The Undead (Zombie Anthology)

by D. L. Snell

  Ryland was jarred back to reality as Samuel pushed the sack across the table. His sightless, metallic jack-o-lantern visage turned slowly from side to side, as if surveying the firing squad flanked by klieg lights. Ryland, never certain whether the afterdead could still hear, mumbled thanks and took the sack. For the first time, he addressed his team. “Fall back.”

  They did, except for Goldhammer, who came forward with a HAZMAT container the size of a lunchbox. Samuel sat quietly as Ryland took a handful of soil from the sack and, like a drug buyer testing the product, sprinkled the dirt over the dark mass in the container. “What’s his name?” He asked Goldhammer, who replied through his bug helmet, “Pancake.” Ryland smiled wryly and stroked the ball of black fur. Now, he felt a rhythmic movement beneath his fingertips; the kitten shuddered, shifted. It was in an advanced state of decay and had been broken beyond repair by a parade of freeway traffic, so there was little for it to do now but purr.

  “Dirt’s good,” Goldhammer called back to the others. Another container was brought forth to receive the sack’s contents. Ryland closed the HAZMAT lunchbox over the cat. It muttered weakly with dead vocal cords. He smiled again. The sack was returned to the table beside the briefcase, both for Samuel to keep. Taking one in each metal fist, the zombie stood up.

  The lunchbox jerked in Ryland’s hands, and even before the black blur flew past his face and down the tunnel, he knew; even as his legs pumped against his will, sending him past the table and over that invisible line in futile pursuit, he knew. Goddamned crippled cat!

  A clutch of mechanical fingers took root in the center of Ryland’s chest.

  Pulled off his feet by Grinning Samuel and out of reality by the numbing terror in his veins, Ryland heard dimly the patter of bullets against Samuel’s back. Goldhammer, like a double-jointed ballet dancer, pirouetted off the table and drove a boot into the afterdead’s defunct groin. While his legs jackknifed through the air, he planted his M4 against Samuel’s temple and got off a good quarter-second burst of fire before the zombie punched through his body armor and yanked out a streaming handful of guts. A spurting, slopping mess that cushioned the soldier’s fall immediately followed it.

  Ryland had been thrown clear of the battle and had crashed into the dirt; having been tossed deeper into the catacombs, he saw Samuel as a hulking silhouette against the lights, swaying under a barrage of gunfire. Ryland felt bullets zipping overhead and pressed his face into the earth, tasting that accursed dirt for which Goldhammer had just died.

  Died. . . . Christ.

  The government had accumulated a half-ton of soil from the parish over the past three decades, and had been burying bodies in it, clocking their resurrection and administering tests of strength, endurance, and aptitude. What little intelligence Samuel exhibited was rare in afterdead (except those who stayed near their Source, of course); they usually came up sputtering the last of their blood and bile and clamoring for the nearest warm body, abandoning all higher faculties in the lust for living flesh. Indeed, such was the case with Sergeant Goldhammer, who sat up beside the besieged Samuel and fixed his bug-like gaze on Ryland. His exposed viscera was caked with soil, his back to the other men—but surely they realized what he’d become. . . .

  Goldhammer made a wet noise inside his helmet. Ryland heard it over the gunfire.

  Pawing through his own innards, the dead soldier came at his former commander. Former as of thirty seconds ago. Yes, he was fresh undead, and there was still some basic military protocol embedded in that brain of his, wasn’t there, so Ryland threw his hand out (wrist broken, he felt) and screamed, “Stop!”Goldhammer did, crouching on all fours with a rope of intestine dragging between his legs. He cocked his head and was the perfect picture of a sick dog. He was trying to recognize the word and why it had halted him in his tracks. Ryland could see the gears turning, like the gears in Grinning Samuel’s jaw, and at that moment, Samuel ripped into the firing squad; the hail of bullets was reduced to a drizzle.

  Goldhammer pounced. Ryland pivoted on his broken wrist with a blinding snap of pain and caught his aggressor with a boot heel between the glassy bug eyes. Goldhammer grunted, batted the leg aside. They wrestled there on the ground with Ryland kicking himself farther and farther down the tunnel, all the while aware that Samuel would soon be finished with the others.

  Backpedaling on his hands and hindquarters, he disturbed a pile of pebbles—no, gears, the strewn contents of the briefcase! Ryland closed his good hand around a fistful of them, and, with a half-hearted cry, he hurled them into Goldhammer’s face. Relatively pointless but still an amusing precursor to Samuel’s hand sweeping down like a wrecking ball and crushing Goldhammer’s skull against the wall. The soldier crumpled to clear a path for the grinning afterdead. Samuel’s steel maw was painted with liquid rust from the insides of Ryland’s men. The zombie knew right where his prey was, and Ryland’s situation hit rock bottom as the damaged klieg lights faded out.

  “STOP!!” He shrieked. “STOOOOOOOOOOP!!!” He now knew for certain that Samuel could still hear by the way that his pace quickened. A barely discernable silhouette in the faint remnants of light, Grinning Samuel’s grasping fingers squealed as he drew closer. Ryland’s back struck a wall. He waited for those fingers to find his heart.

  His broken wrist was jerked into the air. He screamed, imagining that his entire arm had been ripped off. But it hadn’t been. Samuel wasn’t even moving now.

  With his breath caught in his throat, Ryland just sat and listened in the dark.

  And then he heard it.Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  His wrist twisted a little. He bit into his lip while Samuel traced the band of his gold wristwatch. The pair remained motionless in the shadows for what seemed like an eternity, but Ryland counted the ticks and tocks and knew it was less then a minute. Finally, in spite of both terror and logic, he stammered, “It’s a Rolex.”

  The watch left his wrist, and his intact arm dropped into his moist lap. Samuel could be heard shuffling off into the catacombs, down beneath the parish churchyard where the mystery of his unlife dwelled. The tick-tock, tick-tock gradually ceased.

  Ryland sucked icy air into his lungs and sat there for what really did seem like an eternity. There were a few dull spots of light down the tunnel. There, he’d have to confront the remains of his slaughtered team; but Samuel would have done quite a number on them, and none would be getting back up. He pushed his ankles through the dirt until the circulation returned to them; he tried to stand. He was still a bit shaky, wrist throbbing like mad. Goddamn, it was getting colder by the second. He took another breath, sat back down, and listened to the silence.

  Then he heard something new . . .

  Meow.

  Ryland smiled again and reached a blind hand into the darkness.

  Ann at Twilight

  Brent Zirnheld

  When the dead had risen to eat the living, Ann’s nice little world crumbled around her. One of the first to die had been her husband, Lamont. He’d never gotten a proper burial, nor had Ann been able to touch him one last time. In fact, he’d never been buried, but shot in the head and left on the streets of Knoxville, Tennessee for rats, cats, birds, and dogs—that is if the living dead had left anything behind after they had gotten their fill.

  “Pity you can’t see what a beautiful day it is,” Jeb said. “Damn fine day. Blue sky, white puffy clouds, green trees. Damn pity.”

  Ann listened from the truck’s passenger seat. To her, a beautiful day was the warmth of the sun on her skin and the songs of birds. She’d never been able to see a beautiful day, blind since birth. Living in the dark, she’d been particularly challenged when it came to life in this new Dark Age.

  After Lamont’s death and the general collapse of society, Ann had depended on the kindness of strangers. She’d met an ex-cop named Glen who’d been a Godsend. Unlike most of those who wanted to survive, he hadn’t let her blindness deter him; he and his brother Tom had rescued her from the squalor that ha
d become Knoxville and took her with them when they left, despite the liability that having a blind woman created.

  Unfortunately, Glen was killed halfway through Arkansas, and Tom blamed Ann for the loss. He’d raped her and traded her for two rifles, ten gallons of gas, and several boxes of ammunition.

  That was two weeks ago. Once Ann was healed enough from Tom’s brutal attack, she’d been put on the market again. Two hours later, Jeb arrived with a truckload of reefer, and Ann had switched owners.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d been bought by someone who would actually protect her and give a damn about her well being, but Jeb was part of a white supremacist clan. And he’d only made it too clear what her new role would be once she was taken back to the ranch.

  “Oh, well it was a beautiful day. Lookie what I see out there. Ha, ha, you can’t look, can you? Well, let me describe ’im to you,” Jeb said, slowing down the truck.

  The vehicle shifted to the right. As it slowed, it left solid pavement and crunched gravel on the road’s shoulder.

  “He’s a big ’un. Hobblin’ this way like he’s got a snowball’s chance in hell of catching anything going by on this road. Best of all, he’s a nigger just like you. Nice to know another one’s dead. I’ll be damned if he’s gonna be around much longer to put the bite on someone, though.”

  Jeb pulled something Ann assumed was a rifle from the rack behind her head. Part of it struck her in the left ear as he jerked it free.

  “Is he in a meadow?” Ann asked, rubbing her ear. “How far away is he?”

  “Oh, she speaks!” Jeb said.

  She heard a mechanical sound as he did something to the gun, readying it for firing.

  “What’s distance to you?” Jeb asked. “He’s way out there in the open. How the hell can I describe it? A hundred yards maybe, does that help? Far enough away to be a good challenge to hit from this range.”

  “What time is it?” Ann asked.

  Jeb laughed. She was afraid he wouldn’t tell her, but he blurted with a chuckle, “Five-thirty. You got a hot date? Oh, of course you do. First with me then with Ed, then with Steve, then with Ralph, then with John, then with Rick and maybe we’ll even let little Joe have some of that fine pussy.” Jeb laughed harder. “Yeah, you got yerself several hot dates tonight.”

  Seven of them, Ann counted, including little Joe. At least seven, anyway; Jeb could have forgotten to list some of them.

  “Don’t you guys have girlfriends?” she asked.

  “We got us some other women, but they get old after awhile. It’ll be extra good to have somethin’ new to liven things up for a little while. Especially somethin’ we don’t mind roughin’ up.”

  Ann kept silent. It wasn’t her habit of talking back to those who could strike her with impunity. Besides, she had to figure out how the other women played into it. Were they captives or willing partners?

  Jeb opened the door. Ann heard his feet hit the pavement. He left his door open.

  Ann waited. The left side of the truck dipped ever so slightly. He was leaning on the front of the truck.

  Holding her breath, Ann reached forward. Her fingers touched the dashboard. With the tips of her fingers, she sought the glove compartment’s release. While she’d opened glove boxes before, she hadn’t so much as touched this one, so there was no telling what kind of release mechanism she’d be dealing with.

  Trying to keep her back straight, Ann hoped Jeb wasn’t paying attention to her while he was outside the vehicle. There was no way to know. If he caught her, he’d tie her hands and she’d get no further chances. This was likely her only opportunity to find a weapon, so it would have to be worth the risk. Once he returned to the truck, she’d better have a weapon to use, or there would be no stopping him. He’d take her to his clan’s ranch, and she’d be their toy until they grew tired of her—or until she broke.

  Her fingers found the latch. It was round with an upraised surface. A knob? She twisted.

  The rifle exploded, startling her. The glove compartment’s door hit her knees.

  “Dammit!” Jeb yelled.

  Her heart seized and she froze in place.

  But then he prepped his gun for a second shot.

  Abandoning subtlety, Ann reached into the open box and found a gun. Two of them.

  Second shot.

  “Yes!” Jeb exclaimed.

  Ann quickly withdrew the nearest gun. It was a revolver, she could tell by the swell on each side. With her left hand, she closed the box, praying it would stay shut. It did.

  She put the gun beside her right leg, but it was possible he might still see it, so she lowered it between the seat and the door. It was very heavy. There was no way she’d drop it, though. Not a chance. This gun was her salvation—the only way she’d be able to escape this sicko.

  Jeb hopped into the truck. Slammed the door.

  “Shoulda seen that! Knocked ’im backward three whole feet before he went down on ’is back.”

  The weapon struck Ann in the side of the head again as he put it back from where it came. His giggle signaled that this time he’d struck her on purpose. Behind her head, the rifle bumped her once more before sliding into the rack.

  “Oh, well if that don’t beat shit, there’s another dead nig,” Jeb said, his sour breath passing across Ann’s face.

  Ann wondered if Jeb was staring through the window at the dead man. Which direction? The same direction as the other dead man? The same general vicinity?

  “Spooky sucker. Just standing there. Should I put ’im out of his misery or just let ’im wander around?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Too far to hit. Maybe this one’s still alive. He’s just standing there. Hard to tell these days. I liked the dead back in the beginning before they learned to get sneaky. Used ta be, you’d just sit there with a rifle and pick them off one by one until they were gone or you was out of ammo. Then they started learnin’ to play dead, or crawl, or hide, or sneak around. The worst ones pretend to be alive. Like this one. Dead sucker’s waving at us.”

  “Maybe he’s not dead,” Ann said. It was habit to keep Jeb talking, but he was such a heavy nose breather that she knew exactly where he was when he didn’t speak.

  Ann felt the sun on her chest and chin, the rays soaking into her blouse and exposed skin from her neck to her forehead. They were definitely facing west from what she could assume, given the time of day. The sun could be coming from the side, but Ann doubted it as her whole face was feeling the sun’s warmth.

  “He’s dead alright. Missin’ one of his arms, I think. Front of his shirt’s covered with blood like he’s been eatin’ himself a good meal. Startin’ to walk this way.”

  There was silence as Ann wondered what Jeb would do. From his voice, she knew that the dead man was in the field to her right. If she ran, she’d be going straight for him unless she stayed on the road. She could hardly stay on the road, though. Someone who knew Jeb and his friends could happen along.

  “Screw it. I gotta be gettin’ you back to the boys. Me and Rick will have ta come out here tomorrow and see where those dead folk are comin’ from. Gonna have us some fun with you tonight and I can’t hardly wait.”

  Jeb grabbed her left breast and squeezed. He knew just where her nipple was, too.

  “Ow!” she exclaimed, jerking away.

  Jeb laughed and touched her cheek. “Don’t tell the boys, but I think yer kinda cute in your own darkie way.”

  He started the truck.

  Balancing the gun against the side of the seat, Ann slid her fingers downward to grip its handle and slide a finger through the trigger guard. With her middle finger, she felt for a safety, but didn’t find one readily so she took the chance.

  Reaching for the door handle with her left hand, Ann pressed her right wrist against her left shoulder to steady her aim. She squeezed the trigger. It was a tough one to squeeze, very tight, so she added pressure.

  “Damn bitch!” Jeb yelled, opening his
door.

  The hammer fell on an empty chamber. Jeb had left the first hole empty as his “safety.” She squeezed again. The gun bucked in her hand and filled the truck’s cab with an explosive report that made Ann’s ears ring louder than they ever had.

  She squeezed the trigger again.

  Then she opened her door and turned her body. Deaf now, she slid off the seat, knees bent slightly as she braced for contact with the ground. Her feet landed at an angle, pitching her forward. Throwing out her arms, she braced for impact. It came quickly, her knees and hands landing on gravel that poked into them, especially the fingers of her right hand that were smashed between gravel and the gun’s handle. She didn’t let go of the gun, though.

  Immediately, Ann scrambled forward. She moved in the direction she thought would take her to the rear and away from the truck. Toward the field. Maybe. The fall had disoriented her somewhat. She could feel gravel and plants beneath her feet, but heard only ringing in her ears.

  “You damned cunt!” Jeb screamed, his voice sounding farther away than what it was. She could still tell he was behind her and to the right.

  Her heart sank. Not only was he still alive, her only method of sensing his location was going haywire from the gunshot. Her ears would be ringing for at least the next few minutes—the next few minutes being the most crucial moments of her life.

  “I’ll kill you!” Jeb screamed. Then he cried out in agony. “Cunt!”

  He screamed again, a howl of pain. She’d hit him at least once, though how bad was anyone’s guess.

  Ann continued moving as fast as she could, expecting a bullet to strike her in the back at any moment. She might be heading in the general direction of the dead man who would eat her flesh if given the opportunity, but there was no way to know.

  Still armed, she was thankful she hadn’t dropped the gun. It was a useless weapon against Jeb at the moment, but it might come in handy should she walk into the arms of the dead.