The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22

by Stephen Jones

  It may have been attrition of power, or a terrific storm, though not nearly as terrific as the one Ella and Tina had described. The one that had changed things. But something killed the electricity. He managed to get a lot of meat out before then, and he tossed a lot away to keep it from rotting in the store, making the place stink.

  By then, he had a freezer and the smaller refrigerator both hooked to gas generators he had taken from the store. And by siphoning gas from cars, he had been able to keep it running. He also worked out a way to maintain electricity by supplanting the gas-powered generators with car batteries that he wired up and used until they died. Then he got others, fresh ones from the car parts house. He didn’t know how long that supply would last. Someday he feared he would be completely in the dark when night fell. So, he made a point of picking up candles each time he went to the store. He had hundreds of them now, big fat ones, and plenty of matches.

  The weather was cool, so he decided on canned chilli and crackers. There was plenty of food in the store, as most of the town had seen the storm and been affected by it, and had immediately gone into zombie mode. For them, it was no more cheese and crackers, salads with dressing on the side, now it was hot, fresh meat and cold dead meat, rotting on the bone.

  As he cruised the aisle, he saw a rack with bags of jerky on it. He hadn’t had jerky in ages. He grabbed bags of it and threw them in the cart. He found a twelve pack of bottled beer and put that in the cart.

  He was there for about six hours. Just wandering. Thinking. He used the restrooms, which still flushed. He had the same luxury at his house, and he could have waited, but the whole trip, the food, walking the aisles, using the toilet, it was akin to a vacation.

  After a while he went to the section of the store that contained the decorations. He filled another basket with strings of lights, and even located a medium-sized plastic Christmas tree. Three baskets were eventually filled, one with the plastic tree precariously balanced on top. He found a Santa hat, said, “What the hell,” and put it on.

  He pushed all three baskets near the door he had come in. He slung the shotgun off his shoulder, and took a deep breath. He hated this part. You never knew what was behind the door. The automatic doors would have been better in this regard, as they were hard plastic and you could see through them, but the problem was if you went out that way, you left the automatic door working, and they could come and go inside as they pleased. He liked the store to be his sanctuary, just like the pawnshop down town, the huge car parts store, and a number of other places he had rigged with locks and hidden weapons.

  He stuck the key in the door and heard it snick. He opened it quickly. They weren’t right at the door, but they were all around his truck. He got behind one of the baskets and pushed it out, leaving the door behind him open. It was chancy, as one of them might slip inside unseen, even be waiting a week or two later when he came back, but it was a chance he had to take.

  Pushing the basket hard, he rushed out into the lot and to the back of the truck. He had to pause to open up with the shotgun. He dropped four of them, then realised he was out of fire-power. For the first time in ages, he had forgotten to check the loads in the gun; his last trek out, a trip to the pawnshop, had used most of them, and he hadn’t reloaded.

  He couldn’t believe it. He was slipping. And you couldn’t slip. Not in this world.

  He pulled the .38 revolver and popped off a shot, missed. Two were closing. He stuck the revolver back in his belt, grabbed a handful of goodies from the basket and tossed them in the back of the pickup. When he looked up, four were closing, and down the way, stumbling over the parking lot, were more of them. A lot of them. In that moment, all he could think was: at least they’re slow.

  He pulled the .38 again, but one of them came out of nowhere, grabbed him by the throat. He whacked at the arm with his revolver, snapped it off at the shoulder, leaving the hand still gripping him. The zombie, minus an arm, lunged toward him, snapping its teeth, filling the air with its foul stench.

  At close range he didn’t miss with the revolver, got Armless right between the eyes. He jerked the arm free of his neck, moved forward quickly, and using the pistol as a club, which for him was more precise, he knocked two down, crushing one’s skull, and finishing off the other with a close skull shot. A careful shot dropped another.

  He looked to see how fast the other zombies were coming.

  Not that fast. They were just halfway across the lot.

  There was one more dead near the front of his truck. It had circled the vehicle while he was fighting the others. He hadn’t even seen where it came from. He watched it as he finished unloading the car. When it was close, he shot it at near point-blank range, causing its rotten skull to explode like a pumpkin, spewing what appeared to be boiled, dirty oatmeal all over the side of his truck and the parking lot.

  Darting back inside, he managed to push one cart out, and then shove the other after it. He grabbed the handles of the carts, one in each hand, and guided them to the back of the truck. The zombies were near now. One of them, for some reason, was holding his hand high above his head, as if in greeting. Calvin was tempted to wave.

  Calvin tossed everything in the back of the truck, was dismayed to hear a bulb or two from his string of bulbs pop. The last thing he tossed in back was the Christmas tree.

  He was behind the wheel and backing around even before the zombies arrived. He drove toward them, hit two and crunched them down.

  As if it mattered, as he wheeled out of the lot, he tossed up his hand in a one finger salute.

  “They were so pretty,” Ella had said about the lightning flashes.

  She had awakened him as he lay snoozing on the couch.

  “They were red and yellow and green and blue and all kinds of colours,” Tina said. “Come on, daddy, come see.”

  By the time he was there, the strange lightning storm was gone. There was only the rain. It had come out of nowhere, caused by who knew what. Even the rain came and went quickly; a storm that covered the earth briefly, flashed lights, spit rain, and departed.

  When the rain stopped, the people who had observed the coloured lightning died, just keeled over. Ella and Tina among them, dropped over right in the living room on Christmas Eve, just before presents were to be opened.

  It made no sense. But that’s what happened.

  Then, even as he tried to revive them, they rose.

  Immediately, he knew they weren’t right. It didn’t take a wizard to realise that. They came at him, snarling, long strings of mucus flipping from their mouths like rabid dog saliva. They tried to bite him. He pushed them back, he called their names, he yelled, he pleaded, but still they came, biting and snapping. He stuck a couch cushion in Ella’s mouth. She grabbed it and ripped it. Stuffing flew like a snowstorm. And he ran.

  He hid in the bedroom, locked the door, not wanting to hurt them. He heard the others, his neighbours, outside, roaming around the house. He looked out the window. There were people all over the back yard, fighting with one another, some of them living, trying to survive, going down beneath teeth and nails. People like him, who for some reason had not seen the weird storm. But the rest were dead. Like his wife and daughter. The lights of the storm had stuck something behind their eyes that killed them and brought them back – dead, but walking, and hungry.

  Ella and Tina pounded on his bedroom door with the intensity of a drum solo. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. He sat on the bed for an hour, his hands over his ears, tears streaming down his face, listening to his family banging at the door, hearing the world outside coming apart.

  He took a deep breath, got the shotgun out of the closet, made sure it was loaded, opened the bedroom door.

  It was funny, but he could still remember thinking as they went through the doorway, here’s my gift to you. Merry Christmas, family. I love you.

  And then two shots.

  Later, when things had settled, he had managed, even in the midst of a zombie take-over, to tak
e their bodies to the dumpster, pour gas on them, and dispose of them as best he could. Months later, from time to time, he would awaken, the smell of their burning flesh and the odour of gasoline in his nostrils.

  Later, one post at a time, fighting off zombies as he worked, he built his compound to keep them out, to give him a yard, a bit of normalcy.

  Calvin looked in the rearview mirror. His forehead was beaded with sweat. He was still wearing the Santa hat. The snowball on its tip had fallen onto the side of his face. He flipped it back, kept driving.

  He was almost home when he saw the dog and saw them chasing it. The dog was skinny, near starved, black and white spotted, probably some kind of hound mix. It was running all out, and as it was nearing dark, the pace of the zombies had picked up. By deep nightfall, they would be able to move much faster. That dog was dead meat.

  The dog cut out into the road in front of him, and he braked. Of the four zombies chasing the dog, only one of them stopped to look at him. The other three ran on.

  Calvin said, “Eat bumper,” gassed the truck into the zombie who had stopped to stare, knocking it under the pickup. He could hear it dragging underneath as he drove. The other zombies were chasing the dog down the street, gaining on it; it ran with its tongue hanging long.

  The dog swerved off the road and jetted between houses. The zombies ran after it. Calvin started to let it go. It wasn’t his problem. But, as if without thought, he wheeled the truck off the road and across a yard. He caught one of the zombies, a fat slow one that had most likely been fat and slow in life. He bounced the truck over it and bore down on the other two.

  One heard the motor, turned to look, and was scooped under the bumper so fast it looked like a magic act disappearance. The other didn’t seem to notice him at all. It was so intent on its canine lunch. Calvin hit it with the truck, knocked it against the side of a house, pinned it there, gassed the truck until it snapped in two and the house warped under the pressure.

  Calvin backed off, fearing he might have damaged the engine. But the truck still ran.

  He looked. The dog was standing between two houses, panting, its pink tongue hanging out of its mouth like a bright power tie.

  Opening the door, Calvin called to the dog. The dog didn’t move, but its ears sprang up.

  “Come on, boy . . . girl. Come on, doggie.”

  The dog didn’t move.

  Calvin looked over his shoulders. Zombies were starting to appear everywhere. They were far enough away he could make an escape, but close enough to be concerned.

  And then he saw the plastic Christmas tree had been knocked out of the back of the pickup. He ran over and picked it up and tossed it in the bed. He looked at the dog.

  “It’s now are never, pup,” Calvin said. “Come on. I’m not one of them.”

  It appeared the dog understood completely. It came toward him, tail wagging. Calvin bent down, carefully extended his hand toward it. He patted it on the head. Its tail went crazy. The dog had a collar on. There was a little aluminium tag in the shape of a bone around its neck. He took it between thumb and forefinger. The dog’s name was stencilled on it: BUFFY.

  Looking back at the zombies coming across the yard in near formation, Calvin spoke to the dog, “Come on, Buffy. Go with me.”

  He stepped back, one hand on the open door. The dog sprang past him, into the seat. Calvin climbed in, backed around, and they were out of there, slamming zombies right and left as the truck broke their lines.

  As he neared his house, the sun was starting to dip. The sky was as purple as a hammered plum. Behind him, in the mirror, he could see zombies coming from all over, between houses, out of houses, down the road, moving swiftly.

  He gave the truck gas, and then a tire blew.

  The truck’s rear end skidded hard left, almost spun, but Calvin fought the wheel and righted it. It bumped along, and he was forced to slow it down to what seemed like a near crawl. In the rearview, he could see the dead gaining; a sea of teeth and putrid faces. He glanced at the dog. It was staring out the back window as well, a look of concern on its face.

  “I shouldn’t have stopped for you,” Calvin said, and in an instant he thought: If I opened the door and kicked you out, that might slow them down. They might stop and fight over a hot lunch.

  It was a fleeting thought.

  “You go, I go,” Calvin said, as if he had owned the dog for years, as if it were a part of his family.

  He kept driving, bumping the pickup along.

  When he arrived at his house, he didn’t have time to back as usual. He hit the garage remote and drove the truck inside. When he got out, Buffy clambering out behind him, the zombies were in the garage, maybe ten of them, others in the near distance were moving faster and faster toward him.

  Calvin touched the remote, closed the garage door, trapping himself and the dog inside with those ten, but keeping the others out. He tossed the remote on the hood of the pickup, pulled the pistol and used what ammunition was left. A few of them were hit in the head and dropped. He jammed the empty pistol in his belt, pulled the tire iron free, began to swing it, cracking heads with the blows.

  He heard growling and ripping, turned to see Buffy had taken one down and was tearing its throat out, pulling its near rotten head off its shoulders.

  “Good dog, Buffy,” Calvin yelled, and swung the iron. “Sic ’em.”

  They came over the roof of the truck, one of them, a woman, leaped on him and knocked him face down, sent his tire iron flying. She went rolling into the wall, but was up quickly and moving toward him.

  He knew this was it. He sensed another close on him, and then another, and then he heard the dog bark, growl. Calvin managed to turn his head slightly as Buffy leaped and hit the one above him, knocking her down. It wasn’t much, but it allowed Calvin to scramble to his feet, start swinging the tire iron. Left and right he swung it, with all his might.

  They came for him, closer. He backed up, Buffy beside him, their asses against the wall, the zombies in front of them. There were three of the dead left. They came like bullets. Calvin breathed hard. He grabbed the tire iron off the garage floor, swung it as quickly and as firmly as he could manage, dodging in between them, not making a kill shot, just knocking them aside, finally dashing for the truck with Buffy at his heels. Calvin and Buffy jumped inside, and Calvin slammed the door and locked it. The zombies slammed against the door and the window, but it held.

  Calvin got a box of .38 shells out of the glove box, pulled the revolver from his belt and loaded it. He took a deep breath. He looked out the driver’s side window where one of the zombies, maybe male, maybe female, too far gone to tell, tried to chew the glass.

  When he had driven inside, he had inadvertently killed the engine. He reached and twisted the key, started it up. Then he pushed back against Buffy, until they were as close to the other door as possible. Then he used his toe to roll down the glass where the zombie gnashed. As the window dropped, its head dipped inward and its teeth snapped at the air. The revolver barked, knocking a hole in the zombie’s head, spurting a gusher of goo, causing it to spin and drop as if practising a ballet move.

  Another showed its face at the open window, and got the same reception. A .38 slug.

  Calvin twisted in his seat and looked at the other window. Nothing. Where was the last one? He eased to the middle, pulling the dog beside him. As he held the dog, he could feel it shivering. Damn, what a dog. Terrified, and still a fighter. No quitter was she.

  A hand darted through the open window, tried to grab him, snatched off his Santa hat. He spun around to shoot. The zombie arm struck the pistol, sent it flying. It grabbed him. It had him now, and this one, fresher than the others, was strong. It pulled him toward the window, toward snapping, jagged teeth.

  Buffy leaped. It was a tight fit between Calvin and the window, but the starved dog made it, hit the zombie full in the face and slammed it backwards. Buffy fell out the window after it.

  Calvin found the pistol,
jumped out of the car. The creature had grabbed Buffy by the throat, had spun her around on her back, and was hastily dropping its head for the bite.

  Calvin fired. The gun took off the top of the thing’s head. It let go of Buffy. It stood up, stared at him, made two quick steps toward him, and dropped. The dog charged to Calvin’s side, growling.

  “It’s all right, girl. It’s all right. You done good. Damn, you done good.”

  Calvin got the tire iron and went around and carefully bashed in all the heads of the zombies, just for insurance. Tomorrow, he’d change the tire on the truck, probably blown out from running over zombies. He’d put his spare on it, the doughnut tire, drive to the tire store and find four brand new ones and put them on. Tomorrow he’d get rid of the zombies’ bodies. Tomorrow he’d do a lot of things.

  But not tonight.

  He found the Santa hat and put it back on.

  Tonight, he had other plans.

  First he gave Buffy a package of jerky. She ate like the starving animal she was. He got a bowl out of the shelf and filled it with water.

  “From now on, that’s your bowl, girl. Tomorrow . . . Maybe the next day, I’ll find you some canned dog food at the store.”

  He got another bowl and opened a can of chilli and poured it into it. He was most likely overfeeding her. She’d probably throw it up. But that was all right. He would clean it up, and tomorrow they’d start over, more carefully. But tonight, Buffy had earned a special treat.

  He went out and got the tree out of the truck and put it up and put ornaments on it from two years back. Ornaments he had left on the floor after throwing the old dead and dried tree over the fence. This plastic one was smaller, but it would last, year after year.