The Undead (Zombie Anthology)

by D. L. Snell

  That’s when I remind myself that the Indian is dead already.

  You piece of shit. How dumb could you be, hatching a plot to kill a dead man? You’re not gonna put up a fight. Let’s be honest: this guy’s gonna have you for lunch. And you know what, shithead? You probably deserve it.

  Nine more paces.

  Cold As He Wishes

  C.M. Shevlin

  It all started with a girl. No, wait a minute. That’s not entirely true. It all started with a dog. But since everything comes around to the girl eventually, I might as well begin with her. So . . . Sheila. She was always too good for me. Everybody said so. Too pretty, too clever, too funny, too . . . everything. The two of us together never made any sort of sense except to me. We met at St Jude’s, somewhere I should’ve never been in the first place. But I had every one fooled into thinking I was pretty smart, paid attention in class most of the time, and everyone at home had high hopes, especially when the teacher put me down to sit the scholarship exam for the local grammar school.

  But two days before the exam, my dog Winston died in his sleep. I really loved that animal, I mean really. He wasn’t anybody’s idea of a prizewinner—a sheepdog crossed with some mysterious other. He’d been crippled with arthritis for the last year and was occasionally incontinent, so in a way it was a release for him. Of course, I was eleven and didn’t see it like that—completely gutted I was. My mum promised me anything—puppies, money, anything—to settle me down enough to take the exam. Nothing worked. Finally, she turned to my granddad and demanded, “Isn’t there anything you could say to him?” Granddad just shook his head and went on filling his pipe.

  I lay awake for ages that night on the sofa bed; I had been sleeping there since Granddad had moved into our terrace house in Cavendish Street. Dwelling on the unfairness of it all, I was staring at the ceiling when the stairs creaked. Quickly, I rolled over and faked sleep, but my granddad shook me, holding his fingers to his lips, “Shhhh. Get dressed, come with me, Chris.”

  It was a warm night, so I just shoved my feet into trainers and pulled a jacket over my pajamas. Granddad carried two spades. Together, we walked to the patch of wasteland down the road where we’d buried Winston. I’d left his favorite ball atop his grave but it was lying yards away, already punctured and torn. I picked it up, blinking back the tears.

  I kicked the ball away. “So why are we here?”

  Granddad tossed me the other spade and said, “Dig.” He’d been in the army more than twenty years ago, so when he said, “Dig,” I dug, the spade easily turning over the dry earth. We unwrapped Winston’s canvas body bag, and Granddad grunted as he bent down and picked up a handful of the dirt that had covered the carcass. He scattered it in a circle. Taking a knife from his pocket, he slit his palm and walked the circle again, shaking blood onto the earth. Painfully he bent and used the knife to smear blood onto the dog’s mouth.

  “Granda,” I said, finding my voice, “What’re you doing?”

  He ignored me.

  Pressing a hand to the small of his back, Granddad straightened. He took a deep breath and held the knife in front of him. In a cracked but resonant voice that contrasted with his matter-of-fact words, Granddad called out, “Time to get up, boy. Blood and earth calls you, we command you.”

  “Granda . . .” I whined, by this time close to peeing where I stood. There was a sudden twitch in the dog’s body, like a violent tic. I jumped back. After another convulsion, Winston turned onto his front. He began to make efforts to get to his feet, his eyes rolling and his mouth tightly closed, strings of saliva dripping on the canvas beneath him.

  “What?” I asked in an awed whisper. “Is that really Winston, Granda? Is it?”

  He shrugged. “Something like him, anyhow. Here,” he handed me the knife. “Feed him your blood, or he’ll slip back again. Just a bit mind you, don’t let him catch you in a grip.”

  I gripped the handle and resolutely cut down into my palm, which immediately began to stain with blood. I held it out, shaking. “Here boy, here Wins—”

  My grandfather’s hand clamped down on my shoulder. “Don’t use his name. Call him something else . . . or just ‘boy.’

  “Why?”

  “If you use his name, he might remember who he is. And he mightn’t be that happy about it.”

  My forehead creased in confusion, but I turned back to the dog, which was dragging himself towards my hands and the droplets of blood. I squeezed the cut, and the drops quivered and fell into Winston’s mouth. He swallowed and, energized, got to his feet, fixing me with an empty stare.

  We headed back home, Granddad’s handkerchief knotted around my hand. Winston shambled awkwardly behind us, still slowed by his arthritis. I was hardly able to believe what had happened.

  “Granda?

  “Hmmm?”

  “Would that work on humans?”

  “It could do. But it’s not done.”

  “But why? I mean, if it could work . . .”

  He grabbed my upper arms and gave me a couple of shakes. “It’s not done, do you hear me? Never! Don’t even think about it!”

  “No, Granda. I won’t, Granda.” I twisted out of his painful grip.

  He released me and wagged his finger. “Remember what I said, now.” He started to shuffle away, but stopped. Without looking back, he said, “Don’t ever do it, Christopher. But . . . if you do . . . give ‘em plenty of raw meat and they’ll last maybe a few weeks. And when they start getting that look in their eye, put them back and put them back fast, before the hunger gets too strong. Or else you’ll wish you had. Put ’em back the same way as you woke ’em up, but use salt instead of the blood.”

  Next morning, my mum’s lips got all tight when she saw Winston, but she didn’t say anything. I took the entrance exam and passed with flying colors. I had my dog back so everything was great again. Although it wasn’t the same. He still followed me everywhere, but when I stroked him he didn’t lick me or roll onto his back, begging for more. And he never took his eyes off me, just stared. Not with devotion or hatred or even hunger really. Just . . . a waiting stare. So when I woke a week later to find him gone, I didn’t make as much fuss as you might think. Anyhow, school started soon after, and then there were new classes, new teachers, and Sheila.

  Yeah, we’re back to her. I used to sit for whole periods, just mesmerized by her long shining fall of hair right in front of my desk, so close I could have run my fingers through it. It took me a whole year to pluck up the courage to talk to her, but when I did we got on really well. We’d read the same books, we felt the same about different stuff—or mostly, she’d tell me what she felt about things, and I’d nod and smile. Everybody started coupling up about second year, so it was pretty natural for us to do the same. But we stayed together, all the way through junior school and the exams, which I managed to scrape through with her help.

  Hard to believe maybe, but I never even thought once of Winston. Even when I was sixteen and Granda died, I just sat beside Sheila at the funeral as she stroked my arm, and I thought of the sex we’d have that evening if I could get Auntie Flo to stay with Mum. I thought we’d be together forever. I can see now that was incredibly naïve. What are the odds of marrying your junior school girlfriend anyway? Who’d even want to? Except me of course. Beside the point anyway. Like I said, Sheila was clever. She was headed straight for a university, and even with her help, I miserably failed finals. We promised we’d stay together—call, write, visit at weekends—but well, yeah, you know what happened. She met someone else at school. She wrote me a letter to tell me we’d always be friends, blah blah blah.

  When I eventually emerged from the walking coma caused by that little note, I messed around for a couple of years, worked in a video store, drove taxis. Had fuck all luck with women really. Even the ones who were distinctly not in my league (which I felt had been raised by going out with Sheila) sharply rejected me. Bastard. Selfish tosser. Those were things I heard quite a bit. Or from the psycho
logy diploma student I dated for a while, “emotionally unavailable.” That takes us up to a night about a year ago.

  I’d been out on a drinking binge with some mates from Blockbuster where I’d struck out at least ten times. My best mate Ian and I walked home, singing and generally making arses of ourselves. I must have taken a detour somewhere because when I woke up in the early hours of the morning, I was in the graveyard lying over what seemed to be a pretty fresh grave. The economical wooden cross read “Josephine Hamilton. Born 12th February 1980 Died 13th February 2004 aged 24 years. Beloved daughter and sister.”

  Well that blows, I thought, day after your birthday. Sort of like someone went “Alright, I’ll give you twenty-four years. But not one day more.” 13th February. That was yesterday.

  Flopping onto my back to stare up at the sky, it took a minute for the notion to percolate through my booze sodden mind. I like to think it would have seemed appalling had I been in my right senses. But right then, I was thinking, Well why the hell not? Just try it and see. Probably won’t work anyway. . . .’

  If I’d encountered any obstacles at all, chances are good that I would have abandoned the idea right away. But the night watchman was nowhere to be seen, and his shed nearby contained the necessary implements: a spade and a penknife. I was so sloshed I didn’t wonder about state the corpse, about how long the woman had been dead. Thankfully when I opened the coffin and took a fascinated and repelled glance inside, Josephine Hamilton was as fresh as her grave. I was shaking at this point, just as I had all those years ago. But I’d come this far and something inside me had to know if it was even doable.

  “I’ll put her right back,” I said, “if it works. Which it won’t.” I copied everything I’d seen my grandfather do that night—the circle of earth, the circle of blood, the blood on the lips. Then the words, which I felt more than a little stupid saying, I don’t mind telling you: “Come on, time to get up, girl. Blood and earth calls you, and I command you.”

  Nothing happened. I exhaled a long breath, sneakily relieved like when Granddad had taken Winston in the night to put him back into his grave. The horror of what I had just done hit me, and I felt stomach acid rise in my throat. I turned away and vomited. Finally, I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and turned around, steeling myself to cover the coffin and fill in the grave.

  Josephine Hamilton’s head and shoulders were up out of the coffin, and her white hands gripped the sides as if to pull her to a sitting position. I froze, then continued to retch, even though there was nothing left to come up.

  Experiencing a nearly uncontrollable urge to run, I backed away. What had Granddad said? If I didn’t feed her, she’d just slip back. But she was watching me with that familiar flat stare and still trying to hoist herself out of the coffin. I had the sickening feeling that if I didn’t give her what she wanted, she’d drag herself out and follow me until I did, that I’d hear a scratching at my door later. I cut my hand and held it above her mouth only to snatch it away just as she swiped for it. Once her tongue darted out to taste the blood on her lips though, she was able to pull herself up and step out of the coffin in one fluid motion, watching me all the while.

  So what would you have done? Like I believe you. Like hell you would have put her back. You’d have been afraid but intrigued, just like I was. I took her home, after filling in the grave again. I left her sitting at the kitchen table, and I barricaded myself in the bedroom. God knows how I slept, but I did. When I woke with a hangover, it seemed obvious that it must have all been a dream. Except when I stumbled to the toilet, there was Josephine Hamilton, deceased, sitting in a beam of morning sunlight in my flat.

  Don’t get me wrong, it was still creepy the way her eyes followed me without her head ever moving, but in the daytime, she really didn’t seem that frightening. Just a pretty girl with short brown hair and chocolate eyes, a little on the plump side, but definitely attractive.

  Forgetting my need to pee, I sat down with a thump opposite her and said to myself, “Now what am I going to do with you?”

  Her head lifted a fraction and her mouth stretched into a sweet smile. “I don’t know,” she said.

  My mouth dropped open. I looked into her eyes, still perfectly flat. “You can talk.”

  She looked back at me, seemingly unoffended, but without response.

  I leaned forward a little and said, “Jo—” and suddenly remembered my granddad’s advice about Winston: “If you use his name, he might remember who he is,” he had said. “And he mightn’t be that happy about what you’ve done.” I finished, “-anna. Joanna. That’s your name.”

  She raised no objection. “I’m very hungry,” she said, her voice as flat as her eyes.

  “Sure you are, well you would be . . . why wouldn’t you be?” I could feel myself begin to gabble. “I’ll get you something to eat.”

  At the fridge, I pulled out the roast my mum had left. She was to come over and cook it the next day, so it was still red bloody and raw. I set it down in front of Josephine/Joanna, and for a split second I thought I saw disappointment in those expressionless eyes, but she began to tear at it with frantic fingers. When she was done, I tentatively dabbed at her mouth and chin with a cloth to remove the traces of blood and the gobbets of meat.

  She followed me about the house for the rest of the day, until I told her to stop, after which she just sat. I headed out that night, and, surrendering to an impulse, I took her with me. I was expecting it to be a disaster. I deserved it to be a disaster. Imagine my surprise when she was a hit with my mates. She smiled a lot, she laughed when others laughed, she was pretty—yeah, I got a lot of envious glances. Slowly I began to enjoy myself as I realized this could be a relationship in which I had complete control. Jo would never leave me, and I could dispose of her whenever I got bored.

  I kissed her outside the pub that night, and it wasn’t unpleasant. She was cold, colder than a normal girl even in November, and my lips felt a little numb when I pulled away. But she made all the right movements with her lips then, and back at my flat, she made all the right moves with the rest of her body. I learned early on to send her to bed with an electric blanket a half an hour before joining her.

  So for a few weeks, things were good for me. But several things upset the balance of what was the most secure relationship I had ever had. Firstly, it got harder to satisfy her appetite for raw meat. Also, her complexion began to grow sallow, and her flesh took on an unpleasant consistency. When I touched it, it was as if the different layers would slide over each other. And sometimes when she moved, I could hear a sloshing sound, which I began to imagine was the liquefaction of her internal organs. But it was when I woke up one night to find her standing over me with hunger in her eyes that I knew it was time to put her back. I took her to the graveyard with a tin of table salt and knife in my pocket. I was more than a little nervous about this as I hadn’t seen my granddad perform this part of the ritual. Together we dug up her grave again, exposing the coffin. I opened it and ordered her inside.

  She turned and looked at me. “I don’t want to.”

  She looked so forlorn, and something like human emotion appeared for the first time in her eyes. I almost weakened, but the hunger that sharpened the bones of her face persuaded me.

  “Get into the coffin,” I repeated, and she obeyed.

  It went just like my grandfather had said it would—the earth, the salt, the words. When the last spadeful of dirt had been thrown in, I said “Goodbye, Josephine,” before walking away.

  It didn’t end there. I started scanning the obituaries, which unfortunately don’t come with pictures attached. Sometimes I had to travel all around the countryside. Still, I wasn’t overly fussy. Blondes, redheads, brunettes—an endless procession of perfectly biddable women entered my life and left it again just as easily. My friends couldn’t believe my luck.

  “But where do you find them?” Ian asked. “I never see you pulling.”

  And you wouldn’t want to, I thought dryly to
myself, remembering my last raising, where the subject had seemed to have a little trouble getting out of the coffin, even with me pulling her for dear life. It was only when I moved the blanket that I discovered the article about the industrial accident she had suffered. The obituary had neglected to mention the amputations. I put her back again pretty quick, I can tell you. There are some things you can’t explain away down at the pub.

  It was Carol—no wait a minute, it was Jeannie, that’s right—that I was with when I bumped into Sheila. She was coming out of the shopping centre, loaded down with Christmas shopping. For a few seconds, I forgot who—what—was beside me. It was Sheila’s pointed glances towards my companion that prompted me to make introductions. Jeannie smiled because that’s what I’d told her to do when I introduced her to strangers. “Nice to meet you,” she said. That encounter knocked me for six. Coming up on seven years, and I still wasn’t over Sheila. I guess everyone has one person they never get over. Of course, I realize that not everyone substitutes that person with a series of zombies.

  A Sunday morning two weeks afterwards, I got a telephone call. Jeannie—naturally, that wasn’t her real name, but I always liked that sitcom, you know the one with Barbara Eden—anyway, she answered it and said in her perfectly flat voice, “Just a minute, please,” and she handed the receiver to me.

  “Chris?” an unfamiliar female voice asked.

  “Yeah, can I help you?”

  “Chris, it’s Kathy,” she said with a little catch in her voice. I came awake with a start. Kathy was Sheila’s best friend, still is, though they’re not as close as they used to be what with her going away to the university and all. Kathy and I kept in touch on and off; we always did get on well, and occasionally she had news of Sheila. Plus I figured that we had something in common, having been left behind by the same person.