by J. R. Rain
“Anyway,” he said. “It says here that this app is guaranteed to raise the dead.”
“Guaranteed how?” I asked. “The app was free.”
“Whatever,” said Tommy, now mostly ignoring me. “The instructions are pretty basic.”
“What are they?” I asked, still nursing my sore shoulder. Tommy had a punch like a Mack truck. Mostly, I regretted like hell for asking Tommy what the instructions were. Stupid curiosity.
“Find a graveyard, sit comfortably, and then press play.”
I didn’t like how this was adding up, and was just about to grab the phone back, when Tommy, anticipating my move, held it away from me...and at the same time, pressed play.
Almost immediately, a voice speaking in another language issued out.
“What’s he saying?” asked Tommy.
“How the hell would I know?”
“Sounds like gibberish.”
“No,” I said, “it sounds like an incantation.”
“What the hell is an incantation?”
“It’s a spell, dumbass.”
“Like a witch’s spell?”
“Yeah,” I said, “except I can’t understand what he’s saying.”
“Sounds trippy,” said Tommy.
“Maybe we should turn it off.”
“Why? He’s just getting started.”
Truth was, I was getting very, very creeped out. A shiver had started working through me, a shiver that I was having a hard time controlling. In fact, if I wasn’t careful, my teeth were going to start chattering soon. And it wasn’t even cold out.
“I’m being serious, Tommy.”
“Uh oh. Billy’s getting serious. I’d better turn it off or he might throw a hissy fit.”
“Or, more likely, he’s going to kick your ass.”
“I’d like to see you try it.”
Tommy and I were always challenging each other. Of course, never once had we actually come to blows, but we’d been close. “Just turn it off.”
“Why don’t you make me?”
It was at that moment I saw red.
Maybe it was the cemetery setting, or the fact that I was already on edge, or the creepy monotone that was even now emanating from my phone, but I’d suddenly had enough of Billy and his jabs and, well, his stupid face.
With a growl and a few choice curse words, I lunged at him...surprising the hell out of him—and me—in the process.
I grabbed him around the neck as he swung wildly at me, and soon we were rolling around on the grass and dirt under the Ghost Tree, just two clowns with too much energy and time and testosterone.
One of his elbows got me on the lip and I instantly tasted blood, which I spat out. Turns out that was a big mistake. Turns out a little bit of blood was all that was left to summon the zombies, which I unwittingly provided. The last ingredient, if you will.
And as we continued rolling around, now further away from the big tree and closer to the actual burial plots, as both of us spent some time with our heads pressed against the thick grass, Tommy quit muttering curses at me and said, “Do you hear that?”
“I hear your stupid face talking,” I said. No, not the cleverest comeback I’d ever muttered. Then again, I had Tommy’s hand presently clawing at my face.
“I’m serious, man. I hear something.”
“I don’t hear any—”
I stopped fighting Tommy. I stopped and sat up and cocked my head, listening hard. Yes, I heard it, too.
Digging.
* * *
Now we both had our ears pressed to the ground.
“What is it?” asked Tommy, and for the first time tonight the cockiness was gone from his voice.
“Shh,” I admonished.
I pressed my ear harder. Jesus, it sounded like something was coming up through the ground directly beneath us, scratching desperately. I lifted my head, confused.
“Moles?” asked Tommy.
“I don’t know,” I said.
It was at that moment that I realized that the creepy voice was still intoning from my phone. A phone that Tommy was still holding. “Give me,” I said and grabbed it from him. I promptly shut the app off, and the voice stopped.
A very strange silence fell over the cemetery, a silence that was punctuated with the sounds of digging.
“Billy,” said Tommy, and I noticed he had scooted closer to me. “Billy, it sounds like it’s coming from, you know, all over.”
I knew what he meant. The sounds of scratching and digging most certainly weren’t coming from solely below us. It was coming from everywhere. Throughout the entire cemetery.
“Jesus, Billy, you don’t think those are dead people coming up, do you?”
He was the first to voice it, and, yes, I was thinking the same thing. Except I couldn’t bring myself to say it, couldn’t form the words, in fact. The words were too unreal, too foreign, too horrific. Except...except I was certain we were hearing digging from beneath us, a sound that was now getting louder and...
“They’re getting closer,” said Tommy.
“What’s getting closer?” I said, and was shocked that Tommy had almost thrown himself on me. So much for Mr. Tough Guy.
“The undead, man! Just like the app said. It raised the dead.”
“You mean...”
“Yes, Billy. I’m talking about zombies, and they’re getting fucking closer. Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
I couldn’t have agreed more. I didn’t know what the hell was happening, but I was certain—no, I was positive—that I was dreaming. There was no way in hell this was really happening.
Okay, Billy, you can wake up any time now. Go on. Time to eat breakfast. Mmm, waffles!
Hell, I was even looking forward to school. School suddenly seemed like the least of my problems.
Tommy was already on his feet and pulling me up. “Geez, man. Get moving!”
Dream or not, I was still here, in the cemetery, and something was coming up from the ground. And they were coming up quickly.
I scrambled to my feet with Tommy’s help, and we had just stumbled forward when we both saw it.
“Oh, hell no!” screamed Tommy.
There, glowing in the faint moonlight and starlight, not far from the Haunted Tree, was a skeletal hand, protruding up from the grass. Chunks of soil fell from it as it waved and clawed at the night air.
* * *
We ran.
We ran like there was no tomorrow, we ran like the wind, like our lives depended on it, like our hair was on fire. Mostly, we ran and screamed and pissed ourselves as if the dead were rising around us, which they actually were.
Dozens of them.
The clawing and scratching sounds we’d heard had now turned into a deep rumbling as dozens and dozens of the undead clawed their way to the surface. Unfortunately, we were on the surface, too.
Now, as we scrambled to the SUV, many such bony hands were protruding from the surface. All waving. All digging at the earth around them.
The closer we got to the SUV, the more the hands turned into arms...and some were now even shoulders, as the dead were getting ever so close to pulling themselves free. Tommy was always the better athlete and a faster runner, and soon he was pulling away from me, deftly sidestepping the waving, bony, sometimes leathery hands.
Myself, I wasn’t as fleet of foot, or as quick on my feet. While Tommy wove his way through the field of the dead, like Barry Sanders through the Bears’ defense, I was mostly plowing through them, stepping on some, and breaking through others. Some managed to actually grab hold of the hem of my Levis. I kicked these off me, screaming like someone who had lost his mind, which I might have very well done.
At one point I stumbled and fell. As I reached down to break my fall, I actually clasped hands with a bony hand. It yanked me forward...and nearly caused me to totally lose my balance. Most amazing was its bone-crushing strength, no pun intended. How a pile of old tendons and bones with no muscle mass could be so damn strong
was beyond me.
Except, I knew how it could be so strong.
The dead were fueled by supernatural means, whatever that meant. And there were no rules when it came to the supernatural, or to raising the dead. At least, not many.
I pulled my hand back, my high-pitched sounding foreign even to my ears, and promptly emptied my bladder. As warmth permeated my jeans, I finally yanked my hand free. I was moving again, dodging more of the hands and arms and shoulders...and now heads...
Yes, heads.
A skull pushed its round, bony mass through the dirt and lifted its face into the night sky, catching the moonlight, as dirt fell free from it. I saw deep into its eye sockets as it turned and looked at me...and opened its mouth...
Oh, sweet Jesus!
I leaped over it as it reached for me with a mostly bony hand. Some tattered skin still hung from it. Luckily, I just missed it...and continued on.
Tommy was already waiting at the truck, which was a safe haven. No hands or heads within twenty or so feet. But the hands and heads were now becoming torsos as the fucking things were pulling themselves out of the ground.
“You pissed yourself!” said Tommy, pointing.
“Really?” I said. “We fucking raise the dead, and that’s all you can say? And, by the way, you pissed yourself, too.”
Tommy looked down. “Well, I’ll be.”
Sounds of digging filled the air. Mixed with the sounds was something else. Gnashing. I turned in time to see some of the skeletons—and even those that weren’t quite skeletons—lurching to their feet. The gnashing was from their opening and closing jaws.
“Oh, fuck, man!” I said. I felt my bowels loosening next. I definitely didn’t want to shit my pants, almost as much as I didn’t want get eaten by a zombie. And yeah, that’s exactly what they fucking were. Zombies. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
“Far away from here, man.” Tommy ran around to his side of the truck and yanked the door open. I did the same and soon we were sitting together on the bench seat. Through the side windows and windshield we could see that more and more of the undead had found their feet. And more and more had turned toward us. Many were skeleton, but dozens were recent dead, too. Old people, mostly, with their wrinkled pale skin draped over bones.
Tommy patted his jeans, then his jacket pockets, then repeated the process. “Oh, fuck.”
“No,” I said. “Oh no. Don’t say it.”
“I left the keys by the tree.”
“Why the fuck would you leave them there?”
“My jeans are too tight, you know?” He motioned down to his lap...a lap that was currently wet with fresh urine. “And there’s only room for one bulge, if you know what I mean.”
Tommy had an epic key ring, filled with all sorts of doodads and souvenirs and bottle cap openers, and you name it. The gnashing was growing louder and now some of the undead had made their way into the parking lot.
“Never mind that, you idiot,” I shouted. “Go get them.”
“I...I can’t, man.”
“What do you mean, you can’t? They’re your keys. You left them!”
“You’re going to have to get them.” And as he spoke, I saw it...he was literally pissing himself again. Although I didn’t blame him, I saw the bigger problem. Tommy was scared shitless. Well not shitless yet, but give that a few minutes. Or seconds.
No, if we were going to get out of here, it was going to have to be me who got the keys.
“Fuck it,” I said, and opened the door.
* * *
And I wasn’t even the fast one. Or the quick one. Both were assets that I could have used right about now.
Back in the cool night air—air that was now filled with a musky, mushromy, vomitous stench of the putrefying dead. I spied the the Ghost Tree and started running.
* * *
The zombies had found their feet.
And now, with me out and about, some of the zombies oriented on me, although many still lurched toward the truck. Tommy was going to have a shit fit.
Luckily, the creepy things weren’t very fast...there were so goddamned many of them. Lord, how many dead were buried here? Hundreds? I didn’t know, but as I ran and slid and juked my way through the cemetery, it felt like there were thousands of them. Behind me I heard Tommy screaming. The windows were up, but it wouldn’t be long before one of the undead put a bony elbow through one of them.
Before me was a young girl...presently bloated and leaking dark fluid everywhere. She reached her hands out toward me and the look in her eyes was—well, the look in one of her eyes, as the other was still sewn shut—something I would never forget. There was a tiny light just behind her eyes. A glow, in fact. Now, as I scanned all of the dead facing looking at me, coming toward me, they all had the same glow.
It was, I suspected, the light of life...or whatever was animating these corpses, whatever was giving them drive and purpose and strength.
It had to be evil...and it wanted me. And Tommy, and maybe the whole town, and maybe the whole damn world.
Jesus.
Now, I was back in the cemetery proper, off the temporary safe haven of the parking lot—temporary because some of the undead had lurched their way onto the loose gravel. About half of these zombies were skeleton, while the other half had some form of skin hanging from them. All of them had the devil light in their eyes. And the three closest to me focused that devil light onto me. Lucky me. All three were dressed in their Sunday best. Two males, one female. Only one of them had any skin to speak of, the female. She was dressed in a flowing dress with a floral design. The dress was covered in dirt. The skin around her ankles had fallen down like old socks.
“Oh, holy hell,” I muttered and skirted the three of them, only to find myself face-to-face with a half dozen more. Most wore suits and ties, although their clothing hung loosely, sharp with bony knees and elbows.
I knew these fuckers were strong, and so I had to avoid their grasp at all costs. Of course, knowing that there was a very good chance I might be eaten alive in the next few minutes, spurred me forward, and sharpened my reflexes.
I dodged and wove and leaped and generally ran faster than I ever had in my entire life.
I thought I had skirted past a mostly intact man, although his face was sunken and his eyes had been eaten away—although the devil light was still there—when he managed to reach out and grab my arm. How something dead for God knew how long had the reflexes to grab me as I was rushing past, was beyond me.
But grab me he did.
And firmly, too.
I turned again and looked the bastard straight in his deteriorating face...and saw my history teacher, Mr. Dingly, who had died of a heart attack months earlier. I knew it was him. In fact, he was even wearing the same bow tie.
“Mr. Dingly,” I said, tugging on my arm.
But my now-dead teacher held on even tighter. Now that I was stopped, the undead converged upon me.
“Mr. Dingly...let go. Please!”
My zombie history teacher cocked his head to one side in a manner that suggested it had heard me, but a second later, the light in his dead eyes flared brightly and it opened its mouth wide and lunged at me.
“Mr. Dingly!”
I fell back, and his snapping jaws just missed my face. As I fell, I raised my foot and launched him up and over me. He went sprawling somewhere behind me. As I tried to scramble to my feet, a clawing hand reaching up through the ground—someone got to the party fashionably late—grabbed my shoulder, but I rolled to my right and broke loose, and broke off a few fingers, too.
I soon found my feet—and saw a clear path to the Haunted Tree.
I took it, running hard.
* * *
I was at the tree.
Except I couldn’t see clear enough to look for the keys. Yes, there was a full moon out, and yes it enabled me to see the zombies presently closing in on me, but unfortunately a fat lot of good the full moon did under this massive oak. My phone ha
d a flashlight app...
Oh, holy shit!
Tommy had it. We’d swapped earlier.
But I had his iPhone and I swiped it on. Immediately the area under the tree was lit in a soft, bluish glow. I ignored the fact—or tried to—that just outside of the bluish glow was an approaching nightmare. Many approaching nightmares, with their own eyes aglow.
“Help me, Lord,” I whispered, sweeping the phone around.
There! Shining in the dim light was his wad of keys, partially hidden under some leaves, no doubt kicked up from our desperate flight to the truck. A truck that suddenly seemed very far away.
I grabbed the wad and faced what I knew was coming.
And there were a lot of them. More than I had anticipated. Worse, I didn’t see an opening through them.
Tommy’s cell phone rang.
I nearly shit my pants, but managed to hang on to it. I fumbled with it, swiping it on.
“Jesus, man. What’s taking you so long? The fuckers are everywhere. They’re banging on the glass.”
“I’m surrounded, too.”
“Well, figure a way through, dammit.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said, and stared at the closest zombie, who was now not more than twenty feet away and closing in fast. Well, kind of fast. There were others behind him. Dozens and dozens of others, and they formed a formidable wall of the undead. Very soon I was about to experience what it would be like to have something take a healthy bite out of me.
“Oh, fuck fuck fuck!” Yeah, that was me.
I ran to the other side. Of the tree. More undead. A wave of them, in fact, all lurching toward me, all gnashing their teeth, all with that bizarre light in their eye. I had a feeling that the last thing I would see on this earth were those fucking lights staring down at me, before I was consumed alive.
There had to be a way.
“Hurry, Billy!” screeched Tommy. “One of them just picked up a rock. Who knew zombies could problem solve!”
Why I still had Billy pressed to my ear, I didn’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to be left alone before I died. Maybe I wanted company. Maybe I had forgotten I was holding the phone because a wave of the undead was rolling toward me.