Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 1

by Jeff Strand

  I could see the crazed right eye of the behemoth as it galloped, eating up the last few yards of ground that separated us. I struggled to steady myself in the rocking, jouncing truck and drew a bead on that bloodshot eye. I sucked in air and held it. The thing was almost on top of us; I thought I felt its hot, angry breath.

  Ace screamed, “Shoot, Jimmy!”

  I fired. The rifle kicked like a wild horse. The bullet crashed into the monstrous face, just below the eye. Red exploded. The creature’s head snapped back with the impact. It was dead, it just didn’t know it yet. Momentum kept it moving forward, its legs still churning, running of their own accord without any command from the now lifeless brain.

  It struck us just behind the cab. I hadn’t time to drop the rifle and hold on. I was thrown clear of the truck as it was tumbled sideways like a toy. I landed on my back.

  In the moonlight I saw a wave, a dark gray tsunami rolling in my direction. Before I could scramble away, the animal’s carcass came to rest on top of me, covering my legs.

  I couldn’t move, of course. The funny thing was, it didn’t hurt. At first I thought I must be in shock, but then realized that I’d fallen lengthwise into a depression, a rut, and that neither the fall nor the weight of the dead beast had caused any major injury. I wiggled my toes inside my boots.

  I tried to look around. The hairy, gray mass on top of me cut my field of vision to a difficult one-hundred-and-eighty degrees; the only way to see the all of it was to lie back and crane my neck, giving me an upside-down worms-eye view of my limited world.

  I looked to my left and saw the truck. It was up-ended, one front tire still spinning. Ace lay half in and out of the cab. He’d been killed outright, his neck broken on impact. His head lolled at a freakish-looking angle. Our tusks, our beautiful tusks, were strewn about as though some giant had dropped a box of toothpicks.

  I resigned myself to a long, ugly walk out of the bush and started to scoop at the crusted earth under my ass in an effort to dig my way out from under the dead elephant. The Buck knife on my left leg would have helped the effort, but I couldn’t reach it.

  I dug with my hands. By the palmful I scooped up dirt, mostly dust. I dug until the tips of my fingers were raw.

  I’d been at it a while when I heard the first growl. I stiffened, then hurried my efforts. More joined the first. My hands scratched at the crusty soil, faster, almost frenzied.

  Then my fingers found the rock. My leg was wedged between it and the elephant’s back. No amount of digging was going to free me.

  I heard a snarl and looked over at the truck. Three dogs were pulling Ace’s body to pieces, tugging at hunks of flesh and gobbling them whole so as to get back to the body sooner. They were joined by two more.

  One ripped the meat from the dead man’s upper arm. He carried it away a few steps from the others. Dropping it into the dirt, he held it down with a forepaw and tore at it with his teeth. Another came toward him; he warned it away with a growl.

  They’d leave the elephant alone. They knew the hide would be too tough for them until it had lay out in the sun for a few days and rotted, breaking down the meat. They’d go for an easier meal first.

  One of them trotted toward me, growling, blinking, its eyes shining in the moonlight. I shouted and tossed a handful of dirt at it. He jumped back a step, then circled.

  Frantic, I reached down my right side, pushing my hand between the elephant’s hide and the ground. I got a finger on the handle of the .357. I pushed farther down, scraping flesh off the back of my wrist.

  The dogs were finishing with the tasty bits of Ace’s torso. Two left it and joined the one stalking me. I got my middle and ring fingers around the curve of the handle; my thumb brushed it.

  The dogs postured, circling, weaving, barking, now and then coming close then darting back. I tried to face them down as I dug for the gun.

  Finally grasping it firmly, I pulled, dragging it farther and farther out of the holster, out from under the mountain of flesh that imprisoned me.

  I pulled it all the way loose just as the lead dog sprang. I brought the gun about and fired—the big round caught the canine full in the chest and spun him in the air. He fell still in the dirt six feet in front of me.

  The others were on him at once, ripping him apart, slobbering. I saw the blood and pieces of meat and hair stuck between their teeth. Another looked at me. I dropped him where he stood.

  That gave the others pause. They jumped back a step, but were joined by still more.

  I was enraged. Filthy scavengers. I’d take a few more with me. I shot three in quick succession. That was it.

  Save the last round for yourself. I took a deep breath, put the barrel of the big pistol in my mouth and squeezed. Click.

  I pulled the trigger again and again. Nothing. I’d forgotten the round I’d shot past Ace’s head.

  I heard a chuckle. I pulled Joseph’s talisman out of my shirt pocket. The god’s head was covering his face with his hands. The other was shaking with laughter.

  I dropped it as I felt the first bite.

  THE MOST IMPORTANT MIRACLE

  BY SCOTT EMERSON

  _____

  This morning I put ground glass in my wife’s pancakes.

  Can’t really say what prompted me to do it. I was behind the counter, preparing a fresh bowl of batter for the early-morning rush, when the notion came. Without a second thought I dropped a glass onto the floor and stamped my heel onto the milk-clouded shards until they were crushed fine. Then I carefully scooped the glass into my hand and spilled it into the batter.

  Like I said, no reason. Just a spur of the moment decision, like choosing a red shirt over a blue one.

  All I know for sure was that it was the right thing to do.

  I went about my business, cooking up orders as they came down the line, the glass-studded batter waiting for when Sally would come and join me for breakfast. In fact, I’d forgotten all about the batter and its contents until the old man stumbled into the diner.

  Through the service window I saw him enter, steadying himself against the booths as he weaved toward the counter. He moved like he’d been drinking, or perhaps involved in some sort of accident, jostling a few of the patrons as he went. Nobody seemed to mind or even notice him, even as he spilled their coffee or knocked utensils out of hands.

  Once he reached the Formica countertop he ran a hand through his long white hair. Kelly, the morning-shift waitress, walked by without a word; not being rude—she’d dealt with far less savory characters than him, she simply hadn’t seen him standing before her. The old man took a biscuit off a plate and bit into it, crumbs gathering in his flowing white beard. He washed it down with a half-empty glass of juice someone had left behind and sauntered behind the counter into the kitchen.

  I didn’t say anything, just kept on scrambling eggs and tossing bacon on the griddle. The old man watched me for a minute before he spoke. “I know what you did,” he said.

  “How’s that?”

  “The pancake batter,” he said. “Very sneaky. Clever, almost.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t follow you.”

  The old man smiled. He stuck a finger into the batter bowl and swirled it around, plucking free a sliver of glass. It glistened in the fluorescent lighting, like a cheap ring. It was then I remembered breaking the glass. Remembered my wife.

  “Hey, look pal, I know how it seems, but I swear to—”

  The old man waved me off. “No, you don’t understand,” he said. “You’ve nothing to worry about. I approve.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  He smiled again—leered, really, in a way that was almost obscene. “It’s an offering, my son. To the God of Breakfast. This morning He is risen, and has called home his flock. Those that have answered, they shall be rewarded in breakfast heaven.”

  He wrapped his arms around me and drew me into the warmest, most welcoming embrace I’ve known. His beard smelled of butter and maple syrup. I thought of m
y grandmother’s dining room, her liver-spotted hands smearing orange marmalade over English muffins.

  “You are pure of heart, my son. Rejoice, for you’re not alone. The God of Breakfast loves you.”

  Words failed me. I cried into the old man’s beard.

  “There, there, my son. You’ve still much work to do.”

  “What do you ask of me?”

  The old man cradled my face in his bacon-scented hands. “I’ll be sending someone very soon. You’ll know what to do.”

  “How?”

  “It will be just like the glass. You’ll know when the moment is right.”

  And like that he was gone, the smell of butter and syrup lingering behind like a ghost. His absence felt like dying. I’d have given anything to be back in his warm, fragrant embrace.

  I went back to work.

  Although deeply missing the old man, I found a renewed vigor in myself. I heaped sausage links and stacks of pancakes onto plates with great élan, barely containing my joy as order after order came in. I wanted to sing, to tell all of the diners the good news, but I kept my rapture in check. There would be time for all of that later, and when that moment came they too would know.

  All the while the batter for my wife’s pancakes sat waiting.

  Lost in my bliss, I almost didn’t hear the back door creak open. It wasn’t until I heard the soft patter of footsteps on tile that I stopped and turned to see.

  Before me stood a young man in his early thirties, healthy and glowing, with the same luxuriant beard and mane of hair as the old man’s, only his was a rich gleaming brown. His eyes were the same as the old man’s too, as was the familiar breakfast that subtly wafted from his being.

  The young man smiled beatifically. “My father sent me,” he said. “He told me you’d know what to do.”

  And in that moment I did.

  I picked up the meat cleaver and got down to it.

  First I cut into his chest, hacking away at the thick layers of bacon beneath the skin. Grease oozed in wet spatters as I shaved meat away from the bone, gathering it onto a plate for later frying. Next I pried open the young man’s ribcage to get the plump round ham beating there, nearly dropping it in my ecstatic state. His midsection came next, yard after yard of sausage links unspooling as I pulled them free like a magician’s handkerchiefs, slippery and warm. I hacked open his skull and scooped several helpings of hash browns, slit his throat like a slaughterhouse steer and stuck a carafe underneath the gouting wound to collect the orange juice that flowed forth. Grabbing his testicles I squeezed until they cracked like eggshells, the yolks spewing forth to land, spitting, on the griddle; I reached for a spatula and commenced scrambling.

  Finally I cut the young man’s tongue from his mouth, rolled it in bread crumbs, and tossed it in the deep flyer. This I ate myself, for it carried the God of Breakfast’s word.

  •

  Renewed, I spent the rest of the morning cooking the young man’s bounty. From the kitchen I announced all meals were on the house, and a chorus of approval rose from the diners.

  The bell above the door jangled as my wife came in. I caught her eye and she smiled on the way to her booth in the corner.

  I took the bowl of glass-spiked batter and proceeded to pour out pancakes.

  In the service window waited row after row of plates, each piled high with food harvested from my young visitor. Fishhooks wrapped in bacon. Razorblades nestled in Belgian waffles. Thumbtacks swirled in a soiled toilet and hidden in French toast. Eggs Benedict dusted with bug spray. Glasses of milk and orange juice laced with rat poison.

  I thought of all the diners and greasy spoons across this great country of ours, the cooks preparing offerings of their own, of folks sitting down to their own specially prepared meals. I thought of the God of Breakfast looking down with His warm, loving gaze. I thought of what was to come.

  It was all I could do not to weep with joy.

  I carried a stack of pancakes to my wife. As I placed them in front of her she greeted me with a peck of the cheek. “Hi, honey,” she said. “Busy morning?”

  “Yes. But a good one.”

  “I’m glad.” She poured maple syrup over her pancakes, slowly, drawing out my anticipation. Then she picked up her fork, cut herself a morsel, and took the first bite of a new age.

  HUNGRY FOR CONTROL

  BY CLARE DE LUNE

  _____

  She liked the stillness of it all, especially when night faded into morning.

  But it wasn’t like that anymore. Now, it was nothing but blood, death, and a strange, foreboding loneliness.

  Lisa watched the young woman coming across the parking lot from her post on the roof of the library. She lowered the barrel of the .22 until the woman was in its crosshairs and concentrated. As the woman got closer, she could see more details: the once-white t-shirt ripped up the middle to show a bloodied bra, a deep slash across her chest that revealed the white gleam of an exposed rib, the matted blonde hair.

  Lisa recognized her. It was Sarah, her coworker.

  It was like this every morning. She’d wake up to find several of them slowly rambling across the parking lot—they’d somehow shambled over the razor wire surrounding the city’s administrative complex: a library, a police station with a jailhouse (handy), and a small courthouse. Most of the small town slept quietly, though—but there were enough of them around, more than the living, to keep Lisa occupied.

  The woman who used to be Sarah came closer and Lisa pulled the trigger. Sarah’s head exploded like an overripe fruit. Yes, Lisa had gotten good. And yes, Lisa didn’t care anymore. She knew all those hushed moments making out in the stacks with Sarah were a distant memory. If she got near Sarah now, Sarah would devour her in a whole new way.

  This was the way things were now. Ever since those outrageous news stories started coming out—“The Dead Have Risen” and “Drug Addicts Turned Cannibal”—nothing remained quiet for long. And if it did, it meant some major shit was about to go down.

  One day, she’d take solace in that quiet again. Quiet: just like the library had once been, just like her life had been before the outbreak.

  She thought about Sarah with the bloody, ripped t-shirt and her own current routine and how much it deviated from her old one. She used to get up with Jimmy, make coffee, chat over breakfast, see him off to work. Work in the garden before it was time to walk over to the library and start work herself. Sometimes, she and Jimmy would take lunch together, being that he worked just across the way at the police station. And they had a whole hour, which meant plenty of time together.

  And that meant crazy hotel room games on the other side of town, ones where he would handcuff her and fuck her hard from behind, or the better ones where she would handcuff him and make him be totally still. Those were the best. She liked stillness. And control. Like she had with the .22 rifle.

  She liked being in control for a change. The rifle was like having a cock, but more powerful. Shooting the undead and carrying a rifle had been a nice switch from her day-to-day life with Jimmy. He always insisted on being the one in charge, whether it was by his cop life or by bossing her around. So those times when he gave her control were completely luscious. She felt powerful, God-like, and like she totally owned her sexuality.

  Yes, she could make him into a toy during those little rendezvous—cuffs at the wrists, his belt lassoed around his ankles, her panties in his mouth while she rode his cock and dug her nails into his chest. She made sure she enjoyed herself while she could, because once Jimmy was loose again, there was no telling what he would do. He wasn’t a fan of her little games.

  Not that she didn’t love him. She did. As a matter of fact, she obsessed over him—maybe not him—the idea of him: someone to challenge her, someone to take charge of things and win her over with his dominance and manliness. She sometimes felt a strange need to consume him in her rare moments of domination over him. But with him, it always ended up the other way around. He’d either free
himself from his cuffs or find some way to gain control again, and she’d find herself bound, gagged and taken advantage of.

  She never got off with Jimmy. Not once. She knew if she had a chance to keep him completely still, she’d get there.

  But now he was either dead or undead—Lisa wasn’t sure which.

  Lisa reloaded her rifle and her mind tracked back. He had lived for a while after the shit hit the fan. He helped her with target practice, she helped him put up the razor wire around the complex. She remembered him saying they’d make it through, since she was smart and he was a tough cop, right?

  But everything was different now.

  Where the fuck are you now, Jimmy?

  If only he hadn’t gone to check on that bus full of refugees …

  Everyone had gotten in their cars in an attempt to leave, to somehow escape the outbreak, as if it was escapable. Most of those folks who had attempted to escape were now the same ones who always shambled their way over the razor wire. Matter of fact, she recognized a few locals every day—her nosy neighbors, cranky old Mr. and Mrs. Wallace from across the street, her library coworkers, the stoner grocery bagger guy from the market. They all shuffled across the pavement at one time or another, jaws slack and eyes vacant, mindless zombies with an insatiable appetite for flesh and blood.

  She always waited for Jimmy to show up, undead and reanimated. He was determined, brave and hardcore, so he was bound to show up, even as his undead self. Right? Lisa always wondered if they retained any remnants of their real selves at all.

  She had been working during the outbreak and luckily enough, and of course, brave ole Jimmy came up full force in his F150, blazing through the parking lot to check on her. He’d knocked down a few of the undead then, but they just got right back up (or crawled) and shambled on. That was before they knew you were supposed to go for the headshots. That’s what stopped them from getting back up all over again.