by Brian Keene
“I want to hold you, Dallas.”
She reached for him and her fingers passed through his center. As suddenly as it had begun, the winds stopped and the ashes dissipated, floating to the floor. Laura pulled her hand away. The center of the dust cloud was cold, and the tips of her fingers turned pale. It reminded her of when she’d been a little girl, and built a snowman without wearing her gloves.
“Dallas?”
There was no answer. She knelt to the floor and scooped the ash in her hands, letting it sift through her fingers. Another gust of wind blew through the room, gently carrying the dust away.
“I miss you.”
She went back out into the hall and knocked on Doris’ door.
“All set dear?”
“If it’s okay with you, Doris, I think I’m going to hang around awhile.”
“I understand, Laura. Take what time you need. It’s important to do so. I’ll be off for the hospital then. Jack will be grumbling if I don’t get back soon.”
“Give him my best?”
“I surely will. And you must come see him soon, yes?”
Laura nodded, unable to speak.
She went back to her apartment and shut the door, waiting for the sounds of the old lady’s departure. When she was sure Doris had gone, she rummaged inside her shopping bag and pulled out the gas can and the pills. She swallowed the pills first, and waited for them to kick in. Then, as she grew drowsy, Laura unscrewed the lid and splashed gasoline all over the floor, the walls, and the furniture. It carved little rivulets in the dust, and the smell of it wasn’t at all unpleasant. It was welcome. The odor blocked out the stench coming from the pit below.
She was getting sleepy.
Laura lit the match.
“Dallas.”
The wind answered her with a sigh, and the dust began to move again, caressing her arms and face.
She was asleep before the flames touched her.
• • •
The fireman wiped a grimy hand across his brow. “Christ, like we needed this on top of everything else?”
“Least the building wasn’t re-occupied yet,” his partner said. “And the fire was contained to just a few apartments.”
“Wasn’t re-occupied my ass! What do you call those? Squatters?” He pointed at the two mounds of dust on the floor. They were both human shaped, lying together side-by-side. He let his eyes linger on them a moment longer, and swore that the dust piles were holding hands.
The other man shrugged. “Optical illusion? A joke? Fuck, do you know how hot it had to be in here to reduce a human body to ash like that? Couldn’t have happened, man, or else this entire building would be toast.”
“So what the fuck are they?”
“Just one of those weird things, like the photos you see in The Fortean Times. Simulacra they call it, or something like that. The security guard said there were only a few tenants that had come back to get their stuff, and he was pretty sure they were gone.”
“Well, it still gives me the creeps. Let’s go.”
• • •
After they left, the dust began to swirl again. Sheets of heavy plywood had finally been put into place, sealing up the burned apartment, but the air moved. A wind blew through the room. It came not from the windows or from the hall, but from somewhere else.
The mounds of ash rose and embraced. Then, still holding hands, they fell apart; floating away until there was nothing left.
STORY NOTE: This story bounced around in my head for a year before I wrote it. One month after the 9/11 attacks, I went to New York City to do a live appearance at the Housing Works Bookstore. As I was walking down the street, I happened to glance up and spotted a turkey buzzard flying between the buildings. Then another. And another. Turkey buzzards are a common sight in rural areas like where I live. Any time there’s a dead animal in the field or on the road, you’ll find them circling. But I’d never seen one in the city. Especially New York City. A newspaper vendor told me the birds were going to Ground Zero—the wreckage of the World Trade Center. In some ways, that image of the scavenger birds, and the newspaper vendor’s explanation for their presence, chill me more than the footage of the planes hitting the towers or the Pentagon ever can. A year after, in October of 2002, I tired to write it out of my system. “Dust” was the result.
BURYING BETSY
We buried Betsy on Saturday. We dug her up on Monday and let her come inside, but then on Wednesday, Daddy said we had to put her back in the ground again.
Before that, we’d only buried her about once a month. Betsy got upset when she found out she had to go back down so soon. She wanted to know why. Daddy said it was more dangerous now. Only way she’d be safe was to hide her down there below the dirt, where no one could get to her without a lot of trouble. Betsy cried a little when she climbed back into the box, but Daddy told her it would be okay. I cried a little, too, but didn’t let no one else see me do it.
We gathered around the spot in the woods; me, Daddy, Betsy, and my older brother Billy. Betsy is six, I’m nine, and Billy is eleven. Betsy, Billy and Benny—that’s what Mom had named us. Daddy said she liked names that began with the letter ‘B’.
Betsy’s eyes were big and round as she lay down inside the wooden box. She clutched her water bottle and the little bag of cookies that Daddy had given her. The other hand held her stuffed bear. He was missing one eye and the seams had split on his head. He didn’t have a name.
We closed the lid, and Betsy whimpered inside the box.
“Please, Daddy,” she begged. “Can’t I just stay up this once?”
“We’ve been over this. It’s the only way to keep you safe. You know what could happen otherwise.”
“But it’s dark and it’s cold, and when I go potty, it makes a mess.”
Daddy shivered.
“Maybe we could let her stay up just this once,” Billy said. “Me and Benny can keep an eye on her.”
Daddy frowned. “You want your little sister to end up like the others? You know what can happen.”
Billy nodded, staring at the ground. I didn’t say anything. I probably couldn’t have anyway. There was a lump in my throat, and it grew as Betsy sobbed inside the box.
We sealed her up tight, and hammered the lid back on with some eight-penny nails. There was a small round hole in the lid. We fed a garden hose through the opening, so Betsy could breathe. Then Daddy got his caulk gun out of the shed and sealed the little crack between the hose and the lid, so that no dirt would fall down into the box. Finally, we each grabbed a rope and lowered the box down into the hole.
“Careful,” Daddy grunted. “Don’t jostle her.”
We shoveled the dirt back down on her. The hole was about eight feet deep, and even with the three of us it took a good forty minutes. Her cries got quieter as we filled the hole. Soon enough, we couldn’t hear her at all. We laid the big squares of sod over the fresh grave and tamped them down real good. Made sure the hose was sticking out at an angle, so rainwater wouldn’t rush inside it. When we were done, Daddy gathered some fallen branches and leaves and scattered them around. Then he stepped back, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his t-shirt, and nodded with approval.
“Looks good,” he said. “Somebody comes by, there’s no way they could tell she’s down there.”
He was right. Only thing that seemed odd was that piece of green garden hose, and even that kind of blended with the leaves. It looked just like a scrap, tossed aside and left to rot.
“And,” Daddy continued, “it will take a long time to dig her back up. It would wear anybody out.”
We walked back up to the house and got washed up for dinner. I had blisters on my hands from all the shoveling, and there was black dirt under my fingernails. It took a long time to get my hands clean, but I felt better once they were. Daddy and Billy were already sitting at the table when I came downstairs. I pulled out my seat. Betsy’s empty chair made me sad all over again.
Dinner was cornbread
and beans. Daddy fixed them on the stove. They were okay, but not nearly as good as Mom’s used to be. Daddy’s cornbread crumbled too much, especially when you tried to spread butter on it. And his beans tasted kind of plain. Mom’s had been much better.
Mom had been gone a little over a year now. Didn’t seem that long some days, but then on others, it seemed like forever. Sometimes, I couldn’t remember what she looked like anymore. I’d get the picture album down from the hutch and stare at her photos to remind me how her face had been. And her eyes. Her smile. I hated that I couldn’t remember.
But I still remembered how her cornbread tasted. It was fine.
I missed her. We all did, especially Daddy, more and more these days.
After dinner, Billy and me washed the dishes while Daddy went outside to smoke. When he came back in, we watched the news. Daddy let us watch whatever we wanted to at night, up until our bedtime, but we always had to watch the news first. He said it was important that we knew about the world, and how things really were, especially since we didn’t go to school.
Just like every night, the news was more of the same; terrorism, wars, bombings, shootings, people in Washington hollering at each other—and the pedophiles. Always the pedophiles... A teenaged girl had been abducted behind a car wash in Chicago. Another was found dead and naked alongside the riverbank in Ashland, Kentucky. Two little boys were missing in Idaho, and the police said the suspect had a previous record. And our town was mentioned, too. The news lady talked about the twelve little girls who’d gone missing in the last year, and how they’d all been found dead and molested.
Molested... it was a scary word.
Daddy said it was all part of the world we lived in now. Things weren’t like when he’d been a kid. There were pedophiles everywhere these days. They’d follow you home from school, get you at the church, or crawl through your bedroom window at night. They’d talk to you on the internet—trick you into thinking they were someone else, and then meet up with you. That’s why Daddy said none of us were allowed on the computer, and why he didn’t let us go to school. Child molesters could be anyone—teachers, priests, doctors, policemen, even parents.
Daddy said it was an urge, a sickness in their brain that made them do those things. He said even if they went to jail or saw a doctor, there weren’t no cure. When the urge was on them, there was no helping it. Unless they learned to control it, and even then, there weren’t no guarantees.
I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. I lay there in the darkness and listened to Billy snoring beneath me. We had bunk beds, and it was a familiar sound—sort of comforting. One of those noises that you hear every night, the ones that tell you everything is okay—your big brother snoring, your little sister in the room across the hall, your Daddy’s footsteps as he tiptoes down the hall in the middle of the night.
But tonight, there was just Billy. Daddy wouldn’t be tiptoeing down the hall. He’d left just as soon as we went to bed. I heard the car pull out of the driveway. He was gone, out to fulfill his urges. He’d told me and Billy that he’d always had them, but he’d been able to control them until Mom died. After she was gone, they’d gotten stronger. He knew the urges were wrong, but he had to do what he had to do.
It’s almost midnight now, and I still can’t sleep. Daddy’s not back yet.
Tomorrow, another little girl will be missing.
But at least it won’t be Betsy.
Betsy is buried in the ground, safe from Daddy’s urges.
STORY NOTE: The idea for this story took root during a conversation with the mother of my second son. We were discussing how, when I was a kid, my parents let me ride my bike all over town and stay gone all day, coming home only for dinner. Back then, they didn’t worry about some nut abducting me. It saddens me that things have changed. I want our son to enjoy the same freedoms I had as a boy, but I also want to protect him from the bad people out there. “Burying Betsy” grew out of that. At first, the father was just burying his daughter to keep her safe, but halfway through the first draft, the twist suggested itself to me and the story became something quite different from its original premise.
FAST ZOMBIES SUCK
Ken was ready for the zombie apocalypse. His friends (what few of them he had) always said, “If the world is ever invaded by zombies, I’m going to Ken’s house.” This wasn’t because Ken was a survivalist. He didn’t spend his time online, debating conspiracy theories and looking at photos of black, unmarked helicopters and wondering when the secret masters of the New World Order/Bilderbergers/Black Lodge/Illuminati would put their endgame into play and conquer the planet through forced vaccinations and wholesale slaughter. Nor was Ken a gun nut. He owned firearms—a Colt .38 handgun and a Remington 30/06 rifle—but he didn’t have secret caches of guns and explosives buried out in the woods, and he didn’t horde them in fear that he would wake up one morning and find that the government had repealed the Second Amendment overnight. Ken didn’t believe that the world would end in 2012 any more than he’d believed in the Y2K craze a decade before. He wasn’t afraid of a comet or asteroid or the moon crashing into the Earth. He wasn’t afraid of a sudden, massive solar flare. He wasn’t afraid of the arrival of Planet Nibiru or that Yellowstone would turn into a giant volcano or any of the other ways people on the internet said the world was going to end.
He just liked zombies—and it was his passion for zombies, his friends agreed, that made Ken’s the place to be if and when the world ended.
His apartment walls were adorned with framed original movie posters for Land of the Dead, Zombi, Return of the Living Dead, The Plague of the Zombies, and more. Also on the wall were autographed pictures from some of his favorite zombie-film stars—Dawn of the Dead’s Ken Foree, Day of the Dead’s Gary Klar, and Night of the Living Dead’s Kyra Schon. His shelves overflowed with zombie movies on Blu-Ray, DVD and even old VHS tapes, as well as zombie books, magazines, video games, toys and graphic novels. Ken had a tattoo across his chest, hidden beneath his black ‘Fulci Lives!’ t-shirt. The tattoo said ‘Romero is God’. He was saving money for another tattoo—one across his back that said ‘Fast Zombies Suck’, because that was his mantra.
Ken was a traditionalist. He hated fast zombies. The undead should shuffle and moan, not run and screech like the corpses in 28 Days Later or the Dawn of the Dead remake. They shouldn’t carry guns and make wisecracks like the dead in those Brian Keene books. Hell, those things weren’t even zombies. Keene’s creations were more like Raimi’s Evil Dead than anything Romero had ever done, and the zombies in 28 Days Later weren’t even really dead. Ken much preferred Romero’s tetralogy or Kirkman’s Walking Dead series. Those guys understood that there was nothing scary about fast zombies.
Ken didn’t get out much. His social life usually consisted of going to work at the supermarket and then coming home to watch movies or play video games until it was time for bed. He did this seven days a week. Sometimes he ordered a pizza. Occasionally his friends dropped by with a six-pack. Then they’d drink beer, eat pizza and either play video games or watch movies until it was time to go to bed. The routine rarely changed.
Because he didn’t go outside much, Ken didn’t realize that zombies had invaded his neighborhood until he stepped onto the porch to take out the trash. He froze, garbage bag in hand, gaping at the corpses shambling down the street. There were at least fifty of them—maybe more; an army of shuffling, moaning, mangled dead, so gruesome in the dim moonlight that their wounds seemed more like special effects make up than the real thing. The garbage bag slipped from Ken’s numb fingers and split open on the ground. A few of the creatures glanced in his direction.
“Zombies!” His voice wavered, partly through fear, but also with an eager, almost uncomfortable feeling of excitement. He stared at the creatures, noticing with no small sense of satisfaction that, in real life, zombies did indeed move slow, not fast.
Ken ran back inside the apartment, felt around beneath his unmade bed, and pulled out the han
dgun. His hands shook as he fumbled with the weapon, and he dropped the bullets several times. Finally, he snapped the cylinder shut, filled his pockets with extra ammo, and then ran back onto the porch.
The zombies were right in front of his house now. They still clustered to the street and sidewalk. None of them had ventured into his yard—yet. Ken decided to make sure things stayed that way. He raised the pistol, aimed for the nearest zombie’s head, took a deep breath, held it, and then opened fire.
The bullet tore a hole in the corpse’s shoulder. The zombie shuddered, lurched to a stop... and screamed.
“What the hell?” Ken squeezed the trigger again. The pistol jerked in his grip. This time, the creature toppled over.
Then, all at once, the zombies began running away. They ran fast. They shouted at one another, sounding remarkably like living people rather than the dead. They cried for help, cried out for God, cried out to take cover, but none of them cried for “Brains!”
One of them pointed directly at Ken. “He’s got a gun. Somebody call the police!”
Ken frowned. His ears rang and stomach clenched. He suddenly felt very small and afraid and unsure of himself. Zombies didn’t run. They didn’t cry out for God to help them. And they most certainly didn’t call the police.
He stepped down off the porch and into the yard. He approached the corpse he’d shot and noticed a piece of paper lying nearby—a flyer of some kind. The zombie’s blood had splattered the paper. Ken stood over the flyer and read what was printed on it.
ZOMBIE WALK
THIS SATURDAY, 8PM TO MIDNIGHT
ALL PROCEEDS TO BENEFIT THE LOCAL RED CROSS CHAPTER
COME GET MADE UP TO LOOK LIKE THE WALKING DEAD AND JOIN US AS WE SHAMBLE THROUGH TOWN! MAKE-UP ARTISTS WILL BE ON HAND. FOOD, FUN, GAMES AND PRIZES!