What the fuck we gonna do? Indian Sarah’s voice is tense.
Call the RCMP! cries very white and very middle-’burbs Canadian Tyler.
You can’t call the RCMP if you live on a grow-op. You just can’t, I say.
Well then what are we gonna do? Rhonda insists.
Repent.
Kezzie’s soft whisper coincides with the pause in “Piggies” right before the ending. And catches us all by surprise. Like when she draws her gun and points it at us.
∆ ∆ ∆
The public safety bulletins explain the weird hissing noise zombies make as air, produced by muscle reflex, colliding with gridlocked lungs in a body no longer recycling oxygen to survive. Makes sense, but it doesn’t explain the weird feeling it prompts in the listener. It feels like that uncomfortable warm tingle you experience immediately after cutting yourself. That. Magnified a hundred times. And stretched out. The zombie hiss intensifies when the creature scents blood, and the sound summons others to swarm.
Buzz begins hissing softly as we glare back at Kezzie, holding us God-hostage there in the room with her Browning and Bible verses. We know what she is about. It’s obvious. Accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour lickety-split or be blown to bits. Or fed to the zombie. Simple as that.
This is bullshit, spits Rhonda.
This is a gift. Kezzie smiles dreamily. The Lord has given you time to repent and make yourselves right with Him before the oceans turn to blood and the moon to sackcloth and death takes you.
I got people. Indian Sarah stares very intently at Kezzie as she speaks, the way you might stare at someone very fragile. Not my band, but friends.
Rhonda and I glance at each other. The First Nations have fared better than most. Many bands retreated onto their reserves and barricaded the roads when the infestation started.
We can steal some canoes from the marina. It’s just a short trip across the saltchuck to Quadra Island. They’ll—
Those heathens? Kezzie’s whisper is casually dismissive. (As she looks up, I imagine the hiss from Buzz as a light misting rain into which she gazes.) Children of Cain. They brought this on us with their pagan ways. A lightning rod for God’s wrath! No thank you. I’d sooner push my face into a meat grinder.
Rasta Bob’s eyes flick from Indian Sarah to Kezzie and back. What should we do? he asks. What can we—?
The hiss grows louder. Tyler is first to pivot to the window. Jeeezus! he exclaims, and I can see before even stepping beside him the horrific thing that has wandered out of the blasted tree line to stand beside Buzz – or rather, two things. And because one would be horrific enough, the presence of a second creature is sufficient to make me dizzy. I grasp the wall to stay upright. And force myself to look at the ridge.
One is Davis. He farmed the spread next door until dying over a month ago. Bone-splintered, the tweed of his good suit worm-eaten to tatters, he grins down at Buzz. A half-moon of flesh has rotted from his right cheek. The gaping black of his eye sockets roll like weird, sinister marbles beneath the brim of a new straw hat. And below him?
A maggot-infested barrel of ribs. Bone legs teetering on strips of flesh. A skeletal head of the type better suited to desert floors or the walls of western bunkhouses. A mammal abomination, every bit as much arisen from the grave as its rider…
And behold, Kezzie whispers, a pale horse. And he that rode upon it was named Death. And Hell followed him.
Deacon chooses that moment to act – just puts his head down and charges Kezzie in a classic football tackle. Almost gets there too. But Kezzie – gifted with the spooky awareness of the ultra-paranoid – spins, aims and fires. Deacon crumples with a grunt, hands spidering to stem the trickle from the powdery black hole in his thigh.
Blood. The hiss rises to a shriek as the creatures outside catch the scent. Buzz, Davis and the zombie horse start down the hill towards the farmhouse. Kezzie, looming over Deacon, grins and makes the sign of the cross with the gun barrel.
∆ ∆ ∆
Let us pray.
Under the circumstances, the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. But Kezzie’s tone is so firm, so serious that – even with zombies approaching and Deacon bleeding to death on the living room floor – I’m almost tempted to join Rasta Bob, Tyler and Indian Sarah as they bow their heads.
Almighty God, you have shown your great love for us in so many ways – by famine, war, pestilence, this zombie infestation…
You’re fucking crazy. The tightness in Rhonda’s voice could pass for self-control but I recognize it as panic. You’re like those fuckers who pray over their sick kids rather than let them have a blood transfusion.
…and now merciful God you have granted us the privilege of watching the world die…
Deacon groans from his place on the floor. The pool of blood is spreading so fast that even an ambulance hauling ass full speed from Comox wouldn’t get here in time to save him.
You have warned us time and again merciful God that only an ocean of blood can redeem the infinite sins of this generation of vipers. Kezzie marches to the military footlocker beside the old stone fireplace and twiddles the dial of the padlock. And in your benevolence, O Lord, you have promised that the faithful will be protected as beneath eagles’ wings!
She drags the locker top open to expose the rack of weapons inside.
Behold the claws that lurk within the wings of angels! Kezzie drags out an assault rifle and hands it to Rasta Bob. A riot gun that she passes to Indian Sarah. An AK. It goes to Tyler. Then she slams shut the locker and re-locks it.
What about us? I ask.
You non-believers are on your own. Kezzie smiles.
I once lived in an apartment next door to a man who wept continuously. At first I thought the noise was some sort of machine – a broken air conditioner, perhaps. Until someone explained that the man had shared the place with his wife for forty years until she died. This knowledge placed the sound in context and gave it emotional depth. The same way that knowing the hiss approaching the house is caused by air hitting dormant lungs lends its scuba-tank sound a sinister quality. By some weird consensus we all keep our gazes fixed indoors, intent on the tight circle of mutual anger in the living room.
You’re just going to let us die?
It is said that in the end of days those who do not profess the Son of Man shall be told to depart from him. Kezzie cocks her assault rifle. Dried sheaves cast unto the fire!
A clawed hand thumps the window – skeletal fingers gloved in decaying flesh. Kezzie raises her assault rifle. We duck. A hail of lead blows the window outward in a spray of exploding glass. A breathy shriek rises. Kezzie fires again, advancing on the jagged sill, face twisted in rage.
And in those days – !(she slams a fresh clip into the gun) – men shall seek death and not find it! Desire death and – (she cocks the action) – DEATH SHALL FLEE FROM THEM!
Gunfire. I grasp Rhonda’s wrist and drag her through the kitchen doorway. The keys to the farm truck are on a hook by the stove. I grab the keys and haul open the back door. Panicked voices are erupting between bursts of gunfire. The truck crowds the narrow carport. Rhonda pulls away from me.
We’re not LEAVING them—?
Fuck ’em. C’mon!
I push Rhonda out first. A cowardly move but one that, in the logic of the moment (wide truck, narrow carport, zombies busy) makes perfect sense. I hear the frenzied metallic clatter, then Rhonda screaming. I reach to pull her back and she is snatched around the edge of the doorway. I hear a noise like a bear howl – loud but compressed, as if the sound is being forced through the tin horn of an old gramophone. I am about to run after Rhonda when a mist of scarlet sprays the windows and driver’s side door of the truck, driving me back through the doorway.
Coward! Frozen by a little blood? I crane around the edge and am rewarded by the sight of the zombie horse dragging Rhonda over the hood of the truck, teeth clenched in the nape of her neck. Its bony hooves make clattering sounds on the chassis as the beast balances on its b
ack legs. The crimson eyes flash and the ropy hair of its mane – still inexplicably attached to a narrow strip of rotting skin on its upper spine – whips as it drags a still-struggling Rhonda out into the open beyond the carport. And what do I do? Grasp an ankle? Grab a carving knife from the cutting board and leap forth to put it point-first into the Hell-coloured eye of the zombie nag?
No. I retreat into the kitchen and flatten my back against the wall beside the doorway and wait until the racket subsides. Then I peer into the carport to see the death nag grazing calmly on Rhonda’s eviscerated intestines. And shut the door softly before slipping back into the living room.
That image of the horse, head lowered, swaying slightly as he sucks up Rhonda’s innards like spaghetti is frozen in my mind like a DVD player after you’ve hit pause. Dazed, I look up to discover I’m back in the living room. The couches have been upended into impromptu barricades. A spray of glass carpets the floor. Deacon, having bled out, lies blank-eyed and still.
Get down!
I glare towards the fierce whisper and glimpse sharp blond bangs, light reflected in little round lenses. In that moment I hate Kezzie more than anything – even the zombies. Two of us are dead because of her. How many more? I duck behind a bookcase.
The hissing outside roars like a gale-force wind. The ranks of undead summoned by Buzz and Davis shift and mutter in a cluster of indistinct figures beyond the fence. Closer in, hands – one bone, the other a shrivel of grey flesh – grasp at the windowsill. One lone creature, drawn by the prospect of live flesh, is willing to brave oblivion in order to feed. And the stench! Although cunning enough to remain out of the line of fire, the zombies can’t hide their smell (moist earth, rotting viscera, decaying shrouds). It clots the room in a vile perfume.
Where’s Rhonda? Kezzie demands.
Dead, I say quietly. Tyler opens up with a blast of submachine-gun fire and gore floods the sill and floor as the hands abruptly vanish from the window. All is silence, followed by the clank of Tyler’s empty magazine hitting the floor.
For behold in those days, the winnowing fire—
Kezzie, I interrupt, what’s the plan? (After a brief hesitation, the undead at the fence are shuffling forward with a chorus of renewed hissing. In the distance, bug-like, others break from the tree line to converge on the slope leading down to the farm.)
Why – (Kezzie blinks) – to wait here ’til Jesus comes to get us, of course!
Yeah! You got a problem wi’ dot, mon?
Ah – no. No, not exactly. I was just hoping for something a little more practical…
Practical? You can think of something more practical – (Kezzie jabs her weapon skyward) – than awaiting the Prince of Peace?
One creature has gotten close enough to grasp the window ledge and lever a knee onto the sill. Pin-striped arms out on either side to steady itself, its dress pants threadbare around the meaty wreck of its knee, it hisses, throat working in a snarl of tendons.
Indian Sarah curses in Cree, pumps her Mossberg.
I and I!
Fucking death-critter…
What time (I pretend to check my watch) is the Jesus bus due, Kezzie? Cuz I think he better get a move on…
Indian Sarah’s shotgun roars and the critter’s head evaporates in a spray of bloody bone. Its body teeters on the sill for a moment or two before crumpling backwards. The others crowding in behind it release a collective hiss of displeasure before climbing over the corpse to take its place.
There’s too goddamn many of them! Tyler grasps his gun and does a jig like an overgrown kid desperate to pee. Too goddamn many!
DON’T TAKE THE LORD’S NAME IN VAIN YOU GODLESS FUCK! Kezzie leaps to her feet and sprays a burst of machine-gun fire at the window. The nearest critters are driven back but it takes only a few seconds for a trio of them to reach the sill and begin fighting for dibs to climb inside.
What we gonna do, mon?
Quiet…QUIET! I need to think. Kezzie sticks a joint in her mouth and sparks up. The collective eyes of her followers follow its perfumed smoke spiraling upward as hungrily as the critters watch us. Kezzie takes a long contemplative toke and blinks at the approaching hordes.
Alas Babylon, she whispers.
A new zombie makes its bid. Despite its advanced stage of decay I can tell, from the apron and high shoes, that it is female – the undead corpse of an elderly woman. (Do zombies recognize distinctions of age?) It gets partway through the window before Rasta Bob steps up and blasts it back the way it came. In the silence following the weapon’s roar a new sound intrudes – that of the front door being hammered.
Second floor! Kezzie grasps Tyler’s elbow. Now!
Kezzie…maybe we should call the RCMP. I stumble on the word “call” and am forced to grab the banister as I stagger upstairs beside her. Indian Sarah runs ahead of us. Tyler and Rasta Bob cover our retreat at the bottom.
Call the fucking cops? Are you nuts?
I know we’ll get busted but we’ve got bigger prob—
Indian Sarah screams. She stumbles back from the top of the stairs, something clamped to her left foot. At first I think it’s an animal until I recognize the tiny hands, the little round head and the rotted lace of an infant’s funeral dress. Sarah drops her gun and starts trying to pry the thing from her leg.
Fuckin’ critter! Kezzie brushes past me, puts the muzzle of her rifle against the creature’s skull and fires. Baby bits fly in a thousand blood-strewn directions. They musta’ pitched the damn thing up through a second-floor window! Tyler! Check all the rooms!
Sarah sobs and drops to her butt. Kezzie bends over her, examining the raw wound at her ankle.
Ya got bit, Sarah.
Sarah presses her eyes shut against tears and nods as if moving her head is painful.
You know what’s going to happen? Don’t you?
Indian Sarah says nothing. But we’ve all seen the public service bulletins. Bites from undead cause a swiftly spreading infection that resembles gangrene. Within an hour paralysis spreads to the viscera and lungs and the body of the victim ceases to pump blood and process oxygen. It enters a death-like paralysis where it lays for a short time before reanimating as a zombie.
I’m finished, Sarah whispers.
Kezzie draws her Browning.
I am the Resurrection and the Life, she whispers, cocking the breech and laying the muzzle to Sarah’s temple. He that believeth in me shall not perish but have eternal life.
I close my eyes and Kezzie delivers Sarah to her promised eternity.
∆ ∆ ∆
I’m gonna kill you: a common enough threat. I’ve thought it a million times. But in a world where death has grown legs and walks around like a mob of decaying meat puppets, that threat loses its force in a funny kind of way.
I want to kill Kezzie. But what good will that do? Really? She’ll just come back from the dead. They all do. Her pre-emptive cancellation of Indian Sarah was an empty gesture because it’s not Jesus who is the Resurrection and the Life anymore. Now there is resurrection but no life. And it’s more than that. I don’t want to just kill Kezzie.
I want her to suffer.
∆ ∆ ∆
Tyler has taken up a position beside the smashed window where the zombies pitched in their baby bomb. I stand near by, my back against the wall until giving up to slide down and sit on my haunches.
We should have called the RCMP, Tyler. You were right.
Think they’d still come?
They have to. They got no choice.
I dig in my pocket as Kezzie’s exhortations to Rasta Bob float up the stairs:
Be strong, as unto the warrior Joshua, the warrior Ezekiel! Let your sword flash swift in your hand, brother!
I draw out my cell. Dial 911. Wait. Then:
Nine-one-one. What sort of emergency? Police, fire, ambulance or undead?
Undead.
Please hold.
There is a brief pause before a male voice says firmly:
Zombie Response Unit. What’s your location?
I tell him.
How many undead are present?
Dunno. Maybe…two dozen?
That many? (I hear typing.) Why did you wait to call?
This is a grow-op.
Are there weapons on-site?
Yeah. Pointed at the zombies.
Okay. (More typing.) We’ll be sending an airborne unit. Nearest detachment is Campbell River. How long can you hold out?
I extend my cell so the constable can hear Rasta Bob’s screams float up the stairs. When I put the phone back to my ear, he says:
Hold on. We’re coming.
He clicks off.
Kezzie backs up the stairs, emptying her machine gun as she goes. She nods to Tyler who immediately jumps up and takes her place. Kezzie snakes up beside me, eyes jumping from my hand to my pocket as she reloads.
Who did you phone?
Dial-an-Atheist.
Mock as you wish, unbeliever. But it is the faithful who stand strong in this final hour!
You’re really full of shit, Kezzie, you know that?
Tyler is singing between bursts of gunfire:
Glory, glory allelujah…glory, glory…
That’s it, brother! Kezzie shrieks. Give them the full measure of God’s wrath and splendour!
Tyler looses one final burst of gunfire before being engulfed. He manages a strangled scream before the hordes are fighting one another for a chunk of his body. His death has bought us, at most, a minute or two. Kezzie turns to me.
Will you accept Jesus as your personal lord and saviour?
What if I do?
Then I’ll shoot you in the head.
Um, no thanks. As I glance out the window for signs of approaching choppers Kezzie asks:
What are you looking for?
Angels.
∆ ∆ ∆
They say suffering is good for the soul.
Do they suffer, these soulless creatures? Is feasting on us an expression of their anguish? Are they tormented by memories of their time among the living? I think about the human fear of extinction that elevated death into a religion of resurrection. Do the zombies have a fear of life that works the same way, only in reverse? That’s when an idea occurs to me.
Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction Page 11