The category she called 'the little big man.' A large part of his self-esteem comes from his perceived position in the male hierarchy. She should have guessed from the outfit. Clearly, he felt he had been 'deputized' by Roger, but he had to come up with his own uniform. He had a white t-shirt, with a camouflage coat over it. There was a badge affixed to the left breast and he had a black hunter-style hat with a second badge of some sort attached. Clearly, he couldn't find anything for below the waist, so he had just grabbed something that was at least part of a uniform, even if not the right one. Brown shorts. She wondered if he had worked for UPS himself or if he had stolen them from someone who no longer cared so much about his modesty. He was the kind of kid who always took boxing or karate, but never got good at them. He surely had a collection of knives and pointy, Chinese looking things. He dropped the stock of the gun from his shoulder in a swinging, underhand arc and caught it with his right hand. Clearly a well-practiced manoeuvre. He probably practiced it in front of a mirror the way she practiced her disarming smile.

  Wilkins looked sour as he turned back.

  "I'm sorry. But I'm sure you understand we've had a difficult couple of days ourselves. There was a small cemetery here on the island. We had some work to do to secure the island for the living."

  "Of course." Mira replied, acutely aware of how desperately they were applying layers to the thin veneer of civilization that coated the current reality. Of course I understand being threatened. If fat boy had shot me, my last words would be forgiving and sympathetic. Because my own uniform doesn't come off. Not until I'm cold and … Dead?

  "I'd invite you in but I have nothing to offer. And I wasn't exactly clean when I arrived. I'd like time to get in order before I have guests."

  "We'll be fine right here, ma'am. But if we could steal some of your time, it would be appreciated. We've talked to nobody from the mainland since this started. The Internet went down almost immediately, and the news was very confused and uninformative before it went off the air. You’ll know things we won't, and if nothing else would offer a fresh perspective on what we already know."

  She was not really in the mood for a talk, but it was a nice June day. Blue skies, dotted with white clouds. The sound of sparrows filled the air, along with one cardinal, all puffed up in his scarlet finery, chirping out his dominance over this area of the island. The concrete smile nearly cracked with tears as she listened.

  The birds are singing.

  The dead walk the Earth and the birds are singing.

  But she gestured to the two chairs perched about the small drink table on the porch. Wilkins made a 'ladies first' gesture in return. She sat, sweeping her skirt beneath her primly as she landed. Without even offering to the boy, Roger sat in the other chair, sighed deeply, as if dreading what was coming next, and spoke:

  "Is it safe to assume your husband will not be joining us?"

  Her eyes slammed shut suddenly. Blunt. Very blunt. But then, how could he have phrased it? Her cold breath hitched as disjointed flashes of her journey here projected against her lids.

  The long, weeping drive with that horrible smear of Jeff's blood on the part of the windshield the wipers won't swipe. The sick baby that wouldn't stop crying. Jeff pounding on the moving figures, holding them at bay as the tank filled. And the bites. Oh, Jesus the horrible bites on his arms as he smashed their bones with the baseball bat. But they didn't stop. You could shatter them down to skin bags of broken bones and they just … Won't … Stop.

  "Mansfield," she whispered, staring at the wood planking of the porch. Then, clearing her throat, she spoke more clearly. "We came from Columbus. A huge city, full of … We had to go. It was death to stay there. We made it to the car …"

  She and Jeff and ran from the house. She had the baby and he had that old wooden slugger Jeff’s father had given him a few years back. A week ago that bat had been worth more than a thousand dollars. It was signed by Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Pete Rose (whoever they were). Now it was worth nothing in dollars, but if it could just get them to the car it would be worth all her remaining possessions and a thousand times more. Their little suburban neighbourhood had become a horror show. Friends and neighbours, all came. It was like they knew. They knew there was fresh meat in the house. The car was parked on the street. Thirty feet of shambling feet and blunt teeth away from the front door. They ran for it, Jeff smashing the walkers out of their path with the bat. She running behind, head low, the baby wrapped like it was the dead of winter, though it was unusually hot, for June. They made it to the car, and they left their little three-bedroom single family home with city taxes but a good, suburban school district behind.

  "Jeff was an airline pilot.” She shook her head, realizing she was speaking in a disjointed manner. “Jeff is my husband. Was my husband. We g-g-got in our car and started driving north. His folks were from Shaker Heights and they owned this vacation home here.” She looked up at Roger, as if seeking approval. “We thought it might be safe here. You know, sixteen miles off the shore …”

  "Yes,” Wilkins soothed. "It was a good plan. Please continue."

  "But we didn't have … I mean who thinks of these things? Keeping your gas tank full in case the dead come back? That would be crazy. It still sounds crazy." Her voice started to hitch.

  "So you ran out of gas?"

  "No. We saw immediately that we were low. But to stop and take, how many minutes outside the safety of the locked car? To fill the tank? We'd have been dead in seconds in the city. So we drove, figuring we would find something outside of town. Where the population was lower. And the number of-f-f-f …"

  Calm and easy, Wilkin put a hand on hers.

  "Yes. Again, you were very smart."

  "But we weren't! Once we left town there was no power anywhere. Hundreds of gallons of gas in those big tanks under the parking lots,
and no way to get it. How were we to do it? Siphon? Get out and look for a hose? Then find a tool to pry up the covers. There were fewer walkers out of the city, but there were some. We couldn't leave the car for long enough to do all that. So we kept driving. We kept driving and the gauge kept getting lower and lower. Finally there was a place with power."

  "Mansfield,” he offered.

  She nodded. "I've always thought of that as a small town, but … how many walking death factories constitute a lot? It was as bad as Columbus. The walkers were everywhere. But we had no choice. The baby was sick, had been since before this all happened, but now she was untreated and on the run. We had to get to … stable ground."

  Jeff had left the safety of the car to pump the gas. He still had to pay for it! How’s that for irony? He swiped his card but it wouldn't work. He had to smash into the station itself and flip on all the pumps. How he knew to do that she had no idea, but he did. But all the breaking glass was a hell of a racket …

  "They can still hear, you know,” she observed. It was out of the blue, from Roger's point of view, but he accepted it.

  "I never thought about it. I suppose they can."

  She looked at him more intently. "No. You don’t get it. They can hear!"

  The walkers came from all directions. They weren't fast, but they were relentless. Jeff got the nozzle in the tank and started pumping before the first one got near. He battered it back with a hit that would have been a home run even in a major league park. It actually flew about five feet then landed skidding for another five. Its face was smashed and oozing blood. Not really bleeding. Bleeding requires a beating heart. But oozing. Its jawbone was broken and hanging from the left side of its face. Its tongue, the colour of a day old bruise, lolled below its face … and then it stood up, and came for him again. He batted it again, then spun to pound the one coming up behind him. The numbers on the gauge spun, .731, .854, .967, 1.001 gallons …

  "If they can hear, can they feel? Can they see and taste and feel?"

  There were about six of them now. Jeff spun from one to the next, battering them away, going through the whole bunch of them while the first recovered it's feet and came toward him again. It was a game of who can last the longest and it was a losing game. Jeff was getting winded, tired. But whatever drove the muscles of the walkers was inexhaustible. They would just keep coming and coming and coming. And there were lots of them. More arriving every second. 1.98, 2.07, 2.84, the numbers spun. "That's enough!" She screamed. "We have enough! Come back in! Please come back in!"

  But that wasn't going to happen. She could see that clear enough. There were dozens of them now. Most were going for the pungent, sweaty meat of the man with the whirling bat, but some came to the doors of the car, sniffing and looking at Mira and the baby. Veal. She couldn't help giggling crazily. They see the baby and want VEAL.

  "Can they feel pleasure? Can they feel pain?" she asked Roger. Her eyes wide, needing this important piece of data. Needing it more than anything else in the world.

  A face was pressed against the passenger door. A woman's face. Well, the face of something that had once been a woman, bloated and mottled purple. The sickly tongue tracing sticky trails of clotted saliva along the glass. And then she heard a loud thump on the windshield. Jeff. His face was bloody and contorted with pain, his hand slapped the windshield, two fingers already missing and his agonized face cried: "Go! Go you stupid bitch! Get out of here! Take my baby and get to safety!"

  And then his eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he began to slide, lifeless, down onto the hood. In blind, unthinking panic, she slid across the seat, slammed the car in gear, and mashed the accelerator. The car lurched forward, bodies, including Jeff, flew from the car as she moved about ten feet and slammed headlong into the brick of the small convenience store that all modern gas stations had become. The nozzle was still lodged firmly in the tank, the hose pulled and wrenched loose where it was weakest, at the point where it joined the pump. Gasoline continued to surge from the tank, spilling to the ground and flowing along the concrete. She threw the car into reverse and backed out, then jammed it back into gear and, tires spinning, she shot out of the lot and onto the road, dragging the hose behind her.

  "Tell me Mr. Watkins. Can they suffer?"

  "I don’t know, Mrs. Effayant. I honestly don’t know."

  "He was all torn up. He was bitten and bitten. And now … he walks. Do you think he feels the pain? Do you think he is hungry? I know they eat, but do they starve?"

  Roger took her cheeks in both hands and forced her eyes to look into his.

  "Listen. I cannot tell for sure. But I've killed dozens of these things, and … I've shot them, and bashed them, and broken their bones, and if they feel it, they don’t feel it like we do. That, I can promise you. Things that would hurt a human so badly they couldn't move, they just stand right back up and come back for more."

  She leaned back, a little calmer. But hardly comforted.

  "You killed them? They can be killed?"

  "Yes. Sort of. Killed might not be the right word. Whatever it is that makes them move seems to be centred in the head. If you destroy the brain, they go down and don't get back up. We can just bury them normally at that point."

  Her eyes widened at that.

  "Then we can go back! We can go back and put Jeff down! Just in case he feels. Before he has to starve."

  But Roger was already shaking his head.

  "We can't Mira. Think about it. Think about the North Coast. Cleveland on one end and Toledo on the other and nearly non-stop urban area in between. Millions of people. Now most of them aren't people, but still millions. I don't know how you made it through that gauntlet once, but we can't do it twice more. Once down and once back. Mira we just can't!"

  Calming again, she leaned back in her chair. She spent a few seconds smoothing her skirt back into 'pretty young mom' position, than looked back up at him.

  "Why not?" she asked. "What else do I have to do with the rest of my life?"

  "That is an excellent question. It's on my list of things to talk to you about. The answer is rebuild. We survive first, and then we rebuild civilization. You said your husband was a pilot, but what about you? What do you bring to us?"

  She laughed.

  "Nothing! I was a freelance writer! I write technical and science articles. Nothing we can use now."

  His eyes brightened.

  "That is fantastic."

  She looked at him blankly.

  "Really? How so?”

  "Are you kidding? If nothing else you can write down the basics. As much as you can remember. That way, when our descendants start rebuilding the world, they won't have to start from square one. They won’t need to wait for another Archimedes or another Newton. They’ll already know."

  "How can we survive in a world where we can't even die in peace! We will always have the walkers. They aren't going away. Even if they did, people are still going to die, then walk."

  "Maybe the situation will change again. This virus or whatever …"

  Her laugh cut through his words like a harpy’s screech.

  "This is no virus. This is nothing natural. When this started it was very interesting. I figured there would be an article in it. I called some of my medical contacts. Do you know when it all started? Between 9:50 and 9:54pm last Thursday. That is as close as I could narrow it down, but that's a pretty damn narrow window. So I called a friend in Los Angeles. When did it start there? 6:50pm or so. Do you know what that means?"

  Roger looked at her, very intent on learning, but he didn't get it. He shook his head.

  "It means this is not a virus. It's not a disease. It's not anything like that. There was no 'patient zero.' There were no disease vectors. One minute, the dead laid still. The next they walked. Instantly, everywhere. All over the world. All at the same moment. This is not a natural process. There is nothing natural about this."

  Roger looked up at the boy. Little big man. Did she get his real na
me yet? She couldn't remember. This distressed her. It meant an awkward social situation was impending. Can't have that. God forbid.

  "Well," he said at last. "That is distressing, but even if it is supernatural, it seems to follow some rules. It's in the head, whatever it is. So we can … make them stop walking. We already know how to do that from trial and error. In the future we'll have to come up with new funeral practices, but we can do that. Cultures change over time, as new needs arise. But you are wrong about them never going away. And think about this, as it may comfort you about your husband. They are well and truly dead. They rot. They have trouble sneaking up on you because you can smell them a mile away. This thing that is happening, whatever it is, it’s tied up somehow in the brain. In the meat. And it’s rotting. So the shambling millions will … Just rot away. And the living will inherit the earth.”

  She stared distantly out at the slate coloured surface of the lake, and the sharp line where it met the blue sky at the horizon.

  "I don't want to inherit the earth. They can have it. I'm finished here."

  Suddenly, Roger lunged forward and seized her shoulders.

  "Don't say that! Don't ever say that. You don't have the right! Do you know how many people are on this island? Twenty-six. Twenty-seven now that you are here. Eleven women and sixteen men. And you may be the smartest and best educated of the lot of us. Do you understand?"

  "Stop hurting me!"

  Just as suddenly, he released her. He held his hands, palms open, as if struggling to regain control. Then, he sat down again, coolly.