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

by James Roy Daley

  Pickett stood, repositioning his pistol belt as he did. “Oh, I don’t doubt that,” he answered. “After what you pulled yesterday—”

  “Forget that shit!” Jimmy rushed on. “I’m the reason that dead guy disappeared from the morgue today!”

  Pickett let out a short bark of laughter and raised his hands as if surrendering to Jimmy’s statement. “What a surprise!” he added with sarcastic flare. “Tossing a feller outta the john with his pants around his ankles and stealing his phone wasn’t enough fun, was it? Ya just had to find something more interesting! Alright, then, Cooley, enlighten us; what the hell did you do with a half-mutilated corpse?”

  But before he could answer, Pickett’s eyes narrowed to two suspicious slits that focused on Jimmy’s boxers.

  “You didn’t fuck it, did you?”

  Jimmy stared at the man. “What? No! Jesus, Sheriff, I ain’t like that; I just ate one of the fingers—”

  Pickett’s bushy eyebrows seemed to fly off his forehead. “Christ, almighty, son! Now you’re mixed up in cannibalism?”

  Deputy Ferguson laughed through a mouthful of his drink, expelling spurts of orange cola out his nose.

  Pickett glared at the younger officer like an executioner with one hand on the power switch, ending the amusement. He then redirected his attention at Jimmy with equal intensity.

  “This is Detective Riverwind,” Pickett said, motioning to the American Indian with the lacerated face. “He’s the one you’re going to have to make friends with if you don’t want to spend the next decade in prison.”

  A phone rang at the desk. Vern answered it.

  “Now listen up, Cooley,” Pickett continued. “If it wasn’t for the detective’s investigation I’d can your ass right now and Judge Morton would put it on the shelf ’till winter. So if you have some serious information—and I mean it better be a goddamn treasure map with a big fuck’n X at the end of it—then start talking.”

  “Hey, Sheriff!” Ferguson said. “We just got a call from that rescue shelter over on route nine. The neighbors say some nutjob broke into the place and hacked up all the animals with an ax. Sounds real messy.”

  “Wonderful!” Pickett exclaimed. “Has the whole world gone crazy?”

  “I think it would be best if I questioned Mister Cooley alone,” detective Riverwind said. “Do you mind?”

  It was the first time he’d spoken since Jimmy arrived, and the power of the man’s voice sent a shiver down his spine.

  Pickett waved them away. “You can have him!”

  10.

  A scarred, coffee-stained table sat in the center of the police station’s only interview room and Riverwind gestured for Jimmy to have a seat as he closed the door.

  “Look,” Jimmy said once they were alone, “this is a waste of time, man. That psycho you’re after ain’t dead! He’s walking around right now, looking for me!”

  Riverwind nodded his acknowledgement of Jimmy’s predicament, but didn’t reply. Rather than sit down, the man took off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair.

  “The ‘psycho’ you’re referring to is a Navajo witch,” the detective explained, now rolling his sleeves up as he talked. “My people call them Skinwalkers because they have the power to assume the shape of an animal to avoid our detection. Seven days ago I beheaded the one you encountered, trapping its spirit inside its body, but the confrontation left me severely wounded and unable to fully dispose of the remains.”

  Jimmy gaped at the man’s words, looking to his ravaged face and recalling the coyote-headed corpse ripping out the bathroom wall of the motel.

  “I could tell you the whole history of how they came to be,” the detective went on, “but as you said, there isn’t much time. All you need to know is that by consuming the Skinwalker’s flesh, you’ve given it the power to thwart death and seek a new body.”

  “Me!” Jimmy gasped. “But how—”

  “Your friend Stuart isn’t very good at keeping secrets,” Riverwind answered. “He told me about your little scheme when I questioned the morgue staff about the disappearance of the Skinwalker’s corpse. He mentioned how you’d inadvertently swallowed the creature’s finger. Now it’s using your energy, your life force, to stay in our world until it can transfer its spirit into your body.”

  “So how the hell do we stop it?” Jimmy asked. “I mean, you can stop it, right?”

  “There are two options,” the man answered. “One is to completely destroy its physical form, either by force or simply by waiting until the creature’s body decomposes to the point of being useless. The only problem is that you’re now linked to the Skinwalker by the same magical bond that reanimated it, which will allow it to follow you wherever you go. It will anticipate our moves.”

  “Great! So it could be here any second?”

  The man nodded.

  “What’s choice number two?”

  “I cut off your head.”

  Jimmy blinked. “What?”

  Riverwind reached behind his back and pulled out a knife large enough to reflect Jimmy’s whole face in the blade. It glinted in the light of the overhead fluorescents.

  He jumped to his feet. “You can’t kill me! You’re a cop!”

  “Decapitation is a proven method of separating a host’s spirit from his life force. You and Mister Wyllie have left me no choice.”

  Jimmy shivered as a sudden pang of understanding ripped through his brain. “You killed Stuart!”

  “An act of necessity,” Riverwind admitted. “I had to be sure he wasn’t lying about which one of you ate the finger.”

  You stinking motherfu—”

  The detective slashed, and Jimmy leapt backward. He dodged death by scant millimeters, but the tip of the blade still managed to plow a red trench across the skin of his chest.

  Jimmy dropped back in his chair and kicked upward as the wild-eyed detective lunged over the table. This time Jimmy was faster. His heel slammed into Riverwind’s face, popping loose a score of fresh stitches and peeling back a section of cheek.

  The man roared in pain, clutching the wound.

  Jimmy ducked under the table and scrambled to the door, throwing it open as six consecutive gunshots blared through the building.

  He froze in the doorway.

  Across the main room, past the bullpen, the Skinwalker rammed the front desk, demolishing the boards like a runaway wrecking ball. Pickett stood less than ten feet away, frantically reloading his sidearm.

  The creature reared up on the hind legs of a horse, displaying the new additions it had made to its body. Jimmy recalled Vern’s mention of an attack at the nearby animal shelter, and he now knew the fate of those various creatures.

  Or parts of them, anyway.

  The Skinwalker had transplanted its torso onto the body of a horse, looking like a mythological Centaur out of the nightmare of a mental patient. Four new arms sprouted from its sides, each freshly skinned and glistening with red muscle. Two of those newer appendages looked to be human, but the last set clearly came from something much bigger.

  The monster’s coyote head snarled, now topped with deer antlers and flanked on each side by the heads of a mountain lion and a goat. Each scanned the room independently from the other, seeking new prey.

  Deputy Ferguson emerged from the rubble of the desk and squeezed off five shots from his service pistol before the creature turned and struck out with its powerful hind legs, shattering his skull. Blood sprayed the wall.

  Jimmy watched it happen with a dreamlike detachment, unable to react even when the beast plunged two of its hands into the deputy’s chest and tore open his ribcage.

  “Move your ass, Cooley!” Sheriff Pickett shouted.

  Jimmy flinched at the force of the man’s voice, glancing over his shoulder in time to see Riverwind’s knife hack into the doorframe beside him.

  The detective surrendered the knife where it imbedded in the wood and grabbed Jimmy by the hair, yanking him backwards even as his other
hand drew a gun and fired three shots into Pickett’s chest.

  The Sheriff collapsed into a heap.

  The Skinwalker roared.

  Then Riverwind hauled Jimmy back into the interrogation room, slamming the door shut as the monster charged forward.

  Jimmy grabbed for the knife when he passed it, managing to pull it from the doorframe, but Riverwind preempted his action and slammed the pistol-butt down on his wrist.

  The knife clattered to the floor.

  “Now we end this!” the detective declared.

  A moment later, the entire forward wall of the room bowed inward, shattering the sheetrock and splintering the wall studs. A hand tipped with eagle talons punched through the door paneling, snaring a hunk of Riverwind’s skin before he got clear.

  The detective howled in agony, losing his grip on Jimmy’s hair as he strove to slip free of the hooks in his back.

  Jimmy elbowed the man and made his escape, scooping up the knife when he did.

  He spun around to face the trapped Navajo officer.

  “Kill yourself!” Riverwind hissed.

  The door to the room and most of the wall had fragmented into a spider web of destruction, and Jimmy watched as a furless bear’s paw reached through one of the cracks and clutched the man’s face, instantly crushing his lower jaw into a handful of mush.

  Jimmy stumbled away from the spectacle, shivering with terror when he saw that the man’s eyes still gazed with awareness. When the creature released him, Riverwind raised the gun to his head and ended the pain.

  The entire building seemed to shudder as the monster pressed forward.

  Ceiling tiles rained to the floor.

  Jimmy edged into the corner of the room as he watched the wall crumble, knowing he only had a matter of seconds before the creature exploded inside and did whatever pervoid mystical bullshit it wanted to do with him.

  Which left him only one choice.

  He reversed his grip on the knife and stabbed it into his stomach.

  Outside, the Skinwalker bellowed with rage. Jimmy closed his eyes, blocking it out, then suddenly saw an image of himself in his mind, viewed from the other side of the door, as he plunged his hand into the wound to search for the finger.

  An alien world of pain exploded inside his abdomen, and he had to reopen his eyes to be rid of the Skinwalker’s viewpoint when a pale blob of intestine slipped out past his wrist.

  Darkness began to creep into his vision as his questing fingers slid over the rubbery landscape of his insides, encountering internal juices that felt too hot to be healthy.

  The Skinwalker roared again, and he looked up to see more sections of the wall and door disintegrate in front of him, torn away as if no more than—

  Suddenly he had something.

  Something ... not right.

  He’d located a spongy potato-size mass deep in his guts and pulled it out of the wound amid a river of gore.

  The moment he did, the Skinwalker fell apart. The individual components of its morbid construction spilled to the ground in a horrible avalanche, splattering across the floor with a sound Jimmy knew he’d never forget.

  He stood quivering in the aftermath, too fearful to move. The pain in his stomach seemed to have dulled from the shock of thwarting an unnatural death, but he knew he desperately needed to haul ass to a hospital.

  He staggered forward.

  A frightening numbness had crept into his body, reminding him that he didn’t have time to waste being squeamish, and despite the fact he was still barefoot, he quickly waded through the mound off spilled viscera blocking the doorway.

  Tissue squished between his toes.

  Harder items poked into his heels.

  He slipped twice but managed to keep his balance, emerging from the pile only to collapse to his knees as the last of his strength fled from his body.

  Clear of the mess, he dropped to the floor and lay there for what seemed like eternity, one hand clamped over his gut, until he saw Sheriff Pickett push to a stand not far away. Riverwind’s trio of bullets dotted the man’s bulletproof vest like medals of Honor.

  “You alive, Cooley?” he asked.

  Jimmy tried for a “Yes, Sir, I am,” but only uttered a grunt.

  The man stepped forward, eyes widening when he beheld the full extent of Jimmy’s condition. “My, God, son ... What the hell happened to you?”

  Jimmy shakily removed his hand from the wound for the Sheriff to see, only then realizing that he still clutched the thing he’d ripped out of his body.

  He looked down and uncurled his blood-splattered hand.

  And almost screamed at what he saw.

  He stared at the thing, shaking his head as he tried to tell himself that it couldn’t be what it looked like.

  “Holy Jesus,” Pickett gasped. “Is that one of your kidneys?”

  Jimmy dropped the organ on the floor and swung toward the mass of dismembered animal parts.

  “Easy!” the Sheriff said, quickly restraining him. “We have to get you to the doc!”

  “It’s not dead!” he cried as Pickett lifted him to his feet. “The finger’s still in me! It’s playing possum, Sheriff! It’s gonna try and get me again!”

  He tried to break away, his mind racing to think of a way to burn the remains or blow up the building before it was too late, but he didn’t have the strength to resist and before he knew it Sheriff Pickett had ushered him out the front door and into a patrol car.

  “Keep pressure on the wound,” Pickett told him. “We’ll get you patched up in no time.”

  Jimmy wanted to tell him that was exactly what the witch wanted, why it had played dead and allowed them to escape, but the words came out as little more than mumbling that even he couldn’t decipher.

  The Sheriff started the car.

  Switched on the lights and siren.

  And as they pulled away, Jimmy thought he saw Detective Riverwind’s corpse standing in the entryway of the building, the Skinwalker’s four-fingered hand jutting from the hole in the man’s throat, waving to him, like an old friend promising to come visit again.

  Once Jimmy was healed.

  ZOMBIE 2

  ½ oz over-proof rum

  1 ½ oz pineapple juice

  ½ oz orange juice

  ½ oz apricot brandy

  ¾ human finger

  ½ tablespoon sugar

  2 oz dark rum

  1 oz light rum

  1 oz lime juice

  ~

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

  2. Strain into a Collins glass.

  3. Float over-proof rum on top.

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

  5. Serve.

  BEST NEW

  ZOMBIE

  TALES

  Volume Three

  Introduction 3

  JAMES ROY DALEY

  The release date for Best New Zombie Tales Volume Three has been delayed as long as possible. I’ve had a folder full of excuses tucked away inside my mental Rolodex for a while now, probably since the day Zombie Tales Two was made available to the general public. I’ve told people all kinds of things, crazy things: the book wasn’t ready, the stories weren’t quite right; I’m waiting for my book sales to improve; I’m worried about flooding the market.

  Lies.

  All lies.

  Every word that fumbled over my lips. Lies.

  In truth, there’s only one reason volume three was put on hold. Only one.

  H. P. Lovecraft.

  The moment Zombie Tales Three was ready for print I knew he would come to see me, seeking vengeance, seeking retribution. Zombie-Lovecraft chewed the hand from my arm the first time I released a zombie book (see Zombie Tales One), and he sawed the foot from my leg the next (see Zombie Tales Two). Neither incident was enjoyable in any possible way. Both experiences were painful, leaving me scarred mentally, physically, and e
motionally.

  So why put out a third volume? Why not keep rolling out the excuses until the day I die?

  Honestly, I’m not sure that I have an answer for that one. Maybe it’s because I grew up with a punk rock attitude, or maybe I’m just too damn stupid to do the intelligent thing. Or maybe, just maybe, I figured I could take the son-of-a-bitch, and give him a piece of what’s comin’.

  In the months following the release of Zombie Tales Two I spent a lot of time in the hospital. My leg, which was in terrible shape, endured three separate operations. The first was an emergency operation performed hours after my attack. During the second surgery, which was completed a few weeks later, I had part of my leg amputated in preparation for the third operation––a procedure known as osseointegration.

  Osseointegration is a new way of attaching an artificial limb to a body. Up until recently the ‘stump and socket’ method was used, causing significant pain to the amputee. This new ‘direct attachment’ method works by inserting a titanium bolt into the bone at the end of the stump. Several months after the operation is complete the bone will bond itself with the titanium. Once the bone and the titanium are connected an abutment is fastened to the bolt, which extends from the stump. The artificial limb can then be fastened securely. Some of the benefits of this method include better control of the prosthetic, the ability to wear the prosthetic for an extended period of time, and the ability to do things like drive a car, or in some instances, play a musical instrument.