21st Century Dead

by Christopher Golden

  He looked down at Jill. The bite on her arm was almost colorless, but radiating from it were black lines that ran like tattoos of vines up her arm. More of the black lines were etched on her throat and along the sides of her face. Black goo oozed from two or three smaller bites that Jack hadn’t seen before. Were they from what had happened at the school, or from just now? No way to tell: the rain had washed away all the red, leaving wounds that opened obscenely and in which white grubs wriggled in the black wetness.

  Her heart beat like the wings of a hummingbird. Too fast, too light.

  Outside, Mom and the others moaned for them.

  “Jack…” Jill said, and her voice was even smaller, farther away.

  “Yeah?”

  “Remember when you were in the hospital in January?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You … you told me about your dream?” She still spoke in the dazed voice of a dreamer.

  “Which dream?” he asked, though he thought he already knew.

  “The one about … the big wave. The black wave.”

  “The black nothing,” he corrected. “Yeah, I remember.”

  She sniffed but it didn’t stop the tears from falling. “Is … is that what this is?”

  Jack kissed her cheek. As they sat there, her skin had begun to change, the intense heat gradually giving way to a clammy coldness. Outside, the pounding, the moans, the rain, the wind, the thunder—it was all continuous.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly, “I think so.”

  They listened to the noise and Jack felt himself getting smaller inside his own body.

  “Will it hurt?” she asked.

  Jack had to think about that. He didn’t want to lie but he wasn’t sure of the truth.

  The roar of noise was fading. Not getting smaller, but each separate sound was being consumed by a wordless moan that was greater than the sum of its parts.

  “No,” he said, “it won’t hurt.”

  Jill’s eyes drifted shut and there was just the faintest trace of a smile on her lips. There was no reason for it to be there, but it was there.

  He held her until all the warmth was gone from her. He listened for the hummingbird flutter of her heart and heard nothing.

  He touched his face. His tears had stopped with her heart. That’s okay, he thought. That’s how it should be.

  Then Jack laid Jill down on the floor and stood up.

  The moan of the darkness outside was so big now. Massive. Huge.

  He bent close and peered out through the peephole.

  The pounding on the door stopped. Mom and the others outside began to turn, one after the other, looking away from the house. Looking out into the yard.

  Jack took a breath.

  He opened the door.

  12

  THE LIGHTNING and the outspill of light from the lantern showed him the porch and the yard, the car and the road. There were at least fifty of the white-faced people there. None of them looked at him. Mom was right there, but she had her back to him. He saw Roger crawling through the water so he could see past the truck. He saw Dad rise awkwardly to his feet, his face gone but the pistol still dangling from his finger.

  All of them were turned away, looking past the abandoned truck, facing the farm road.

  Jack stood over Jill’s body and watched as the wall of water from the shattered levee came surging up the road toward the house. It was so beautiful.

  A big, black wall of nothing.

  Jack looked at his mother, his father, his uncle, and then down at Jill.

  He would not be going into the dark without them.

  The dark was going to take them all.

  Jack smiled.

  TENDER AS TEETH

  Stephanie Crawford and Duane Swierczynski

  “IS IT TRUE that the cure made all of you vegetarians?” Carson asked.

  Justine was staring at the road ahead, but could see him toying with his digital recorder in her peripheral vision. He was asking a flurry of questions, but at the same time avoiding The Big Question. She wished he’d just come out with it already.

  “Why are you asking me?” she replied. “I’m not the mouthpiece for every single survivor.”

  Carson stammered a little before Justine glanced over and gave him a wide grin.

  “Oh, yes, I referred to former zombies as ‘survivors.’ Make sure to include that. Your readers will love it.”

  As they drove across the desert the sun was pulling the sky from black to a gritty blue gray. The rented compact car held a thirty-three-year-old man named Carson with enough expensive camera equipment to crowd up the backseat, and Justine, a woman two years younger, who kept her own small shoulder bag between her feet.

  The rest of her baggage was invisible.

  * * *

  Some said as far as apocalyptic plagues went, it could have been a lot worse.

  The dead didn’t crawl out of their graves. Society didn’t crumble entirely. The infection didn’t spread as easily as it did in the movies—you had either to really try to get infected or be genetically predisposed to it.

  Justine happened to be one of the latter.

  After work one night, Justine was nursing a Pabst at her local generic, suburban sports bar while half listening to the news about a virus that would probably quiet down like H1N1 and texting her friend Gina, who was late. She was just raising the bottle’s mouth to her lips when a thick, dead weight fell against her and knocked her off her bar stool and onto the sticky, peanut-shell-covered floor. Too fucking enraged to wait for a good Samaritan to jump up and give a hey, pal, Justine started blindly kicking out her heels and thrusting out fists at the drunk bastard. That’s how it played out until the drunk started gnawing at her fists until his incisors connected with the actual bones of her fingers while his mouth worked to slurp up and swallow the shredded meat of her knuckles.

  After that, Justine remembered little until the cure hit her bloodstream.

  That had been six months after the attack in the bar. And in the meantime …

  * * *

  Carson tried to look at Justine without full-on staring at her. Like much of the time he’d spent with her so far, he was fairly certain he was failing miserably. The miracle vaccine seemed to have left Justine with little more damage than a scarred face, a lean-muscled body that bordered on emaciation, and an entire planet filled with people who actively wanted her dead. That was called “being one of the lucky ones.”

  Keep her talking, he reminded himself. Carson asked, “I understand your mom paid for the cure?”

  Justine kicked the glove compartment while crossing her legs. “Sadly, yes. I guess she meant well.”

  “Aren’t you glad to be alive?”

  “If you call this living.”

  “Better than being dead.”

  She turned to face him, squinting and twisting her lips into a pout. “Is it?”

  Asking questions was the problem, Carson decided. He wasn’t a real journalist. He’d only brought the digital recorder to please his editor, who couldn’t afford to send both a photographer and a reporter.

  Just keep her talking as much as possible, the editor had said. We’ll make sense of it later.

  But most important, his editor added, we want her to talk about what it’s like.

  What what is like? Carson had asked.

  His editor had replied, What it’s like to go on living.

  A year ago today he’d been out in Las Vegas for one of the most inane reasons of all: a photo shoot for a celebrity cookbook. The celebrity in question was a borderline morbidly obese actor known for both his comedic roles and as his darker turns in mob flicks. Right before he’d left on that trip, the first outbreaks had been reported, but the virus seemed to be contained to certain parts of the country, and Carson thought he’d come to regret it if he turned down the assignment over the latest health scare. Especially if that would leave him stuck in his Brooklyn apartment for months on end while this thing ran its course. They
were saying it could be as bad as the 1918 flu pandemic.

  Oh, if he had only known.

  The outbreak had happened midshoot. A pack of zombies had burst in just as the food stylist had finished with the chicken scarpariello. They weren’t interested in the dish. They wanted the celebrity chef instead. Carson kept snapping photos before he quite realized what was happening. He escaped across Vegas, continuing to take photos as the city tore itself apart.

  And then he saw Justine, though he didn’t know her name then.

  Back then, she was just …

  Carson heard his editor’s impatient reminder in his head: Keep her talking.

  Yeah.

  Not talking was the reason he’d become a photographer. He preferred to keep the lens between himself and the rest of the world, speaking to subjects only when he absolutely had to.

  He was struggling to formulate a new inane question when she spoke up.

  “Do you remember the exact place?”

  Carson nodded.

  “So where was it?” Justine asked.

  That surprised him. He had assumed she would have just … known. Maybe not when she was in that state, because the former zombies—the survivors—were supposed to have blanked memories. The photo, though … surely she had to have seen the photo at some point.

  Or had she?

  “Outside of Vegas. Almost near Henderson.”

  “Huh,” Justine said. “Makes sense.”

  “Does it?”

  “That’s not far from where I used to live. So come on. Where did you … um, encounter me?”

  Carson pulled onto the 5, which would take them out of the Valley and out through the desert. “I’m hoping I’ll be able to find it again once we’re out there,” he said.

  “Don’t count on it, buddy boy,” she said. “My mom tells me they’ve razed a lot of the old neighborhood. There’s even been talk of abandoning Vegas altogether. Clear everyone out, then drop an H-bomb directly on it. Wipe the slate clean.”

  Carson, still fumbling, heard the question tumble out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

  “Have you, um, seen the photo?”

  * * *

  Justine had woken up in the hospital, still spoiling for a fight. After about a minute her eyes registered that she was in a hospital bed, and she felt her mom squeezing her hand through layers of aching pain and a wooziness that could only be coming from the IV attached to her arm—so she’d assumed. So the bastard had actually put her in the hospital?

  Justine’s first lucid words were spent reassuring her mom, who herself looked like she’d been put through the ringer.

  “Hey, Ma, it’s all right … you should see the other guy.”

  That’s what she attempted to say, at any rate. It came out sounding more like, “ACK-em, aight … shouldas … other guy.” Her voice sounded cracked and enfeebled … almost as if her actual esophagus were bruised and coated in grime.

  Her mother teared up and went in for the most delicate hug Justine could remember ever having experienced.

  “Thank God … He finally showed up. Thank God you’re back, and thank Him that you don’t remember.”

  It was only then that Justine noticed that the doctors and nurses surrounding her had what could only be taken as unprofessional looks of pure, barely disguised disgust on their faces. All this for a fucking bar fight she hadn’t even started?

  Before Justine could ask what exactly was going on, her mom cupped her palm against her daughter’s cheek; Justine couldn’t help realizing how hollowed out it felt against her mom’s warm hand.

  “Sweetie … I have a lot I need to tell you. It’s not when you think it is, and you’re not exactly who you think you are anymore. The world got infected and wormed you worse than anyone. You’re going to need to prepare yourself. Just know I love you, always.”

  And then her mom told her what the world had been up to.

  * * *

  Justine stared at the passing power lines with an interest they didn’t exactly warrant. “Is this professional curiosity?”

  “No,” Carson said. “I’d really like to know.”

  Justine glanced over at Carson, who gave her a tight-lipped smile. She had done her research on him, and she was almost personally insulted by what she’d found. A small part of her was hoping she’d get a gonzo-journalist type that would end the interview with him trying to hunt her in a “most dangerous game” scenario. Carson was, at best, a midlevel photog—his writing credits adding up to captions under his glossy photos of celebrities she had never heard of. There were a few dashes of pretension, but he was clearly paying the bills.

  Except for those unexpected, dramatic moments every photographer lives for. He had a few absorbing shots.

  The main one starring her own self.

  “My mom kept it from me for as long as possible. She acted a bit as if seeing it would trigger me, somehow. But … eh.”

  Justine started absently gnawing on a fingernail with more vigor than she realized.

  “I’ll see little thumbnails on Google and squint my eyes to blur it out. I’ve been told about it enough that my taste to see the actual money shot has long been sated.”

  Justine glanced over at Carson to see how that had landed. She was sleep deprived and barely knew the guy, but he somehow looked … puzzled.

  * * *

  Was she serious? How could she have not looked?

  Carson knew he’d created that photo by pure accident. Even the framing and lighting and composition were a happy accident—a trifecta of the perfect conditions, snapped at exactly the right moment. He admitted it. He’d lucked into it. He couldn’t even claim to have created that photo. He’d merely been the one holding the camera, his index finger twitching. That image had wanted to exist; he’d been simply the conduit.

  The photo wasn’t his fault, just like her … sickness … wasn’t her fault. They were like two car-accident victims, thrown together by chance and left to deal with the wreckage.

  He got all that.

  Still … how could she not want to see? How could you ever hope to recover if you didn’t confront it head-on?

  “Pull over,” she said suddenly.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Unless you want to clean chunks of puke out of this rental, pull over now. Please.”

  Carson was temporarily desert-blind. He couldn’t tell where the edge of the broken road ended and the dead, dry earth began. Blinking his eyes, he slowly edged to the right as Justine’s hands fumbled at the door handle. He saw—felt—her entire body jolt. He applied the brake, kicking up a huge plume of dust. Justine flew out of the passenger seat even before the car had come to a complete halt. She disappeared into the dust. Within seconds, Carson heard her heaving.

  He knew this was what the cure did to you. It took away the zombie, but left you a very, very sick person.

  Should he get out? Did she maybe want a little water, or her privacy? He didn’t know. For a moment, Carson sat behind the wheel, watching the dust settle back down. There were a lot of dust storms out here, he’d read. The Southwest hadn’t seen them this bad since the 1930s Dust Bowl days. Some people thought it was nature’s way of trying to wipe the slate clean, one sharp grain of sand at a time.

  All was quiet: she’d stopped heaving.

  “Justine?” he called out. “You okay?”

  He opened the door just as the truck pulled up behind them. Dammit. Probably a good Samaritan, thinking they needed help.

  “Justine?”

  Car doors slammed behind Carson. He turned off the ignition, pulled the keys from the steering column, pushed open the door with his foot, and stepped out into the hot, dry air. There were three people standing there. Carson was struck at first by how familiar they looked but couldn’t immediately place them. Not until one of them said, “Where’s the baby killer?”

  Fuck me, he thought. It was the protesters.

  They’d followed them out into the desert.


  * * *

  When Carson arrived at Justine’s Burbank apartment just a few hours earlier, he was stunned to see them there, carrying placards and pacing up and down the front walkway. They must have been at it all night, and toward the end of some kind of “shift,” because they looked tired, haggard, and vacant-eyed. Ironically enough, they kind of looked like you-know-whats.

  Carson was equally stunned by the things coming out of their mouths, the sheer hate painted on their signs: AN ABOMINATION LIVES HERE; THAT BABY HAD A FUTURE; KILL YOURSELF JUSTINE.

  Delusional people who had to seize on something, he supposed. There was a whole “disbelief in the cure movement” going on now, with a groundswell of people who brought out these pseudoscientists claiming that the cure was only temporary—that at any moment, thousands of people could revert to flesh-eating monsters again. There was not a lick of scientific evidence to back this up, mind you. But when has that stopped zealots before?

  Carson had parked the car a block away, in the rubble of a lot in front of an old fifties-style motel that had promptly gone out of business a year ago during the chaos. He wiped the sweat from his brow—wasn’t California supposed to be cooler at this time of year? At first he grabbed his small digital camera and locked everything else in the trunk, figuring that if he tried to run that gauntlet with his full gear there was a strong chance he’d be molested. Carson was prepared for anything, but wasn’t in the mood to lose ten grand worth of gear that he knew the paper wouldn’t replace.

  But then again, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro … wasn’t that what Hunter S. Thompson said? Carson donned his vest (he hated it, but people associated it with being a pro, so…) and walked right up to the nut cases, smiling. That’s right, he thought. Just a happy photojournalist on assignment, here to take your picture.

  That’s the thing: you don’t ask. You keep your camera low and just start shooting. Ask, and there’s a strong chance they’ll think, Hey, wait a minute, maybe I shouldn’t agree to this. But if you act like God Himself sent you down here to record the moments for posterity, most people will step out of your way and let you do His Holy Work. Carson snapped away from waist level. Sometimes you want that feeling of looking up from a child’s POV, right up into the faces of these lunatics, the sun bouncing from their hand-painted signs. Carson was feeling good about the assignment when something hard slammed into the center of his back and he tumbled forward into someone’s fist.