They had had a son, some years past. They had given him a good strong name. And he had been strong, hadn’t he?
They were ones who were weak.
The Man was weakest of all.
† † †
That evening, after the dinner dishes had been scraped and washed and dried and put away, after the trash had been emptied and the table wiped cleaned, they found themselves in front of the television. Something was on, but the Man didn’t know what it was. His eyes were unseeing; his ears unhearing. He thought only of Death, of its various forms: radiation coming from the TV screen, leaking from the phone, spewing from the cell towers that surrounded them. He thought about radon gas seeping from the ground and formaldehyde off-gassing from the cabinets and carbon monoxide spewing from the stove. He thought about tree branches falling on them from hundred-year-old maple trees in the yard and earthquakes (even though the likelihood of one was vanishingly small) and of lightning strikes and floods. He thought of exploding gas mains and terrorists and home invasions. He’d given up thinking about food poisoning. That didn’t look like it was happening.
He realized, like a man realizes he is in a dream, that the Woman was talking to him. She said something, but all he managed to hear was, “nine o’clock,” which had meaning enough. Nine o’clock was their bedtime.
“I’ll be up soon,” he told her, watching her climbing the stairs in her nightgown, the red one tonight. He saw that she was still young and attractive, despite the hardness of the past couple of years, and something deep inside of him stirred, a longing to be with her.
They made love gently at first, tentatively, as if they were making love for the first time. There was a feeling of surprise in it, a newfound sense of discovery, of uncharted territory. Her hands were soft and warm, her breath hot on his neck and his chest and his thighs, and he sighed, arching himself into her, again and again. And the whole while, the blinking stop light outside their window cast dull shadows on their wall, as if keeping time.
The pain was not intense at first, just a dull heaviness in his chest, a hand holding him down. Listen, it seemed to say. Slow down. Wait. But soon its grip on him tightened. He felt as if it were a fist clutching his heart, ripping it from his chest. The pain radiated up and into his neck until it felt as if his jaw might shatter. At the same time, the pain expanded down his arm until his fingers were not his own but belonged to the pain.
He knew what was happening: he was having a heart attack.
So this, he thought, this is how the game ends. He closed his eyes and sighed as the Woman bucked and swayed over him.
Then, darkness.
He felt her shift in the bed next to him. He opened his eyes. The clock told him it was almost ten-thirty. He could feel her hand resting upon his chest, her thigh reaching over to settle upon his legs. He could see her looking at him, her hair falling over her pale skin, those delicate lines that had borne him a son. They looked at each other for a long time, not saying anything. Her hand slowly drifted down.
She finally managed to arouse him, despite his anguish, despite his resistance. And when she had finished, he rolled over, turning his back on her. He wondered if she knew he had held back. She had to know; she had to know why.
Later, he heard her get up and leave the room. He heard a sound like soft crying drifting down the hallway. He didn’t want to get up, but he couldn’t help himself. He followed the sound into the back of the house, into the room which they had turned into a nursery.
She was sitting in the rocking chair, the one he had gotten for her when she got pregnant with their son. Their strong son with the strong name.
The sound was coming from somewhere near her neck.
He remembered something he had once read. It was in a strange, old book found at a garage sale. It had been written in French, but he had learned the language. A book about insects. He remembered what it had said about mosquitoes and the voracious appetites of the newly hatched nymphs, how they would eat the carcasses of their parents.
He knew that the sound wasn’t crying, but suckling.
For a long time, he didn’t move. He couldn’t step another foot into the room, toward…that thing, that angry red creature they had created, that nymphic thing.
He was so exhausted, so very tired. He had cheated Death. Or maybe it was Death who had cheated him. The Man would call the bluff.
There was no red this time, just the cold gray of the gun in his hand.
And another way to die.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My undying thanks to the devoted staff of Brinestone Press for their keen eye and gentle but firm touch in helping me bring this story to life, for believing every step of the way that I could raise the dead.
To my devoted fans and followers on Twitter (http://twitter.com/saultanpepper), especially the zombie apocalypse junkies. Everything’s better with the #zombie hashtag.
My deepest gratitude goes to my family for their unflagging support. Without them, I would not be able to create worlds with such richness to them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Saul Tanpepper is a writer of speculative fiction for teens and adults. A former molecular geneticist originally from Upstate New York, he now calls Northern California home.
If you enjoyed Nocturne, please check out the short story collection Shorting the Undead and Other Horrors: a Menagerie of Macabre Mini-Fiction, available in digital and print form from Amazon.com. Additional titles from this collection also available singly in electronic format.
Also stay tuned for his zombie pandemic novel Touch, with a planned release date of May 2012.
For more information about the author and his writings, please check out his website: http://www.tanpepperwrites.com.
Other titles available by Saul Tanpepper
Shorting the Undead and Other Horrors: a Menagerie of Macabre mini-fiction
Eight terrifying tales of the Undead and the Unliving.
Includes:
Occupied (a supermoto champion is trapped on an airplane with the Undead)
Mr. November (four boys, a haunted house, and the World Series on Halloween night)
The Headhunter (a story of redemption, salvation, and zombie hunters)
The Object of Her Obsession (a young woman's desire is so strong it reaches beyond the grave)
Nocturne (a man with a dark secret and an even darker obsession)
Outsourced (a dark comedy about the economy and zombies that crave more than brains)
Open Wide (payback comes in the form of a dentist's drill)
Golgotha (a scientist's attempt at a zombie antidote goes horribly awry)
Approximately 88,000 words
For older teens and adults
Available in paperback and digital formats
Other titles available by Saul Tanpepper
The Headhunter
A year has passed since the Zombie Uprising and Headhunter Bill Hawkins won’t rest until he finds the monster responsible for murdering his wife and fulfills her last request to take its head. But the constant danger, the hiding, the brutality of his profession, all wear on him. Soon after joining up with a preacher-turned-hunter who's convinced the Uprising was God’s Rapture, Bill's resolve suffers another major blow. He begins to doubt his purpose. Is he doing the right thing? More importantly, will he be able to act when he finally finds the young, female monster responsible for his wife's death?
Other titles available by Saul Tanpepper
The Object of Her Obsession
There's something about Felipe-Janssen knives, the fancy ones you used to be able to get at Milano's onTenth Street in downtown Grand Forks. My Uncle Phil got us a set of them for Christmas a half dozen years back, the ones with the guaranteed Eversharp™ blades that come in one of those fancy velvet-lined boxes.
Most of them are gone now. Misplaced or thrown away. All except the filleter. I was always so careful
to keep that one hidden away. I wanted to make sure it wouldn't g
et lost or misused like the others.
Three summers. That's how long seventeen-year-old Emma Harris has been secretly watching Jesse, the boy her uncle hires to fix the fences on their remote North Dakota ranch. Now, three years after her father's death, Emma is ready to make him hers. There's just one problem, and it's her mother.
Other titles available by Saul Tanpepper
A Thing for Zombies
It's funny, the things you get used to seeing, now that they've passed the Undead Amnesty laws. Funny how quickly you learn to ignore them. But then one of them walks in like this and you realize there are some things you'll just never get used to.
Like zombies wearing g-strings.
Seventeen-year-old Kevin Velasco is about to have his heart broken.
But if crushing on his lifelong best friend, Jamie, weren't bad enough, she's obsessed with someone else. Or...some thing: the Undead. How can a guy compete against that?
So, when an attractive young zombie shows up at the pool where they lifeguard, Kevin becomes desperate. But his pushing forces Jamie to make a mind-blowing confession, leaving Kevin to wonder how far she's willing to go for the Undead.
And, more importantly, how far is he willing to go to win her back?
Other titles available by Saul Tanpepper
Flawless
Beauty is fleeting, but dead is forever.
For Edgemont High senior, Claire Fontaine, being beautiful isn't enough, she has to be flawless.
After the horrific death of another Edgemont teen under suspicious circumstances, Claire finds herself in that most unthinkable of situations: single and with the senior ball just weeks away. Luckily, a new boy arrives in town just in time to rescue her. Not only is Trevor hot, like Claire, he's perfect. In fact, his perfection is almost unnatural.
But the closer Claire gets to Trevor, the more danger she finds herself in. The target of an unknown assailant with a mysterious agenda, Claire must decide whether being flawless is worth the sacrifice.
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