The Undead (Zombie Anthology)

by D. L. Snell

  The Last Living Man

  Kevin L. Donihe

  His legs are twin machines. He holds no control over them. They scissor back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes he imagines the sound of gears churning and pistons pumping beneath his skin. He doesn’t need to think before running, not anymore. He is a machine, and running is his default.

  The last living man runs down streets clogged with cars. Those who once drove them now clamor in the distance. He runs through dark tunnels where the echo of his feet sounds like them. He’s been running forever. Standing still is just a dream dreamt while running.

  His breath exits in short, staccato bursts. It ravages his lungs, but masks the rasping sounds behind him. He once considered driving a stick through his eardrums; he heard the dead even when they were nowhere near. Finally, he got past this. He’s gotten past many things.

  He’s gotten past the memory of brown and twisted creatures smashing through doors and windows to plow green teeth into his wife. He remembers the wet smack as her body was chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed.

  And he remembers her resurrection, and how wide and toothy her mouth had been.

  But he’s gotten past those memories too, much like he’s gotten past seeing the death of his world. The last living man no longer needs to be with his own kind. He doesn’t need company or conversation. He is an island floating in an ocean of decay, his past life just another running dream. In this knowledge, he finds cold comfort.

  A sharp and sudden pain lances his chest. He’s thirty-six, but the stress of near-constant running has put years on his heart. The pain once frightened him, but he has found a way to change fear into fuel, to sharpen pain into a spear that goads him.

  But even that spear feels duller now. Everything feels duller. The world is washed in shades of gray that will never brighten. Night will never change into day. Perhaps it’s time to end the game. Perhaps he should have never started playing in the first place. It would have been easier that way. Quicker.

  He stops, turns to face the dead, and closes his eyes. The world tilts and sways under his feet. It feels like he’s still running. No matter. It won’t feel that way for long, not once green teeth and clacking jaws end the running forever.

  The last living man waits.

  Where are the dirty claws? Where are the green teeth that will end this game? He finds himself wanting them, almost sad that they’ve yet to deliver him from a world of running.

  He opens his eyes after minutes seem to pass.

  The dead, he sees, have halted in front of him. They stand in ragged rows that extend for miles. A field of rotten scarecrows, he thinks and wants to laugh.

  Confused, he stares at the phalanx. In the past, all he managed were quick glances over his shoulder. He never lingered on faces. Instead, he looked down at slouching suits and dirty dresses. Didn’t have to see their eyes that way. It wasn’t so bad, without the eyes. They were all so hollow and empty, like those of dead fish. He couldn’t look at them without first feeling horror, then revulsion.

  The dead stand before him, still motionless, still swaying. His feet tell him to run, that the dead remain interested in playing the game. So—heart pounding, chest tightening—the last living man obeys. Days seem to pass before he stops near a collapsed and flaming bridge. Perhaps the dead are now tired of the game, too. No such luck. Again, they halt, slack-jawed and swaying.

  Suddenly, he understands. Terror fades, and then vanishes completely. For the first time, the dead seem pathetic, worthy of pity. These are not conquerors; these are slaves without masters. The last living man realizes he is their sole purpose, that he turns the gears that maintain their existence. He is the crux and the pivot. Nothing will pull them along once there’s no one left to chase.

  He stares deep into their eyes, deeper than he ever imagined he could. He sees more than just stark emptiness. He sees a definite longing in those pits and, buried even deeper, a rudimentary need that, perhaps, might be love.

  The last living man draws his first deep breath in ages. He unleashes it in a slow sigh before beaconing the dead with a forward sweep of his hand.

  “Come here.”

  They continue to stand, swaying, watching.

  “Come here,” he reiterates, this time more urgently.

  They approach, hesitantly at first. In time, they surround him. Hands tug at his filthy t-shirt and brush against his face. These are no longer the hands of killers. These are the hands of supplicants. A woman—a windswept skeleton with yellow parchment skin—reaches over and places a crown of hastily woven grass atop his head. A man—hollow eyed and reeking of death—bows before him; a knee bone protrudes from tattered slacks. Others attempt to hoist him atop shoulders, forgetting how decay has abused their bodies.

  His mind spins. He wonders how many years will pass before they craft the crude tools of ritual from urban trash. How many years until they create tribal drums stretched taut with degraded skin. How long before they scrape together old newspapers and street refuse to collect in a new Bible, a Bible to be forgotten as soon as decay renders the last corpse formless and immobile, a Bible as ephemeral as quicksilver on a hot city street.

  He pulls himself from his thoughts. Miles upon miles of the dead have taken the lead of the first supplicant. Millions bow before him—the desire to worship something, anything—still rattling through their brains, an instinct that will never slouch away.

  The last living man cackles at the sight, and thus gives his coronation speech.

  Only Begotten

  Rebecca Lloyd

  “Come to me,” she croons, kneeling and holding out her arms. The small figure in the corner fixes its flat, milky eyes on her for a moment, then loses interest and goes back to chewing on its thumb. Blood drips on her hand-knotted cream wool carpet, puddling darkly. She feels her belly twist up a little with anger, but breathes it away, knowing that her sweet little boy can’t help it. She beckons again. “Come.”

  It glances over and slowly pulls the mangled thumb from its mouth. She smiles; it blinks, whimpers faintly, and starts crawling. Stiff with morning cold, it drags itself clumsily toward her, leaving little reddish smears in its wake. She coos encouragement, trying not to dwell on what cleaning the carpet will cost her. When it comes near enough, she bundles the squirming form into her arms, ignoring the clamminess of its skin.

  She’s already taken off her beige silk blouse, not wanting to alarm the dry-cleaner with more stains. She tucks her baby against her bare shoulder, wincing only slightly as she feels it set its mouth around her scab-covered collarbone. It’s teething, chewing on everything and making a mess; babies do at this age. The newly cut points leave little nipped-out gouges; it hungrily laps up the blood and bits of flesh. She keeps a smile of contentment pasted across her lips as it nurses.

  Its hunger has grown more demanding since it first started cutting teeth; it worries at her like a small dog, letting out little growls of frustration at the meager meal that flows from her barely-pierced skin. “There, there,” she soothes, rocking it. “I’ll have something better for you soon.”

  She is fifty and has been trying to have a baby for the last ten years. Doctors counseled her after the first four miscarriages to settle for adoption, but she wouldn’t have it. Only a child of her own blood would do. Even after cancer took her husband, she kept trying, with sperm they had banked just after his diagnosis. But her miracle boy almost didn’t make it, despite all her efforts: the fertility specialists, the hormone treatments . . . almost a quarter of a million dollars laid out for one child. At eight months along, she went into contractions that all the drugs in the world couldn’t stop, and what came out was blue and still and responded neither to the doctor’s slap nor to the crash-cart team’s best efforts.

  She’s been pulling in six figures since she was thirty-five, and when they told her that her miracle boy was stillborn, she refused to stand for it. Legs still half-numb from the epidural, she snatched the quarter-milli
on-dollar corpse from one of the nurses and walked right out of the hospital with it. Rocking it. Cooing to it. Waiting for it to move—for it must move, it had to move. She had never been the sort to admit defeat; she ended up standing in the parking lot, shaking the body and screaming at it to wake up.

  When it twitched and opened its moonstone-colored eyes, she knew with a surge of triumphant joy that she had done the right thing. She went home that night with her son in her arms, ready to devote the rest of her life to him.

  It took a bit of time, but her late husband’s lawyer handled the complications that she left in her wake at the hospital.

  As with any preemie, her baby has special needs. It doesn’t like sunlight, and so the shades are always drawn. It’s wary of strangers, and so she doesn’t have friends over much anymore. (She does not miss them; they always had something snotty to say about her little boy.) And then there is the matter of its dietary needs.

  Breast milk did the job for a little while, but her child did not thrive no matter how greedily he drank. He vomited up cow’s milk, formula, even plain water; he sucked both her breasts dry but still seemed hungry. When his skin started turning grey in patches, she took him to a pediatrician. The screaming argument that ensued only served to convince her that she alone should see to her son’s welfare.

  A day later, while making a cabbage rose out of a tomato to garnish her dinner, she discovered what her baby really needs purely by accident. The sharp little paring knife sliced her fingertip—nothing serious, but as the first drops of blood welled, he started whimpering for them. Fortunately, she’s a quick study, and within minutes had him slurping from her greedily. A week of feedings after that, his skin was a healthier tone, and it had stopped flaking off at the joints.

  Now, her hands are as scabbed as her shoulders, and she knows he needs more than she can give—but how he’s grown! Soon enough, he will be walking. That will make providing food that much easier—especially once he grows strong enough to help her handle the details.

  She’s decided to start with this week’s gardener. He’s a day laborer, and though she speaks almost no Spanish, she knows he’s suspicious of her and her baby. Just yesterday, he gave her the ugliest look when she brought her little one out for some air. Perhaps he was simply curious about all the dark swaddling . . . but she can’t take chances. Besides, she can hardly be expected to nourish a growing boy on her own.

  The mess can be minimized by doing it outside. That means keeping the gardener on until after dark, which will make him suspicious. But illegals are desperate for money; a big enough wad waved in front of him will earn his trust fast enough. Provided that she hides what’s left of the body thoroughly, no one will miss him. And for a while at least, her little boy will have plenty to eat.

  His teeth scoop out a bigger shred of skin than she is used to, and she gasps and nearly drops him—dislodging his mouth from her flesh in the process. He immediately whimpers and starts mewling. “Oh no, no, it’s all right, don’t cry. Mommy’s sorry.” She holds his head and gently guides him back to the wound.

  Undead Prometheus

  Rob Morganbesser

  The pounding at the door of the small home he’d slipped into let him know that they had found him again. Their puny minds thought of anything bipedal that was not dead as their prey. Once again he would have to kill a few to prove that he was not. He sat in an overstuffed chair, surrounded by desiccated corpses, likely those of the family that had lived here. They might have been on the run and besieged here, decided that suicide was the best escape. Each had a neat, dried-out hole in the center of the head. Where once the brains had sat, that few pounds of matter that had made each person an individual, now nested roaches, all scraping every bit of tissue from the corpses. Survival is an instinct in every living creature.

  A window on the door, hastily barricaded with a large china closet shattered to bits, made a tinkling noise as the last crystal shards of the window tumbled down in the space between the closet and the door. Other hands scrabbled at the door, the owners of the hands no longer intelligent enough to turn a knob.

  The man rose to his feet, his head brushing a chandelier. He was nearly seven feet tall, his body gaunt and well muscled. He’d traveled across most of the world in his long life, had seen the Czar’s Cossacks ride into villages, leaving nothing alive. He’d seen the result of Stalin’s pogroms, the rise and fall of the Nazi eagles. He had seen death in every one of its myriad ways, or so he had thought.

  Then this had happened. For some reason that science had not calculated, the recent dead had risen from their slabs and deathbeds to attack and devour the living. After a few months of the government trying to keep order, the forces of civilization had shattered like the window his attackers had just broken. In his long life, the survivor—and he was the ultimate survivor—had never seen such horror. In a way, it amused him to see the civilization of those people who had conquered so many diseases and who had solved so many scientific mysteries fall apart because the dead rose. He’d saved some of the living, had brought them to outposts run by governors who understood that, to survive, a more brutal civilization was needed. A civilization in which everyone chose between work and exile, a certain doom: few could live alone in these dangerous times.

  The survivor could. He was strong, and these creatures, as many as they were, gained nothing but his hatred. Hatred had been one of the first things he had ever learned, a simple emotion yet strong. Would he have this reservoir of hate if his father had not rejected him? He thought not. But for as much as he hated—hated the people who shunned him before civilization collapsed, hated those who now recognized him for his strength and abilities—he also loved. He loved the great masters of music, the artists of the Renaissance, the great literature he had taught himself to read. He was a creature of many passions, both dark and light.

  Now he could feel that passion growing within his chest. With every beat of his heart, he felt his hatred for the creatures outside growing. All he wanted, all he had wanted since his father had rejected him so many years past, was to be left alone. Obviously, these foul creatures with their fetid breath and unending hunger could not understand this. He had killed thousands of them, shouting “Leave me be!” Then he had finally understood that they could not learn. They were the lowest of the low, eaters of human flesh, hunters of children. They were a plague on the earth, an earth that had created them out of the toxins man had spilled into the earth; air and waters had caused them to rise. They would remain alive until the earth could purify itself of these toxins. That might take centuries.

  The survivor tilted his head. What was that sound? Closing his eyes—one blue, the other brown, a sight that gained him odd looks—he listened.

  There from a distance was a high shrill yell, the yell of someone in absolute terror. That was why he had left the protected zone of Saint Louis and plodded his way to this small town. People from this area had managed to make radio contact with one of the outposts, but its governor had enough problems. Unless the survivors were scientists, teachers, doctors or dentists—someone who could contribute to the new society—he had no rescue team to spare.

  Rising to his feet, the survivor checked his auto-shotgun he’d taken—with the governor’s permission—from the outpost’s supplies. On full auto, the weapon could decimate several creatures at a time. There were few alive who could handle the weapon on full auto. To him, it was like a toy.

  Striding to the door, he shoved the china closet aside, toppling it with one hand. Grasping the door through its mail slot, he wrenched it off its hinges and threw it out at the jabbering ghouls. It struck two, knocking them backwards. This was a small group, perhaps twenty-five. Good, he thought. I can work my anger off on them. Stepping onto the porch, he raised his weapon and fired. Set for three-round bursts, the 12-gauge bucked in his great, large knuckled hands. The first of the ghouls were blown back, their heads torn from their shoulders in bloody gobbets. Others were blown in half,
torsos flying one way, legs another.

  Finally, the weapon clicked empty. With a roar of anger, he waded into the living dead, great fists pumping up and down. One ghoul fell, its head crushed down into its shoulders; another’s face was shattered, shards of nose and cheekbones driven into its brain. One of the creatures stood there dumbly, unaccustomed to being attacked. Usually, the food went down screaming, not fighting. Before it could retaliate, he grabbed it by its tattered coverall, lifted and threw it against a car, breaking its back.

  With a look of disdain, he moved off, thick fingers reloading his weapon, the ghouls he’d destroyed forgotten. The irate person—a woman he guessed from the pitch—was still screaming. It sounded like anger rather than fear.

  Well, if she kept from being bitten, she’d have nothing to fear. At least for a while.

  * * *

  Bridgett Conolly was trapped on the porch. Why had she listened to Jimmy? He couldn’t think his way out of a plastic bag. True, their food had been running low. True, the outpost wasn’t that far off; outposts had moats filled with spikes or water and were constantly patrolled. The zombies might be numerous, but they were far from nimble. Once one fell into a moat, it was easy pickings for guards. Retractable bridges kept zombies out. When more room was needed, a new moat was built. Once the area was cleaned out, it became part of the outpost.

  Bridgett and Jimmy had headed toward one of these outposts, but they’d run out of gas here in Podunkville. The sound of the car had brought ghouls in droves. Bridgett and Jimmy had run, looking for a place to hole up. Jimmy had been dragged down, the creatures setting their teeth in him, tearing him to bits. Bridgett hadn’t even looked back; she had climbed up a small ladder onto this porch and had been trapped. The windows were barred, and the house was too far from another to jump. All she’d been able to do was pull the ladder up. Now her only option seemed to be jump down and run for it, which was not really an option since they’d be on her the minute she hit the ground. She could also put her gun in her mouth and blow out her own brains. Better that than sitting here until dehydration drove her insane.