Holiday of the Dead

by David Dunwoody

  "I'm sorry Mrs. Effayant. That was uncalled for and unforgivable. I'm …"

  He paused. Breathing deeply a couple of times.

  "I'm the Sheriff. I'm the guy everyone looks to. You see, it's my job – my duty – to keep the people safe. To make them secure and happy. That means, in this case, I have to bring it all back. Forgive my lack of tact here, but eleven Eves is not a very broad breeding base. Even if we didn't have your wonderful brain, we still need your womb. A horrid thing to say to someone I just met, but you have to understand what’s at stake here. This is much bigger than any one of us."

  But she was still staring, not at all startled by his poorly-timed honesty.

  "No." She spoke so quietly that it was almost impossible to hear. "There are others. Other little islands. Other mountaintops. Other little heavens. It's not all on us."

  "I'm sure you are right. But in the meantime, the only place I know for sure humanity has survived is right here. Until we know for sure, about others, we have to behave as if the whole future rests on us. We simply don't have a choice."

  They sat in silence for a long time. Her eyes were lost, fixed to the horizon. Then, without warning, she pitched forward and vomited copiously on the wood planking of the porch.

  The battered car plunged right through the gate at the little dock when she had run out of 'north' and came to the endless expanse of Lake Erie. The drive had been eventful, but easier than she imagined it would be. The roads were mostly clear, as people had taken to hiding in their homes when it all started going to hell. She did manage to run over one walker that seemed to be blundering along the centreline of the highway. The tank had just over four gallons in it. Not even half full, which was good because the gas cap was lost and the valve was held open by the nozzle. She was damned if she was going to stop to remove it now. She wasn’t getting out of this car till the last possible second. Twelve feet of hose had danced along the ground behind her the whole trip.

  Like most docks, there was a fence around it to keep out thieves, but that was a different time. A different world. Thieves wouldn't just drive through the gate because it would make noise and wake the locals. Phones would dial, and the constabulary would come running. Not now. Mira didn't give a tinker’s damn who heard, and she mashed through the wooden planked gate without slowing down.

  She knew where she was. Jeff's folks had a large powerboat that took them to the island. It was still carefully tied at its dock. She ignored it. Mira didn't even know how to start the damn thing, and now wasn't the time to learn. Abandoning the ruin of the car, she made her way down the short dock at the end, clutching the baby to her chest. A long line of small outboard motor boats – fishing boats, her father would have called them – lined the wood. She hopped into one after another, until she found one that was a pull start. She eyed the three walkers that had answered all the commotion. They were still minutes away. Mira pulled the start cord again and again, cursing each time. On the sixth pull, the little Evenrude sputtered to a coughing life. She slipped off the two ropes and kicked away from the dock. It had been years since she used her father's little boat, but it came right back to her. She twisted the handle and sped about forty feet away from the dock, then stopped to watch what happened.

  Could they come after her? They just wandered around, seeming lost. One of the walkers fell in the water, but it seemed to be stuck; as if unable to let its head go underwater. It didn't need to breathe, but it didn't seem to realize it, so it couldn't follow her out into the lake. Saved by stupidity. Actually, that made sense, she guessed. It was, by definition, brain dead. How clever could it be? This thing was never going to take up a career in poetry or particle physics. Idly, she wondered how long it took the brain to die. Are there walkers that could still think for a period of time? She didn't know.

  "God, if you are there, I beg you. Don't let Jeff still be able to think!"

  She picked up Susie and touched her tiny cheeks and lips again. The child was so hot. Burning with fever. She had been sick for days, hell, Mira was sick, but she had a hundred pounds on the baby. She barely noticed, but the baby … Oh, she needed to get the baby to a doctor.

  Mira put up a hand, arresting Roger's forward rush to help. That hand spoke without words: Please. The polite thing is to pretend I didn't just do something disgusting. She wiped her lips with her bare hand, trying to maintain what dignity she could.

  "Breeding,” she said, straightening up. "You want me to have babies."

  The GPS still worked. She was puzzled by that for a second, then realized she shouldn't be. Nothing could touch those satellites; they just sit up there and beam out a carefully timed pattern of data. All the magic was in her handset, which ran on battery and needed little maintenance. Hell, GPS may well be the last sign of intelligent life on earth, sending out its signals long after everyone is dead. The thing was still programmed with the location of, not just the island, but the dock nearest the house. Turning up the throttle, she turned the little boat toward the island.

  Will I find life there? A doctor? God, Susie was so hot! She had been screaming and crying most of the way up, but the last ten miles of the drive she was pretty quiet. She drove the boat with one hand and held the baby to her chest with the other. Susie made the nibbling motions she always did when she was hungry. Without really thinking about it, she popped the buttons on her blouse and offered a breast.

  With inhuman power, the toothless, bony gums mashed the tender nipple. Mira screamed and pulled away from the child. Nearly tipping the boat as she scampered to the far end. Susie fell to the damp bottom and, thrashed with far more strength than an infant should have. The tiny fingers hooked into clumsy claws, digging at the ribbed bottom of the boat. Her little body writhed, her head and feet came up and down as she tried to move. To come after her mother. Mira screamed and screamed as the thing wreathed horribly, it's eyes lolling about in its sockets, unseeing. It actually made some progress toward the front of the boat where Mira was crowded.

  Screaming, Mira lashed out with her left foot, catching the child in the stomach, and kicked her in a high tumbling arc through the air. She landed with a small splash and sank like a piece of granite.

  Mira must have spent two hours weeping in the bottom of the boat as the motor took her in circle after circle after circle …

  She exhaled sharply, and looked up at Roger. His features looked very concerned as he watched her.

  "I am afraid," she spoke, very slowly, "that if you want any deliveries, you are going to have to call FedEx. Because this girl is out of the baby business."

  Roger reached out toward her for a moment, then pulled back, as if realizing touching her might not be wise. Too soon. He should have brought up the 'rebuilding' on his second visit, or third. Too late now.

  "Of course, Ma'am. I didn't mean to imply … I'm sorry. I'm just trying to keep things going here. Progressing. You know. We'll take our leave now. Forgive the intrusion." He slipped a hand into a hidden pocket on the inside of his coat and took out a small boat horn.

  "The phones don't work anymore, I'm afraid. But if you have an emergency of any type, just give a blast or two on that and we'll come running. We haven't come up with a non-emergency method of communication yet, but we are working on it."

  She smiled thinly, her hand still on her belly.

  "Before we go, ma'am. Is there anything we can do for you? We don't have a doctor, but we have a guy who is a retired EMT."

  "I'm fine. I'm more heart sick than stomach sick."

  Roger began patting down his pockets. "I may have an aspirin or something."

  "I'll be fine. I took something before you got here. Just waiting for it to kick in."

  He smiled at her.

  "I'm so sorry I upset you."

  "Think nothing of it. It was either today or later. What has happened … isn't going away."

  "Well, you have a good evening." He turned, heading down the walk to the golf cart he and little big man had arrived in.
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  "I will.” She smiled back. And she was already starting to feel better.

  She had taken something a little before they knocked on her door. Two Tylenol, washed down with twenty ounces of drain cleaner. Burned like the fires of hell, but the pain had gone away soon enough. And she had satisfied her curiosity about how long it's possible to think after you become a walker. A good long time, it turns out. That conversation was even better than her multiplication tables plan.

  Yeah, she was starting to feel better. She licked her dry lips as she watched little big man's chubby bare legs climbing onto the back of the cart.

  Her appetite was even starting to come back.

  THE END

  LADYKILLER

  By

  Ricki Thomas

  Ted arched his back, his spine complaining from the hours of weeding he’d just finished, and he surveyed the garden, the neat rows of marigolds lining the fence, the well pruned bushes and trees cleverly arranged to give a range of greens throughout the year. He smiled, proud of his work. But it wasn’t the beautifully landscaped scene that gave him such a sense of pride. It was his other job. As a ladykiller.

  Mindlessly plucking the dead leaves from his begonias, Ted thought back, a gentle smile appearing as he recalled the first girl, seven years before. Well, someone had to do it, rid the world of scum, it might as well be him. He’d been in his car, parked at the side of a winding country lane, eating a chicken sandwich, when he’d seen her. Oh, she was pretty, but he knew that beneath the long charcoal coat she had tied tightly, she had no clothes on, and that made her a prostitute. And prostitutes were filthy creatures, preying on men for their carnal pleasure.

  So he slunk down in his seat until he’d heard her pass, then quietly collected the wheel nut wrench from the boot of the car. With a stealth he could still muster, he ran up behind her, and smashed her over the head, manically heaving the tool on her until her body slumped, broken and bloody. Always taught by his mother not to leave a mess, he couldn’t just leave her there, so he’d carried her to his car and placed her in the boot, alongside the murderous tool.

  When the darkness fell and the lights in the neighbours’ houses died, he took the body and buried it securely in the garden, but not before removing her coat, and he was amazed to find she wasn’t naked after all: she was wearing a business suit. A tinge of guilt flooded over him, maybe she hadn’t been a prostitute after all. But with her safely in her grave, as he mused to himself with a whisky in the early hours, he knew he’d have to do it again. The sheer adrenaline rush had been so great, the feeling of empowerment, the cracking sound of the skull. It had given him too much pleasure not to continue in his newly found career.

  The first problem he came across reared its ugly head three months later when he couldn’t ignore the compulsion to kill anymore. Finding the girl. He’d been so lucky the first time, she had just appeared. But women walking alone weren’t easy to find in this day and age. He was going to have to select a target this time, choose who to live, and who to die.

  He’d heard through an article in the local newspaper about the prostitute problem in the centre of the nearest town. Apparently, although they plied their trade on the streets, kerb crawling was more of a problem, holding up the traffic, and lustful men propositioning innocent women who just happened to be in the area. He would have to be careful.

  His next target wasn’t as pretty as the first, but that didn’t matter really. She had a twisted expression, hardened by her trade, steely eyes and a mouth crinkled from too many years of smoking. He pulled the car into a lay-by and watched as she tried to solicit her goods. Unsuccessful in her attempts, Ted decided to get out and approach her, suggesting she get into the car. She refused, cautious of the dangers her job entailed, but with the promise of cigarettes, alcohol, and a hefty payment thrust into her waiting hand, she reluctantly agreed after some coaxing.

  Ted was aware that his demeanour was gentle, an aging, small man with grey hair and glasses for his myopic eyes, and he concocted a dramatic story about losing the wife he’d never had years before, now needing to seek his pleasure elsewhere. His tale took the entire journey to relate, and by the time he had reached his tiny village, she’d become comfortable in his presence. He’d stopped on the way to buy the cigarettes, and she was happy to stay in the car, which gave him relief.

  As soon as he’d led her into the kitchen through the back door she started to remove her clothes, and he halted her. After all, it wasn’t sex he was after. He suggested they shared a whisky, that she had a couple of cigarettes, and afterwards he would let her lie on the bed and give her a calming back massage. She thought she’d died and gone to heaven, how lucky was she to find a generous and caring punter. But very soon she did die. And heaven became a small plot next to the first victim in his prized garden.

  Ted gained so much pleasure from both of the killings, he adored the sound of the flesh splitting, of the muted cries as he extinguished their lives, of the only power he had ever managed to wield after growing up, an only child, with his oppressive mother. So it became a pattern. Every few months when the desire overwhelmed him, he would select his victim, entice her back to his house with his amiable manner, and make her pay with her life for her sordid career. Luckily the garden was big enough to withstand so many graves.

  A voice brought Ted back to the present, and he turned to see his neighbour by the fence. “Bob, hello.”

  Bob laughed, he rarely spoke to Ted, but when they did interact it was always with pleasantness. “I see you’ve been gardening again.” Ted was standing beside the latest grave he had prepared for his next victim. “Is it more roses you’re planting?”

  Ted nodded, his hands expressive. “Yes, another English Rose. I shall be going out soon to get a few more.”

  Bob chuckled once more. “So many rose bushes, you must have at least twenty blocks of them.”

  “Yes, I think they’re befitting of such a pretty, well fertilised garden, don’t you?”

  He didn’t know why, maybe it was because she was there, or maybe it was because he fancied something new, but the next victim Ted selected was just a girl. Maybe around the age of ten. She seemed vulnerable, there was a sadness in her eyes, not because she was unhappy, just an underlying torment that he soon came to understand was due to the loss of her mother at the age of three, which she informed him of in the car when he was bringing her back to his bungalow. She’d been easy to lure, a promise of sweets, some pocket money, and maybe a McDonalds later, in return for her company. She was to be the first victim he’d ever asked the name of, and she happily introduced herself as Maisie.

  He revelled in her innocence, the bright blue eyes and trusting nature, and such a pretty little face, and he even contemplated letting her go at one stage. But the burning desire to rip her apart won the battle, and now he had her in his lounge, waiting for her sweets and fizzy drink. He had no need to have her facing the other way, even though he was in his sixties now, and even though he was a short man, he knew it would be easy to overpower her. He laid the tray, laden with chocolate and cans of pop, on the coffee table, and she dived in greedily.

  With her attention purely on selecting which goodies she should start with, he grabbed the poker and came at her, cracking it around the right side of her head. The questioning eyes as she took the beating almost broke his heart, but he was too far into the excitement now to stop, and gradually her body faltered and she was limp. He’d give it a couple of hours into the dead of night, when witnesses would be unlikely, and let her join the others outside.

  The noise was horrendous, deathly moaning, groans from the grave, and at first Ted thought he may be having a nightmare, but as his eyes slowly opened, adjusting to the soft light in the room, he could hear that the bad dream was real.

  A quick glance at the girl’s body on the floor reminded him of the previous day, or was it still the same day? But this had never happened before. The wailing, the crying, the guttural sounds. He jum
ped up from the sofa, as fast as his aging body would allow, and checked the young girl’s pulse. She was definitely dead. So the television was next on his list, switching it off hastily in case the racket was some kind of interference with the signal, but still the gruesome clattering continued. He had to find out where it was coming from.

  Opening the door to the kitchen, Ted took a step back, his eyes filled with horror, mouth agape, fear shaking his body. More than twenty women were in his kitchen, but they were horrendous. Eyes missing, heads crushed, clothes rotting, teeth brown, hair thinning and unkempt. He felt a pain in his chest, down his arm, and a terror he’d never experienced before. But still he didn’t know what to do.

  He backed away, trying to close the door, but the multitude of bodies compared to his fragile fighting was hopeless, and they soon all staggered into the room to join him as he edged further away. He had no idea why, but he lifted Maisie’s little dead body, slightly stiffened with the onset of rigour mortis, and held her in front of him as a worthless shield, and suddenly one of the zombies lunged at him, fleshless fingers clawing at him, faceless teeth grinding, soundless screams echoing, and soon the others had joined the assault.

  He was terrified now, aware that they wanted to kill him, a poor, defenceless old man, a man who had done nothing wrong, leading a peaceful life, tending his flowers, passing the time of day with the villagers. The pain in his chest grew; a clenching, gnawing, relentless torture that threatened to take him before the creatures attacking him did. He could feel his hair being dragged out, his arms being bitten, skinless mouths tasting his flesh. It seemed to go on for a lifetime, his death, and eventually it was there, his body slumped on the floor, a death mask of sheer agony, fright, and panic.

  The most vicious of the zombies smiled a lifeless grin, her revenge now complete with the help of the spirits she’d shared her grave with. She dusted the mud from her rotting business suit, bending down to scoop Maisie from the floor, tenderly stroking the curly hair from her eyes. She kissed her, and Maisie returned, glad to finally be back in her mother’s arms.