by Shock Totem
“Christ, Jack!” Finney shouts into the spray. “Oh, Christ, I see it! I see them! I see—”
I don’t hear the rest, but for the briefest of moments his arm pulls free. A black lasso coils around it, an inky, oily, eel. It’s at his elbow, but the black rope grasps for the shoulder, his side, his belt, it’s a living, eager, hungry tongue. And then his arm vanishes again, this time up to the shoulder.
“Christ, Christ, Christ! Help me, Jack! Jack, HELP ME!”
He grapples with the aquarium, and for a moment I see them, too. Beyond Finney, in the white foam of that spray, I see the shadows of shapes, all teeth. Monstrous, yet keen. Brutish, yet patient. And hungry, so hungry.
“Oh, God! Oh, God!”
I abandon my grip on the aquarium and scramble to safety, where, to my everlasting shame, I remain. The indescribable horrors beyond the water suck at Finney, and he reaches out to me. I recoil from him, afraid he’ll infect me, afraid the black ropes will tether me, too. Inch by inch, the aquarium reels him in, but he’s done shouting. He’s done crying out or trying to call to me or anyone. He just stares at me with the terror of disbelief, his eyes burning into my mind. And I know then that this moment, this second, was how I would remember Finney forever.
And when he’s gone, I’m left alone sitting in three inches of water. The aquarium sits in the middle of the room, filled with black, still water.
• • •
I wake in the middle of the night now. Every night. Like clockwork. I’m haunted by Finney’s face, sure, who wouldn’t be? But it’s not Finney keeping me up. It’s knowing that they’re out there. In eons past, or yet to come, in a galaxy distant or down the street. Whenever. Wherever. It’s knowing they are there. It’s knowing that they are hungry and patient. It’s knowing that time, she is nothing if not an ocean. It’s knowing that she waits for the fisherman. And it’s knowing that we, we are the catch.
Joe Mirabello is a professional game artist with eight years of experience in the industry. As an amateur writer he tries to work on writing for one hour every day. His first novel, The Armpit of Evil, was e-published in the autumn of 2011, and his work has recently appeared in Arcane, a horror anthology from Cold Fusion Media. Joe’s art and blog can be found at www.joemirabello.com.
THREE STRIKES
by Mekenzie Larsen
She watched the hatchet come down, severing the rope pulled tight around her throat. It gave with a vehement snap and she lost her footing, staggering forward then back as she swung one arm wildly through the air as if she were pitching a fastball in reverse. She backed into something—the bar, the glasses and bottles clinking in crystalline unison—and gasped. For the first time in her life, she could breathe.
She watched the hatchet come down. The veil over her eyes thinned, rippled, then vanished. Everything became clear. For the first time in her life, she could see. Tears stung her eyes but this time she refused to wipe them away. They rolled off her cheeks—plip plop—and mixed with blood on the linoleum floor.
No time to think. No time to cry.
The hatchet came down. It sliced through layers of flesh and meat and struck bone, the blade embedded in a mass of dying tissue. She let her hands slip from the splintered handle and wiped them off on the tail of her shirt.
For the first time in her life, she could feel.
Mekenzie Larsen hasn’t cut the rope yet. She lives with her parents and sister and their many furry friends. She shares stories about what she’s dubbed “the strange South” on her blog, www.mekenzielarsen.com, which she doesn’t update nearly often enough.
TO ‘BIE OR NOT TO ‘BIE
by Sean Eads
We are ten, eleven, and twelve years old when we meet the Director.
He seats us in an otherwise empty theatre and tells a story we later agree we’ve heard before. The Director tells us how a fifty-three-year-old stage actor named Marcus Robineaux discovered the zombies’ fascination for Shakespeare. He stumbled upon fifty zombies while doing reconnaissance. Facing death, he decided to die doing what he truly loved, and soliloquized from Hamlet.
The zombies stopped and listened.
Stunned by this, Marcus Robineaux kept performing as he retreated five miles back to the Blue Zone’s northern gate. The zombies followed at a respectful distance and did not become aggressive again until his voice gave out. By that time, he’d reached the high chain-link fence and the guards manning the north gate gunned them down.
Robineaux’s Rescue happened twenty years ago, which was itself twenty years into the Decay. The Blue Zone’s scientists, men and women who are the best in their fields by default, the population of all fields being winnowed, had no explanation.
“Do Shakespeare’s words tap some special memory buried in the zombie’s brain?” the Director says. “We cannot know. But no other language captivates them. Speak words from any other play or poem, and the zombies will still charge. But a well-performed line from Shakespeare could save your life. My job is to make you believe that.”
The Director will teach us to be warriors. Warriors, raiders, and rescuers. Defenders of the Blue Zone, headquartered in Lawrence, Kansas. There are eleven of us and we train in what children pre-Decay would have thought of as Drama Club.
The Director says we must learn well, as we are essential to creating a safe corridor between the Blue Zone and the Yellow Zone. We know the Yellow Zone is just a few hundred people centered in Paducah, Kentucky. But we hear no more about them for now. Our concentration must be on Shakespeare. Every play is a weapon, every scene is ammunition. We rehearse all day. But at night we dream; and when we share our dreams in the morning, we discover that all of us dream of the Yellow Zone.
As we grow up, we start thinking of the Director as Our Director. Old to begin with, he seems to be aging faster than us. We feel the weight of his responsibility. We are his responsibility and we will give him our best. Our Director says we must embrace being soldiers as well as actors. He tells us the language of war was borrowed from the stage. We are troops and troupes. Just as armies have companies, so too do actors. We learn of theatres of operation.
We are thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years old when Our Director christens us the Blue Zone’s Men, even though over half of us are women. Our number is ten now, Amanda having died of influenza. We rehearse entire plays from eight to noon. Then we use specific scenes to learn swordplay. Mercutio against Tybalt; Hamlet versus Laertes; MacBeth and Macduff; Richard III attacking Richmond. Our Director cannot exaggerate the importance of swords. After forty years, local caches of guns and ammunition are dry veins. Reserves are necessary for the immediate defense of the Blue Zone and cannot be wasted. So as we spend our hours learning the language of a distant era, we learn its weaponry as well. Our Director says once we have paralyzed the zombies, we must perform our fight scenes among them. How else can we get close enough to behead our audience?
We are seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen years old when we receive our first zombie audience. There are eight of us now. The previous winter was very bad. We do not dwell on that, however, with zombies so near. Five zombies have been locked into chairs in the twentieth row. They snarl and stomp their feet trying to get at us. Suddenly their braces unlock and they lurch forward. We all agree their speed is surprising. They scare us so much we cannot speak. Our Director stands in the left balcony. Men with guns stand in the right balcony.
“Remember your training! Act!”
We commence Hamlet as the zombie swarm nearer. Susan becomes Francisco. Norm plays Bernardo.
“Who’s there?”
“Nay, an-answer me: stand and...unfold yourself.”
Stacy becomes Horatio. Allen steps forward as Marcellus.
“Say, what, is Horatio there?”
“A piece of him.”
Stacy laughs, clapping both hands over her mouth. Afterwards she explains the line made her think of decaying zombies. The actual zombies are not at all enchanted by our performance and Our Direct
or screams, “Cut! Cut them down!” The zombies explode under the rain of bullets, leaving many pieces.
We have failed spectacularly and caused the waste of precious ammunition. But we learn. The next week we shine before an audience of eleven zombies. We do Romeo and Juliet. The zombies stop charging and stare, the cataracts over their eyes hard and blue and deep.
Above us, Our Director begs us to make the next step. “You see! Your performance has power. They are yours. Now take it to them!”
We segue into the sword fight. Act 3, Scene 1. Kevin is Mercutio and Norm is Tybalt. They fence on stage. Then they leap into the rows to fight among the neutralized zombies. Kevin and Norm never break character. They say their lines and swing their swords, cleaving through the audience. The zombies, fortune’s fools, remain paralyzed to the end. Before Norm “stabs” Kevin under Jill’s arm, all eleven zombies have been beheaded.
In the balcony, Our Director applauds with tears in his eyes.
Graduation day comes for the Blue Zone’s Men. We are eighteen, nineteen, and twenty years old. We have mastered every play. Our swordsmanship is unrivaled. We can fence and stab. We can hack. We can behead a hoard of forty zombies without going dry.
On Graduation night, in what used to be a football stadium, we perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Blue Zone’s five thousand people. We all like this play. All stories of the world pre-Decay seem like a similar, frilly romance. We are experiencing romance ourselves. Jill and Allen; Norm and Susan; Allen and Norm; Stacy and Kevin; Jill and the rest of us. After so many years of intensive training together, we all know and have known each other.
We are one.
The next day, Our Director summons us before the Blue Zone’s Ruling Council.
He says, “It’s been a decade since we established contact with the Yellow Zone. Communication is now almost nonexistent. We have had no word from them in four months. This is the longest their silence has lasted. The Council wishes you to go and discover their fate. You should know that I am against the Council’s decision. I fear to send you there.”
But we are not afraid to go.
Seeing this, Our Director is moved to tears. “At least the summer has started. We have so little to give you. But you have bicycles.” He casts a cold stare at the men and women of the Council. “You will not have to add to your absurdities by walking the entire distance of five hundred miles!”
He steps back as the Council leader says, “We need as much reconnaissance of the Yellow Zone as we can get. We must know the status of their barricades and communications equipment. We need population statistics and your opinion of their morale. Their self-appointed leader is a man named McChrystal. It seems he took ill. If he died, discover his replacement. Hopefully Yellow wants to maintain contact with us. With any luck, we can establish a safe corridor like we did with the White Zone in Nebraska.”
Our Director laughs. “We’ve been discussing a corridor for years—”
“And with the squad you’ve trained so well, we can begin to make good on it. The Blue Zone’s Men are everything to us—our youth, our warriors. Our ambassadors.”
We beam. Our Director looks crestfallen, as if he has read the script in advance.
Three days later, we prepare for the journey. We hug our parents. We say goodbye to our little brothers and sisters and walk our bicycles to the Blue Zone’s eastern gate. Armed men in faded military uniforms salute us.
We straddle our bicycles and try to figure out how to ride while managing our swords. Our knapsacks are light, but we have assurance there are places to requisition more food and water. We will have to scavenge. Our Director comes to offer his parting affection. Already he has new children to teach. Nor were we his first pupils. But perhaps his tears mean we are his best and his favorites.
The gate opens. Our Director strokes Jill’s right cheek and kisses her forehead.
“Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels and—”
“Fly like thought from them to me again,” Jill says, smiling.
We mount our bicycles and pedal forward, into the Decay.
• • •
We travel down I-70 Eastbound for hours without encountering a zombie. The flat terrain makes an ambush impossible. Our panic comes at night, the first we’ve ever spent without protective gates.
“How do we sleep?”
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. We’ll look out for each other.”
“How?”
“Think of Hamlet. I’ll be Bernardo. You be Francisco. We have performed guard duty a thousand times. We need only keep rehearsing the scene.”
We laugh, much relaxed. We take turns sleeping and acting. Neither a zombie nor the ghost of Hamlet’s father makes an appearance.
In the morning we have a disappointing breakfast of old, freeze-dried food before setting out. The highway becomes more cluttered. We stop to ponder the husks of cars. We know so little of life pre-Decay. Our training has made us closer to the world of four centuries past. Ghosts from four decades ago have less meaning. We’ve often thought our years of training isolated us. Even our parents say we sound incomprehensible at times. After years of speaking like Elizabethans in Drama Club, we sometimes slip into it without thinking. Our Director told us it is a queer thing, a sad thing. The language of the present is decaying like everything else, but through Shakespeare a dialect four hundred years old shambles on more vital than ever.
A low groan turns our heads. A single zombie rises from behind a car.
“It is alone. We should just get on our bicycles and ride around it. Why waste time?”
“I will behead it on the spot,” Kevin says. Kevin is quick to wrath and plays our best Hotspur.
Jill says, “We should use the moment to practice our skills before a living dead audience. I think our Midsummer still needs improving.”
Jill is fanatical about rehearsing.
We approach the zombie. It grunts to acknowledge our presence as its withered arms, hanging lifelessly at its sides, suddenly swipe at us.
Norm crouches down and assumes that clever expression we love.
“Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man revenue.”
The zombie’s arms go slack. It sways on its spindled, almost fleshless legs.
We run through the rehearsal for a long time. The zombie stands frozen throughout, its expression placid, its cataracts very blue.
Kevin, playing Helena, does the final speech of Act 1, Scene 1:
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.”
Kevin draws his sword. This is quite apart from anything Shakespeare intended.
“But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.”
Kevin beheads the zombie.
“That was very well done,” Jill says.
We get back on our bicycles and exeunt.
• • •
We encounter more zombies. Most are lone rogues we eliminate at once. One time we find a group of eight, an opponent for each of us. We square off, swords drawn. The task is simple and only Kevin chooses to make a scene of it. Standing before his zombie, he becomes Mercutio. His voice booms:
“O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!”
His zombie stops, instantly subsumed. Kevin cleaves through its right leg, dry bone splintering, breaking. The zombie topples over but tries to stand again.
Kevin continues:
“Tybalt, yo
u rat-catcher, will you walk?”
He claims the zombie’s head.
We should reach the Yellow Zone tomorrow.
• • •
Our first glimpse of the western barricade sparks alarm. We expected the same shiny, sturdy protection of the Blue Zone. What we find is a deplorable Gryffin. Parts of the barricade are chain-link, with broad gaps patched by a flimsier material Norm calls chicken wire. Other places use wooden planks. The barricade is like a play cobbled together from many random scenes, the work of a poor craftsman.
“This is most definitely not the Blue Zone.”
Entire segments of the barricade have collapsed. We follow the perimeter and discover breaks wide enough to ride through.
Kevin does.
“You are crazy to do that, Kevin.”
“Am I the only one brave enough to see what has happened?”
“We can see what has happened.”
“You will not follow me?”
“We’re scared.”
He smiles and hoists his sword high.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.”
We are rallied. Our training has planted a tree of heroism in our hearts. Kevin is Henry V. We become Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph; Fluellen; Gloucester and Bedford and Jamy. Our bicycles are steeds as we charge into the breach, determined to secure the half-achieved Harfleur.
We cry out as we ride through the streets. After many long moments, faces register in windows. We dismount our bicycles and beseech the terrified people of the Yellow Zone to heed us. Blue Zone comes from our lips, syllables of manna that brings the starving forth.
As doors open, Jill says, “Square your shoulders. We are the Blue Zone’s Men.”
We stand very straight and tall. The people clamor to tell a story as fractured as their barricade. They pelt us with a frantic, terrible chronology: how McChrystal died; how discord fell upon them in his absence; how things that needed doing soon went unattended. One day the barricade failed and the people of the Yellow Zone woke to find thousands of zombies in their streets.