Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (Volume 1, 2 & 3)

by James Roy Daley

  Ernie was sittin’ on the wooden bench beside the line, lookin’ green around the gills and smokin’ a cigarette—also against regs, but it probably helped mask the stench. When he noticed me starin’ at him, he leapt up, ground his cigarette out under his foot and reached for one of the consoles that hung from the ceiling between each pair of magazines. At the push of a button, the conveyer sprang to life. It was show time.

  The first object I struck with my peavey pole was solid. A log. I thanked God and all the saints, and pulled it close enough to get my picaroon into it. Water slopped over the edge of the lagoon and pooled at my feet as I hauled it onto the conveyor beside me. Only eight more hours, I told myself. I can do this.

  The next one was a log, too, and I almost had myself convinced this wouldn’t be so bad after all. Then my peavey hit somethin’ that didn’t feel the way any log did. It sank in with a dull thunk. I couldn’t bring myself to look. I just hauled it close, dragged it onto the belt and focused on the logs bobbin’ in the lagoon, tryin’ to figure out how to avoid the nightmares floatin’ among them. The first monster disappeared from my peripheral vision and I chased it with another log the same way I chase scotch with a beer.

  “Ah, crap,” I heard Ernie say behind me, loud and clear through his facemask and my earplugs. I tried not to imagine him rollin’ that thing off the line and into the magazine. Then I tried not to picture what the log did when it landed on top of it. Tried, and failed.

  The first hour was grim. The creatures didn’t take up as much room as logs did and the wood fallin’ on top of ‘em smashed ‘em up even more, so it took longer to fill the magazines than usual.

  When we finished the first load, I got out of there as quick as I could without looking like I was runnin’ away. I ambled down the stairs and headed through the maze of machinery to the cafeteria, walking faster the farther away I got. I left my lunchbox in my locker. Nothing solid was gonna stay in my stomach, so I just had coffee. Gracie, who worked the cash, offered a tired smile. Usually I woulda flirted with her, but I wasn’t in the mood. I didn’t think she was, either. Everyone in the mill knew what we was doin’.

  Since it wasn’t break time for anyone else, the cafeteria was deserted. The night watchman saw me and sauntered over from his booth at the main entrance.

  “Gil,” he said.

  I nodded and drank some coffee. It tasted like mud.

  “As bad as they say?”

  I looked up from my cup and nodded. He must have seen somethin’ in my face, ‘cos he didn’t stick around. I glanced at the clock, dreadin’ the moment when I had to go back. It came soon enough, though. I put in my earplugs, strapped on the facemask and slipped on the rubber gloves before I mounted the stairs to groundwood again.

  It was Ernie’s turn to haul, so I wore my hardhat, grabbed a picaroon and stationed myself at the front of the line. The first three things that came at me were logs. Then one of them things showed up. It was harder to handle than timber, soft and floppy, with limbs—and other parts that were never meant to dangle—danglin’ all over the place. It almost got past me, and what a monumental disaster that would have been if it had reached the end of the belt and tumbled onto the floor with the oversized pieces someone would trim at the end of shift with a chainsaw.

  I wrestled it into the magazine and right away there was another one. And another. It didn’t really matter how they went in. Because they was flexible they couldn’t jam up like logs. Still, old habits die hard. I lined them up like soldiers at attention when I could, and didn’t look down when I dropped logs on top. My earplugs and the steady thrum of the grinders saved me from the sound of them bein’ crushed and mangled by falling timber. Even so, my imagination did a pretty good job. I was just glad I wasn’t downstairs to see what was comin’ out of the grinders.

  Men who work in a mill are used to getting used to things. At the end of the first shift, we kidded around a little, though nobody mentioned the gruesome sights we’d seen over the past eight hours. After two weeks, we was telling zombie jokes and playing tricks on each other with decomposed arms and legs. We got through it, because we had no choice. No one had a trade, and there was only so many jobs at Burger King. We all spent a little more time at the bar, and showered and washed our clothes more’n usual, but as long as the paychecks kept comin’ we showed up and did our jobs.

  After six weeks, it was all over. The box of masks and gloves disappeared. It still reeked on the lines—the smell had soaked into the timber beams and wooden floors—but we was used to it by then. I won’t say we were sorry but, for a while, we had been more than just mindless cogs in the machine that churned out newspaper at the other end of the mill. Maybe we were a little disappointed we didn’t have that any more.

  I’ve worked from one end of this place to the other, from the steam plant to shipping, but I never really stopped to think about where all the paper we made ended up. New York, London, Tokyo—they was all just names to me. I went to Vegas once for a vacation and found big cities not to my likin’.

  Outside of our little town, nobody knew what was in the newspapers they read at the breakfast table or on the subway on the way to work. People crumpled up our paper for packing material, lined their birdcages and litter boxes with it, and even wrapped their fish and chips up in it in some places, or so I’m told.

  We spread that disease better’n any old bonfire ever could. Every time someone got a paper cut, or wiped their noses after reading the paper, they caught a dose. Every time someone shook hands with a friend or kissed a lover, they passed it on.

  No one knew until the first newly infected dead person crawled out of his grave, so it had plenty of time to spread. By the time they figured out what had happened, it was too late. The tree-huggers never said a word when someone suggested burnin’ the mill to the ground. For all I know, one of them struck the first match. That’s how quickly priorities change.

  And now, dear jeezus, they’re everywhere—in every town and city on the planet. Maybe even in Timbuktu, for all I know. The tide has turned against us once more—for good.

  So, now I’m filling the magazine again, one bullet at a time, and waitin’.

  ‘Cos I know they’re coming. It’s only a matter of time.

  This time it’s the end.

  ZOMBIE 1

  ½ oz over-proof rum

  1 oz pineapple juice

  1 oz orange juice

  ½ oz apricot brandy

  ½ tablespoon crushed bone marrow

  ½ tablespoon sugar

  1 oz dark rum

  2 oz light rum

  1. Shake light rum, dark rum, apricot brandy, pineapple juice, orange juice, limejuice, and powdered sugar with ice.

  2. Strain into a Collins glass.

  3. Sprinkle bone marrow into over-proof rum and float on top

  4. Garnish with a fruit slice, spring of mint and a cherry.

  5. Serve.

  * * *

  BEST NEW

  ZOMBIE

  TALES

  Volume Two

  Introduction 2

  JAMES ROY DALEY

  When I heard the loud and mechanical roar, as obnoxious and disquieting as it was, I thought nothing of it. Why would I? My small neighborhood may sit a fair distance away from industrious sounds of the big city but the sound of chain and steel wasn’t completely unheard of. People had trees to trim and fireplaces in need of wood for those oh-so-cold winter nights. A few of my neighbors even had a fire pit behind their homes, giving them every right and reason to use a chainsaw. I didn’t contemplate the grinding racket as it became louder and more obvious––not until the noise was clearly coming from my front porch. Then I thought, What the hell is going on here? Why is someone running a chainsaw near my house?

  I had been sitting on my couch at the time, watching television and eating ice cream; my knees were apart and a bowl was sitting on my lap. Cautiously, almost nervously, I licked my lips, placed the bowl on the coffee table, and stood up.
The saw was louder than ever, insulting the very essence of what a quiet borough was all about. The door was approached with forced footsteps and my hand was placed on the knob with an equal amount of concern. Before I had a chance to turn my wrist, the noise doubled in volume and the door started shaking. The knob began rattling. The pictures hanging on the wall next to me began bopping around like they were in a dance competition. I stepped back with my mouth flopping open. A moment passed and my knees began shaking. I yelled something, but Lord only knows what that something may have been. And just as the blade began making its way through the door––tearing apart the doorknob, the lock, and everything that was around it––the truth of the situation collided with my limited intelligence like a medicine ball in the stomach.

  H. P. Lovecraft was here. He came back to finish what he started.

  I guess this is a good time to point out that I already had one run-in with H. P., and I don’t mind telling you that I didn’t enjoy the experience at all. He mulched my hand apart with a blender, and he warned me that he’d return if…if…

  If what?

  I couldn’t remember.

  While my mind tried to unravel the mystery of what he said, the door swung open in a cloud of sawdust and wood splinters. I saw the chainsaw and I stepped back with my arms held out like a man balancing himself on a log. ‘Arms,’ of course, being a loose term, what with one of my arms ending at the elbow thanks to my last encounter with Mr. Lovecraft.

  I heard his voice mingled within the sounds of the machinery before I saw his face.

  “Zombies!” he screamed. “More goddamn zombies!”

  I tripped. If it happened in a movie I would’ve been thinking, Yeah right! As if!

  Truth may be stranger than fiction some of the time, but life can be filled with enough clichés to make the worst Hollywood writer cringe in disgust. I tripped. Tripped over a fake plastic plant that had been collecting dust in the same spot for the past ten years. I won’t say that I felt stupid; it’s only now that I feel like an idiot for falling down. At the time my feelings were not traveling the embarrassment highway; the terror growing inside my mind was coming together in a way that blocked out all other emotions. H. P. Lovecraft had returned!

  But why?

  That was the question in need of answering.

  He said he’d come back if…

  If…

  It hit me. He said, Make sure your zombie book is amazing. That’s what he said. He said, Make sure the book is amazing or he’d saw my empty head off!

  Oh shit!

  Wasn’t the first volume good? I thought it was good! It got great reviews…the writers are incredible…everyone tells me that the book looks beautiful… So why the hell is he back? What did I do wrong?

  He stepped into my home and lowered the saw. His suit was clean and his tie was thin. I saw his face––his skinny, pale as a ghost, face. His eyes were darker than most and sat deep within their sockets. His slender nose was crinkled in a way that suggested that he was disgusted with me. The grin that haunted his lips evinced the emotion of hate.

  I was in trouble, very serious trouble.

  I said, “Hello Howard. What brings you here?”

  Before the question tumbled across my trembling lips he was standing above me, revving the saw’s engine. His pupils narrowed into pinpricks.

  “How could you?!” he shouted. “Did I not teach you anything? Are your thoughts utterly illogical, asinine, and incongruous? Are you completely moronic? You imperceptive, dimwitted, Neanderthal! You absurd, idiotic, pre-Gravettian, Blytt-Sernander, cavern-dweller!”

  Drowning in my fear, I had no idea what half of those words meant. Did he make up a new language every time he spoke? Thinking about his fiction, it seemed very likely.

  “I warned you,” he said. “I warned you and now I’m going to eradicate you!”

  “Wait!”

  “Why should I?”

  “Just wait––what did I do wrong? The book is good, right? Everyone agrees that I did a great job! So what’s the problem?”

  H. P. rolled his dark and narrow eyes. “You’re doing a second volume?”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me! Your releasing a second zombie book; isn’t that right?”

  “Of course I am! You can’t put out a volume one without a volume two! Did you really think I was going to release a volume one without a volume two?” He revved the engine and I screamed: “Don’t kill me! You should have known it was coming!”

  For a moment he looked stumped. I can only assume that conflicting thoughts swirled inside his mind. Later I would come to the conclusion that my logic had saved my life. Not that it kept me safe. Or in one piece.

  “Pick one,” he said.

  And of course I had no idea what he was talking about. “What?”

  “Pick one!” he repeated.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  H. P. spat on me. The last time I saw him he spat on the floor; this time the wad of mucus hit me in the face, just below my left eye.

  Chuckling, he said, “Leg it is.”

  He moved faster than a shark, and the saw came screaming towards me. Before I knew it would happen, my ankle was being chewed apart and blood was splashing the walls in generous amounts. My single hand pounded against the floor as pain washed over me like an electrical current. I heard the bone grind and I felt my muscles tear. When I pulled my leg away from the blade my foot didn’t come with it. It just sat on the floor, bleeding like a stuck pig. The last thing I remember is that crazy son-of-a-bitch whispering something in my ear. I wish like hell I could remember what he said. I have a feeling it was important.

  * * *

  Ahem.

  Let me clear my throat.

  Dear literate zombie fans; my name is James Roy Daley. What you’re looking at is a little idea of mine, brought to life by the power of hard work. If you’ve read the first volume you know what I’m doing here. I’m putting together the best zombie tales I can get my hands on. If you haven’t read the first volume, I figure you’re missing out. Volume one has some great stories. Ray Garton’s Zombie Love is a real treat, Matt Hult’s Feeding Frenzy is probably the strangest zombie story ever written, and John L. French wrote a tale called Paradise Denied that is so far removed from anything conventional that it belongs in a genre of its own. Plunking those with writers such as Kealan Patrick Burke, Jonathan Mayberry, Jeff Strand, Bev Vincent, Kim Paffenroth, and…well…you get the point. Great writers tend to make great books. And the book you’re currently reading is loaded with great writers.

  First up, an amazing story by a very good friend of mine: Rio Youers.

  Enjoy...

  Bury Me Not

  RIO YOUERS

  She had known this day would come—had been prepared for it, every time she opened the front door for the last two and a half years: a perfect stillness, as if this iota of the world had ceased to be, and was suspended in its own time and place; a chill feeling, unmistakably the discontinuance of something that once was (an endness, she thought, and that peculiar word––endness—fell through her mind and shattered against her soul); and, of course, the smell. It stained the air. Abused goodness. Nothing natural.

  He’s gone, she thought.

  Michelle Weston braced herself and stepped into the hallway. She covered her mouth against the smell, took two trembling steps, and jumped when the wind caught the front door and slammed it with an angry sound.

  “Hello…Mr. Vandenhoff?”

  She didn’t expect a reply. She didn’t get one.

  The hallway was gloomy, with faded walls, an old-fashioned dial phone on a small table in the corner, and Mr. Vandenhoff’s brown leather shoes on the floor—shoes he would never wear again (unless the undertaker chose to bury him in them). The dining room was on the right. Nothing in there but an empty table and a cabinet that housed Mr. Vandenhoff’s many humanitarian awards, along with several photographs of him and various luminaries, although the
only faces she recognized were those of Nelson Mandela and the Princess of Wales. The kitchen was ahead, on the left, with the living room on the right. Judging from the smell, Michelle knew that she would find him in one of these rooms. Maybe he had died waiting for the toast to pop up, and was sprawled on the kitchen floor, as putrid as spoiled fruit. Or he was in the living room, sitting in his armchair in the exact position in which he had died, with Monday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal in his hands, open at the editorials.

  This latter was almost the case; Mr. Vandenhoff was indeed sitting in his armchair, but he didn’t have the Wall Street Journal in his hands. He was actually holding the remote control for the TV, and appeared to be aiming the device at the screen. His thumb was poised over the power button. He had died before he could switch it on.

  “Oh,” Michelle said. She had been expecting it—of course she had, but it hit her hard, all the same. Her legs weakened and she needed the support of the wall for a moment. Her instinct was to take several deep breaths, but the air was so foul that her throat contracted. She covered her mouth and gagged again.