21st Century Dead

by Christopher Golden

  “C’mon, Jack,” the boy urged.

  The pup watched as a dog trotted out, and was shocked by what he saw. It was a dog, just like him—same color, same everything—only older.

  “That’s a good boy,” the older Mitchell said as the dog happily ran down the steps to the yard below. “I even cut the grass for you.”

  The pup walked closer so that they might see him, even letting out a yelp that they might notice all the sooner.

  But the boy and dog did not react. It was as if he wasn’t there.

  “They seem pretty happy, don’t they?” said a voice from somewhere behind him, and the pup turned to see who it was.

  He didn’t know the older man or the big black dog with the graying snout. They, too, were watching the boy and his dog as they walked about the yard.

  “I don’t think they can see me,” the pup said.

  “You’re right,” the old dog answered. “It’s because you’re not really here.”

  “I’m not?” the pup asked.

  “You’re here, but you’re not.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “You’re here,” the dog said again, looking at the dog named Jack that was now playing fetch with the older Mitchell. “But you’re not.”

  “I’m here,” the pup repeated, watching as the ball rolled across the lawn toward them and Jack barreled across the lawn to retrieve his prize.

  “That dog is me,” he suddenly realized. “That dog Jack is me.” He looked to the older dog for further clarification.

  “You got it,” the dog said. The old man accompanying the dog just smiled and slowly nodded.

  “But how can that be me when I’m right here?” the pup asked frantically.

  “It’s because you’re getting a glimpse of something that hasn’t happened yet,” the old dog began. “You’re getting a chance to see a possible future for you and your boy.”

  “My boy?”

  “If you accept your potential as guardian, and Mitchell accepts you.”

  “He’s calling me Jack,” the pup said.

  “Yes, he is. That’s the name he’s given you.”

  “Jack,” the pup repeated. “I like it.”

  “It suits you,” the old dog told him.

  “So this is what it will be like if…” The pup turned his large, brown eyes to the old dog.

  “One of the possible views,” he said. “With a proper guardian, the boy will grow up a warm, loving person, using his special gifts for the benefit of the world.”

  The pup, the old dog, and his man watched as Mitchell grabbed hold of Jack, taking him into his arms, hugging and kissing him, as the dog playfully struggled.

  “He seems to love me,” the pup said.

  “Very much,” the old dog agreed. “And it’s that love that helps to make the boy into what he will be for the world.”

  “But he doesn’t want me,” the pup said, tearing his gaze from the affectionate display before him. “They’re going to take me back.”

  The old dog suddenly looked very worried.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s a possibility also.”

  It suddenly became very dark around them, and the pup felt dizzy, stumbling in the darkness.

  “What’s happening?” the young dog asked.

  The old dog and the old man were still with him, but they were no longer in the yard, the wonderful smell of freshly cut grass having been replaced by something foul.

  Something that stank of death.

  The pup looked around him and was at once afraid. He had been someplace like this before, remembering that he had been taken to another family that had not wanted him, choosing one of his sisters instead. The pup recalled how afraid he’d been of the smells, sights, and sounds of the place: the cars and trucks, the structures that climbed so high up into the sky, and the people.

  So many people.

  “This is a city,” the pup said, looking over to the old dog and man standing beside him. “They scare me.”

  They were standing just inside an alley between two towering buildings, looking out onto the city street. There was something different about this city, something terribly wrong.

  He could feel it all around him, smell it, taste it in the air.

  “Something really bad has happened,” the pup said, the flames from the burning buildings and vehicles across the street from them reflected in his round eyes.

  “You’re right,” the old dog said, as his man nodded yet again, the look upon his withered face exceedingly grim. “This is one of the other possibilities … if you don’t accept your role as guardian.”

  The puppy was scared, but he found himself stepping farther out into the street, taking in the horrific sights around him. The air was filled with thick, black smoke that blotted out the sun, making it appear as night, and there were people running away from something, the look and stink of fear about them.

  In the center of a street clogged with burning cars, the pup gazed down its length to see a group slowly approaching.

  Is this who those people are running from? he wondered, watching the figures as they grew closer. He noticed that they moved oddly, stiffly, lurching with every step.

  All except for the one who led them.

  The boy and his dog were in the lead, an army of strangely moving people following behind them.

  “That’s not me with Mitchell,” the pup said, looking toward the old dog for clarification.

  “No, it’s not,” the old dog agreed as he and the man joined the pup in the middle of the street.

  “It looks like Murphy,” the pup observed. “Did Murphy not die in this view of the world?”

  “No, he died,” the old dog said.

  “But how is he dead if I’m looking—”

  “The boy … Mitchell … brought him back.”

  And that was when the pup got a good look at the dog walking slowly at the boy’s side: the missing patches of fur, the rotting skin covered in feasting insects, the milky white eyes.

  “And in bringing Murphy back, he brought them all back,” the old dog continued.

  The figures behind the boy and his dog were equally disturbing to behold: bodies pale and rotting, covered in dirt, some displaying gaping wounds—bite marks—that had taken their lives.

  But had filled them with something dark that had allowed them to come back.

  “How could he do this?” the pup asked, watching as Mitchell strode down the street, his dead dog by his side, leading a legion of living-dead monsters in an attack upon the city. “Where am I?” the pup asked. “What’s happened to me?”

  The old dog and the old man glanced off in another direction, toward a building engulfed in fire. Out in front, a dead man had pounced upon a living one, had driven him to the sidewalk, and was now biting him … eating him.

  “You were taken back to where you came from,” the old dog said. “A bond was never forged, and the boy was left to the mercies of the spirit from the woods.”

  The pup stared in a mixture of awe and horror at the sight of Mitchell as he and the living-dead version of Murphy advanced, leading their growing army of the dead.

  The boy’s eyes were dark and cold, absent of life even though he still had a pulse, unlike the dog and the shambling legions behind him.

  “Now do you see how important it is?” the old dog said.

  “Yes,” the pup answered, but he was suddenly very afraid. There was so much riding upon him, and he was such a little dog.

  “There comes a time when one has to open his eyes and become more than how he sees himself,” the old dog told him. “To become more than just the runt of the litter.”

  The pup turned back to the advancing horrors to see that Murphy now stood directly before him, dead white eyes staring him down, the stink of rotting meat and dirt forcing its way up into his nose.

  “You’re too late,” the dead dog said, yet it wasn’t Murphy’s deep, soulful voice but the one that the pup had heard from the fog,
that had lured him into the woods.

  And before the pup could react, to tell the dead dog that they’d just have to see about that, Murphy’s mouth opened up incredibly wide, so wide that his jaw unhinged with a disturbing pop, and dirt started to pour from his open mouth.

  So much dirt that it started to cover the puppy, no matter how hard he struggled to stay above the flowing soil.

  “Too late,” taunted the voice again as the dirt washed over his head like an ocean wave.

  * * *

  The filth filled his mouth and nose, and the pup struggled beneath its oppressive weight. For a moment he considered ceasing the struggle, and letting the dirt weigh him down as the sense of responsibility to himself, Mitchell, and the world now weighed him down, but he could not bring himself to surrender.

  It wasn’t in him, for he’d had to struggle to survive since the day he was born, and that was just the way things were.

  The pup lifted his head, finding air, and sucked in snorting nosefuls of the precious stuff. He saw that he was still in the hole, broken pieces of blue stone that were no longer glowing beneath him.

  He knew that he had done something quite wrong at the bottom of this hole and was overcome with the urge to fix it. Tensing his muscular legs beneath his bulky body, the pup sprang up to the edge of the hole, his front limbs catching the lip and giving him the opportunity to haul himself out from the hole.

  Looking around, he saw that the mist still drifted across the ground, and he thought he saw the hint of movement beneath it.

  The pup carefully advanced to where he thought he’d seen something moving and leaped quickly back as the smell of something horribly rotted invaded his snout, before it snapped at him.

  Whatever it was, it was still partially concealed by the rolling fog, and patches of nighttime darkness, but the pup was ready.

  Or at least he thought he was.

  The top part of the raccoon hauled its upper half across the ground, dragging the remains of its innards behind it like some sort of tail.

  I’m too late, the pup thought, continuing to back away as the raccoon crawled toward him, its yellowed teeth bared in a snarl, and ready to take a bite.

  Remembering where he was, and that the hole was close-by, the pup continued to back away, the dead raccoon picking up speed as it came after him. Just as the dead beast lunged, the puppy sprang over the head of the raccoon and the momentum of the dead thing’s thrust carried it over the edge of the hole, where it tumbled to the bottom.

  The pup peered over the side at the horrible thing as it writhed around in the dirt, trying to drag itself up the side, but with little success.

  “Try and bite me, will ya,” he called down to the struggling creature.

  There was another noise from behind, and the pup whirled toward it, surprised to see even more dead animals—now alive—emerging from the woods. There was a bird, more bones than feathers, a pack of squirrels, their wide, dead eyes glowing an eerie red, and a rabbit, its head a bare skull but its body still plump and fluffy.

  Tempted to deal with these awful things as well, the pup curbed the urge, turning away to head back to the house.

  Perhaps he was too late, but maybe there was something that he could still do to make things right.

  * * *

  Murphy’s favorite blanket, with something now alive beneath it, pushed its way up from the center of the grave.

  Murphy watched in horror as the shape squirmed and thrashed, gradually emerging in front of the boy.

  The dead were returning to life all around him; long dead, and more recent. Skeletal remains of forest rodents dug themselves out from beneath dirt and leaves while an opossum, its belly swollen with the gases of decay, waddled out from beneath a bush where it had crawled away to die mere days ago. There were even things, their bodies decayed to dust, that swarmed in the air like clouds of gnats.

  The boy’s special talents were being enhanced by the forest spirit, and the ghost dog had to wonder how far they were able to reach. Murphy recalled the burial place of many humans not too far off where the boy’s grandmother had been laid to rest not long ago, and imagined these terrible talents reaching beneath the ground to rouse the sleeping corpses there.

  Multiple human dead climbing from their graves.

  “And a darkness will spread across the land as the dead replace the living,” the spirit joyously proclaimed, looming above the boy, hands of fog resting upon Mitchell’s shoulders.

  The boy dropped to his knees before the thrashing shape enwrapped in the filthy blanket, reaching down to tear away the deteriorating fabric of this birth sac, to set the thrashing corpse of the dog inside it free.

  The ghostly hackles on Murphy’s neck rose, the skin around his snout pulling back in a ferocious snarl as he beheld the abomination within.

  Mitchell stood back, allowing the reanimated corpse to climb unsteadily to its feet. The boy stared in rapt attention at the thing that had appeared dead but was now very much alive.

  All because of him.

  “I told you, Mitchell,” the spirit cooed. “I told you I would help to bring your beloved friend back to you.”

  Murphy surged toward the boy, and his own living corpse.

  “No, Mitchell,” Murphy said. “It’s not me. Please listen.”

  The boy did not hear, instead reaching a trembling hand down to pet the dead animal’s lowered head. The reanimated dog let out a sound that might have been a groan of pleasure, but could have also been the expulsion of gases caused by rot.

  “Just think of all that we will be able to help,” said the spirit voice. “All those loved, and lost to the living, returned to life again. It will be … glorious.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Mitchell,” Murphy begged. “It isn’t right … it isn’t natural, what you’re doing.”

  The boy put his arms around the dampened neck of his best friend, hugging him to his chest, resting his head against the animal’s face.

  “I told you I’d bring you back,” Mitchell said. “I told you.”

  The ghost dog watched, feeling his heart breaking. How he longed to feel his boy’s arms around him again, but it just wasn’t how it was anymore.

  “It isn’t me,” Murphy said, now mere inches from Mitchell’s ear.

  And the boy seemed suddenly to stiffen, the hand that he had been using to stroke the dog in his arms suddenly leaving the animal’s back. Mitchell stared at that hand. It was covered in fur that had fallen out, and the foul-smelling sweat of decay. The dog turned its milky gaze to the boy, blackened tongue lolling from its mouth, and whined pathetically.

  “Your special friend loves you very much, Mitchell,” said the forest spirit. “Loves you even more than you could possibly imagine now that you’ve brought him back.”

  Murphy watched as the boy took the dog’s face into his hands, looking deeply into his eyes.

  “And I love you, too,” the boy said, his voice trembling with emotion. “But you’re gone now.”

  “No, Mitchell,” the voice proclaimed in the churning mist. “No, he’s right there … your best friend, returned by what you did … what we did together.”

  “No,” the boy said with a sad shake of his head. “No, Murphy’s gone … he’s dead … and that’s just the way it is.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be.” The voice in the churning fog was growing louder.

  Mitchell sadly leaned forward, kissing the dog atop his blocky head, again saying his goodbyes.

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Mitchell, Mitchell, Mitchell,” the spirit repeated angrily. “We were so close.”

  Murphy heard the evil intent growing in the voice, leaping to his ghostly feet to bark wildly.

  “Get out of there, Mitchell!” Murphy warned, knowing that something even worse was about to happen. “Go, Mitchell. Go!”

  “I think it’s time that you let me take control,” the spirit said as the mists began to roil and churn, and the things that had been retur
ned to life from the dead started to converge upon the boy.

  The corpse of the dog was now growling, blackened tongue sliding across yellow teeth as a pocket of insects hiding within the safety of one of its ears erupted, new life crawling out from beneath ears once soft as velvet, becoming a skittering swarm.

  Mitchell screamed then, stumbling backward and falling over the putrefying body of an old tomcat that had crawled back there to die. He went down hard, stunned by the impact as the dead advanced upon him.

  “Get up!” Murphy screamed, watching as the boy fumbled upon ground still slippery from the succession of rainstorms since the hurricane.

  It was sheer torture having to watch what was happening and being unable to react, and the ghost dog tossed his head back, howling to the heavens, begging for someone—anybody, or anything—to help his special boy.

  The puppy charged from the dark of the woods with a menacing growl, his compact and muscular body cutting through the still-drifting fog as he made his way toward the boy.

  “Insolent, pup,” the voice boomed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The pup didn’t slow down, barreling through the gathering of dead things. Murphy watched in awe as the little dog darted and wove through the clusters of dead animals that tried to nip at him, but the puppy was far faster than the dead, avoiding their attacks as he headed toward Mitchell.

  “That will be enough, pup,” the spirit warned.

  A bird of bones and mottled feathers that had once been a mighty hawk exploded from the underbrush, its talons poised to take hold of the little dog.

  The pup came to sudden halt, as the rotting hawk bore down upon him. Murphy saw fear in the little dog’s eyes as the winged nightmare attacked.

  “The boy needs you!” Murphy wailed, his ghostly form flowing over to scream in the puppy’s overly large ears.

  Startled to action, the pup darted quickly to one side, avoiding the bird’s razor-sharp clutches as it swooped down.