The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22

by Stephen Jones

  At the sight of her there – the emotion that transfixed me was some variety of, I knew it. I knew she hadn’t really vanished, knew she wasn’t lost under the earth. She was wearing the oversized army greatcoat, which was streaked with mud. Her feet were bare and filthy. Her skin was more than pale, as if her time underground had bleached it. Her hair was tangled, clotted with dirt, her mouth flaked with something brown.

  I was on the verge of running down the stairs to her when she lowered her hand from her eyes and I saw the white centres, the black sclerae. A wave of dizziness threatened to topple me headlong down the stairs. Kaitlyn smiled at my hesitation, reached over, and pulled open her coat. Underneath, she was naked, her white, white flesh smeared with dirt and clay. She called to me again. “Here I aaa-mmm,” she half-sang. “Didn’t you miss me? Don’t you wanna come play with me?”

  A bolt of longing, of desire sudden and intense, pierced me. God help me, I did want her. My Eurydice: I wanted to bury myself in her, and who cared if her eyes were changed, if her flesh bore evidence of activities I did not want to dwell on? I might have, might have crossed the dozen pieces of wood that separated the life to which I clung from that which had forced itself on me, surrender myself to sweet oblivion, had a large, bony shape not stumbled into view behind Kaitlyn. Of the Ghûl I had seen previously, none had given so profound an impression of being unaccustomed to walking on all fours. It held its head up too high, as if unused to the position. Its weird eyes were rheumy, its gums raw where its lips drew back from them. It curled around Kaitlyn from behind, dragging its muzzle across her hip before nuzzling between her thighs. She sighed deeply. Eyes lidded, lips parted, she extended her hand towards me while the other pressed the Ghûl’s head forward.

  The thing pulled away long enough to give me a sidelong glance, and it was that gesture that sent me scrambling backwards, grabbing for the door and slamming it shut, throwing myself against it as I snapped the deadbolts. It kept me there while I listened to the stairs creak under the combined weights of Kaitlyn and her companion, who settled themselves on the opposite side of the door so that she could murmur tender obscenities to me while the Ghûl’s claws worried the wood. They left with the dawn. Once I was sure they were gone, I ran into my room and began frantically packing.

  If the far end of Cape Cod was not as secure a redoubt as I might have thought, hoped, if Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket proved no more isolated, they were preferable to Albany, whose single, outsized skyscraper was an enormous cenotaph marking a necropolis of whose true depths its inhabitants remained unaware. I fled them, over the miles of road and ocean; I am still fleeing them, down the long passage that joins now to then. That flight has defined my life, is its individual failure and the larger failures of the age in sum. I see the two of them still, down there in the dark, where their wanderings take them along sewers, up into the basements of houses full of sleeping families, under roads and rivers, to familiar cemeteries. Kaitlyn has grown more lean, her hair long. She has traded in her old greatcoat for a newer trenchcoat. The Ghûl lopes along beside her, nimble on its feet. It too has become more lean. The scar over its left eye remains.

  For Fiona and for Ellen Datlow, who knows about Albany.

  KARINA

  SUMNER-SMITH

  When the Zombies Win

  KARINA SUMNER-SMITH IS A Toronto-based author and Nebula Award nominee. Her short fiction has been published in a number of anthologies, including The Living Dead 2, Children of Magic and Ages of Wonder.

  In addition to writing fiction, Karina works as a freelance communications specialist and performs with a local belly-dance troupe.

  As she recalls: “In a discussion about the Apocalypse, I joked that someone should write a story set after everyone has been eaten or turned into zombies. What would the zombies eat? What would they do when there’s no one left to infect? Then I paused (in that way that writers have), and said, ‘You know, that’s not a bad idea . . .’

  “Once I’d considered the consequences, a total Zombie Apocalypse seemed not horrific, nor comedic, but tragic.

  “It’s not just that everyone has died, but tha t we have died and yet continue to stumble through the ruins of our world with no way to understand or acknowledge what’s happened, or mourn the loss of everything we once were.”

  WHEN THE ZOMBIES WIN, they will be slow to realise their success. Word travels slowly on shambling feet.

  It will take years to be sure that there aren’t still humans hiding in high mountain camps or deep within labyrinthine caverns; that the desert bunkers are empty, the forest retreats fallen; that the ships still afloat bear no breathing passengers.

  And then: victory. Yet the zombies will not call out to each other, or cry in relief, or raise their rotting hands in triumph. They will walk unseeing beneath telephone wires and over cell phones, computers, radios. They will pass smouldering rubble without thinking of smoke signals, trip on tattered bed sheets and not consider making flags.

  They are zombies; they will only walk and walk and walk, the word spreading step by step across continents and oceans and islands, year by year. And the word, to them, will feel like hunger.

  When the zombies win, their quest to eat and infect human flesh will continue unabated. They will have known only gorging, only feasting; they will not understand the world as anything other than a screaming buffet on the run.

  Yet there will be only silence and vacant rooms where once there was food, and the zombies, in their slow and stumbling way, will be surprised. Stomachs once perpetually distended will feel empty and curve inward towards their spines, the strength of even animated corpses beginning to fail without fuel. They will look about, cloudy eyes staring, and they will groan, unbreathing lungs wheezing as they try to push out enough air to ask slowly, hungrily, “Brains?”

  But there will be no one left to find. Only each other.

  Zombies, they will learn, do not taste good.

  When the zombies win, they will become restless. There is little to do when one is dead.

  Their old pastimes – their favourite pastimes – will hold no satisfaction. They will shamble down streets, arms outstretched as they groan and wail, yet inspire no fear. Together they will pound on doors, beat on windows with decaying hands until the glass shatters, hide in rivers and lakes, stumble after cars on the highway. But the cars will all be stopped, forever in park; the breaking glass will elicit no screams; and no swimmer’s hands or feet will break the water’s surface to be grabbed. When the doors burst open there will be no one cowering behind.

  There will be no people to stalk, no food to eat, no homes to build, no deaths to die. Lost and aimless they will turn as if seeking a leader’s guidance, and find none. With zombies, the only leader is the one who happens to be walking first.

  So they will walk alone, all of them alone, with no destinations, only the need to keep putting one unsteady foot in front of the other, over and over without end. The world is a big place to wander, even when inhabited only by the dead.

  When the zombies win, they will not think of the future. There will be no next generation of zombies, no newborn zombie children held in rotting arms. The zombies will not find comfort in each other, will not rediscover concepts like friendship or companionship, will not remember sympathy or empathy or kindness. They will not learn or dream, or even know that they cannot.

  They will build no buildings, fix no cars, write no histories, sing no songs. They will not fall in love. For zombies, there is only an endless today – this moment, this place, this step, this need, this hunger, this hunger unrelenting.

  And the streets will begin to crumble, and windows break, and buildings fall. Cities will burn and flood, towns be reclaimed by grassland and forest, desert and ocean.

  The human world will go to pieces, decaying to nothing as empty eyes stare.

  When the zombies win, they will not fear. They will not laugh or rejoice, they will not regret, they will not mourn. And the world will t
urn and turn, seasons burning and freezing across the landscape, the sun flashing through the sky, and they will continue.

  When the zombies win, they will not stop. They will still moan and cry and whisper, on and on until the lips rot from their faces, their vocal cords slide away. They will never truly think again, never know the meaning of the words they try to utter, only flutter endlessly on the edge of remembering. Still they will try to speak, bone scraping on bone as their ruined jaws move, and they will not know why.

  One by one they will fall. In the streets they will fall, legs no longer working, arms too broken to drag them forward. Inside buildings they will fall, tumbling down stairs and collapsing in hallways, slipping behind beds and in closets, curling into the gap between toilet and wall, not knowing, not seeing, not understanding these trappings of the places they once called home. They will sink to the bottoms of rivers and oceans, and lie down in fields, and tumble from mountainsides, and fall apart on the gravel edges of highways.

  One by one they will stop moving, flesh and bone and brain too broken to do anything more. And in that silence and stillness they will struggle – trapped and ruined, they will still yearn, still hunger, always reaching for that which was taken from them. That which they granted to so many of us, in such great numbers.

  To stop. To sleep. To rest, just rest, and let the darkness come.

  STEPHEN JONES

  & KIM NEWMAN

  Necrology: 2010

  AS THE FIRST DECADE of the 21st century comes to an end, we once again remember the passing of writers, artists, performers and technicians who, during their lifetimes, made significant contributions to the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres (or left their mark on popular culture and music in other, often fascinating, ways) . . .

  AUTHORS/ARTISTS/COMPOSERS

  Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only man to be officially recognised by the Japanese government as surviving both the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, died of stomach cancer on January 4, aged 93. On August 6, 1945, he was in Hiroshima on business when the bomb was dropped. He returned home the following day to Nagasaki, and despite his injuries resumed work on August 9, the date the second atomic bomb was detonated. He later wrote a book about his experiences.

  American editor and literary agent Knox [Breckenridge] Burger, who published Kurt Vonnegut’s first story in Collier’s magazine in 1950, died after a long illness the same day, aged 87. Vonnegut dedicated his collection Welcome to the Monkey House to him.

  Italian scriptwriter Piero De Bernardi died on January 8, aged 83. One of seven credited writers on Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, he also scripted Il mistero del tempio indiano (aka Vengeance of Kali) and Dottor Jekyll e genyile signora, and contributed dialogue to Ghosts – Italian Style.

  Welsh-born scriptwriter and lyricist Julian [Bensley] More died in France of cancer on January 15, aged 81. He wrote the original play Expresso Bongo was based on, contributed to the screenplay of The Valley of Gwangi and scripted Incense for the Damned (aka Blood Suckers), based on the novel by Simon Raven.

  “The Father of Japanese SF”, author and translator Takumi Shibano (aka “Rei Kozumi”), died of pneumonia on January 16, aged 83. He founded the country’s first fanzine, Uchujin (Cosmic Dust), in 1957, with the most recent issue appearing in 2009. Tukumi sold his first SF story in 1950 under a pseudonym, and he went on to write three YA novels and contribute non-fiction to a wide variety of publications, including Locus and the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

  Roger Gaillard, the curator of Switzerland’s Maison d’Ailleurs science fiction museum from 1989 to 1996, died on January 22, aged 73. He also edited or co-edited a number of anthologies of essays about SF.

  American TV writer Barry E. Blitzer, one of the creators of the cartoon show Goober and the Ghost Chasers (1973–75), died of complications from abdominal surgery on January 27, aged 80. He also worked on The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Get Smart, Land of the Lost, Partridge Family 2200 AD, The Lost Saucer and The Flintstone Kids.

  Prolific American SF writer Kage Baker died after a long battle with cancer on January 31, aged 57. She had undergone surgery in December 2009 for a brain tumour. Best known for her sprawling time travel “Company” series, which began with a story in Asimov’s in 1997, it went on to encompass nine novels, three novellas and two collections, with more to come. Her other books include the fantasies The Anvil of the World and its sequel, The House of the Stag, the YA novel The Hotel Under the Sand, and the pirate novella Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key. Some of her other short fiction is collected in Mother Aegypt and Other Stories and Dark Mondays. Baker taught Elizabethan English to stage actors for twenty years.

  American music composer, producer and drummer Richard Delvy (Richard Delvecchio) died of aspiration pneumonia after a long illness on February 6, aged 67. The drummer for the first California surf band, the Bel-Airs, he became the lead singer with another band, the Challengers, in 1961. Delvy arranged and sang the memorable theme song for the American version of the movie The Green Slime (1968), and he produced music for the cartoon TV series My Favorite Martian and The Groovy Ghoulies. He also owned the copyright to the classic surf hit “Wipeout”.

  Veteran British-born SF and fantasy humorist William Tenn (Philip Klass, aka “Kenneth Putnam”) died of congestive heart failure at his home in Pennsylvania on February 7, aged 89. His first SF story appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946, and he went on to publish fiction in many other pulp magazines of the time, including Planet Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Fantastic Adventures, Galaxy Science Fiction, Marvel Science Stories and Weird Tales. His short story collections include Of All Possible Worlds, The Human Angle, Time in Advance, The Square Root of Man and two volumes of The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn from NESFA Press: Immodest Proposals and Here Comes Civilization. Tenn’s single novel was Of Men and Monsters, published in 1968; his novella A Lamp for Medusa appeared in book form the same year, he edited the SF anthology Children of Wonder and his non-fiction was collected in the Hugo Award-nominated Dancing Naked: The Unexpurgated William Tenn. He was named Author Emeritus by the SFWA in 1999.

  British children’s author David Severn (David Storr Unwin) died on February 11, aged 91. The son of publisher Sir Stanley Unwin, his more than thirty books include Dream Gold, Drumbeats!, The Future Took Us and The Wishing Bone.

  Japanese SF translator Hisashi Asakura (Zenji Otani), whose works include Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, died on February 14, aged 79.

  American writer and editor Jim (James Judson) Harmon died of a heart attack on February 16, aged 76. With Forrest J Ackerman as his agent, during the 1950s and ’60s he contributed a number of stories to magazines such as Amazing Stories, Future Science Fiction, Galaxy, If, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Venture, and the best of these were collected in 2004 in Harmon’s Galaxy. In the early 1960s he collaborated with Ron Haydock on adult paperbacks with titles like The Man Who Made Maniacs, Wanton Witch, Silent Siren and Ape Rape, while his only SF novel, The Contested Earth, was written in 1959 but not published until 2007. Harmon and Haydock also scripted and appeared in Ray Dennis Steckler’s movie The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters. After contributing articles to Fantastic Monsters of the Movies in the early 1960s, from 1973 to 1974 Harmon was West Coast editor of Curtis Magazines’ Monsters of the Movies, Marvel Comics’ nine-issue rival to Famous Monsters of Filmland. As “Mr Nostalgia”, Harmon became the ancknowledged expert on classic radio shows and published a number of non-fiction works on the subject, including The Great Radio Heroes (1967) and Radio Mystery and Adventure and Its Appearance in Film, Television and Other Media. He also wrote The Great Movie Serials (with Don Glut) and The Godzilla Book, and edited and contributed to two volumes of the It’s That Time Again anthology series featuring old-time radio characters.

  American space artist Robert T. (Theodore) McCall died of heart failure on Feb
ruary 26, aged 90. He created the poster art for 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, along with paintings for various SF magazines, postage stamps and NASA mission patches. Some of his artwork was collected in The Art of Robert McCall: A Celebration of Our Future in Space (1992).

  British bookseller and 1930s fan-turned-author Eric C. (Cyril) Williams died at the age of 91. A contributor to such early fanzines as The Satellite, between 1968 and 1981 he published ten SF novels, including Monkman Comes Down, The Time Injection, The Call of Utopia, Project: Renaissance, Largesse from Triangulum and Homo Telekins, and his short fiction was reprinted in such anthologies as New Writings in SF 5 and Weird Shadows from Beyond.

  John Clifford, whose single feature film credit was co-writer of Carnival of Souls (1962) with director Herk Harvey, died of a heart attack on March 2, aged 91. Clifford also worked as a radio joke writer, an educational and industrial film writer, Western novelist and songwriter (with Angelo Badalamenti for Nina Simone).

  British politician, author and former leader of the Labour Party Michael [Mackintosh] Foot, who wrote the 1995 biography of H.G. Wells, The History of Mr Wells, died on March 3, aged 96.

  American film composer [William] Paul Dunlap died on March 11, aged 90. Although he claimed that he would much preferred to have been remembered for his piano concerto or choral piece, he is best known for his music for such “inferior” movies as Lost Continent (1951), Target Earth (1954), I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Teenage Frankenstein, Blood of Dracula (aka Blood is My Heritage), How to Make a Monster, Frankenstein 1970, Invisible Invaders, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, The Angry Red Planet, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, The Three Stooges in Orbit, Black Zoo, Shock Corridor, Cyborg 2087, Destination Inner Space, Dimension 5 (aka Dimension Four), Castle of Evil and The Destructors, along with numerous Westerns. He reportedly consigned all his movie recordings and sheet music to landfill many years earlier.