Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Martin pushed on through old deadfalls to the border of Rabbit Lake. He stopped and listened for sounds that might direct him. He heard a sudden series of whistles from the direction of the bog. The whistling rose in volume and then stopped abruptly.

  Loons? Could it be loons so late in the season?

  He moved down a slope towards the far end of the lake. The water here was dark and looked deep. Martin experienced a brief jolt of unexplainable fear. The water’s surface was still and placid. No loons swam there to disturb the black-mirror surface.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Nikolas heard the gabbling of geese at the far end of Rabbit Lake. He used his canoe paddle to test the depth of the water and found it less than half a metre deep. He pumped the paddle up and down; solid rock was beneath the canoe. He gave his dog a signal to stay.

  Nikolas pulled his favourite hat down tight on his head and tied the thongs beneath his chin in a double knot. He did not want to lose the hat when he pushed through brush.

  The cackling and the gabbling of the geese lessened. Nikolas crouched low, held aside dangling willow branches and peered through the peephole in the leaves. Nikolas’s jaw muscles tightened at what he saw.

  A sunken ring of earth, edged with a circle of rock ledges and moss-covered gravel, held a round, dark expanse of water several metres in diameter. A circle of water stared back at him like a giant cycloptic black eye. On the surface, six geese circled in a small bunched flock of frightened birds.

  What the hell happened to the rest of the flock? They couldn’t have flown away! I would have seen them. He raised his shotgun to fire as he pushed through the willows.

  When the remaining birds flapped across the water in rising flight, he fired two shots. Both shots hit the targets and two geese fell into the dark water of the sinkhole.

  Nikolas whistled to the waiting dog. River came bounding through the willows and leapt into the water to retrieve the geese. Nikolas watched River swimming at his top speed towards one of the birds.

  Now what in the hell happened to the other one? The damned bird is gone. Geese don’t sink when you hit them, not right away anyhow. Before Nikolas could concoct an answer, he saw River falter in the middle of the sinkhole. The dog let the bird fall from his mouth and gave a terrified yelp before he was pulled under the surface.

  “River!” Nikolas shouted. “River! Hold on boy!”

  The man dropped his gun and slid down the mossy incline across the wet gravel and fell into the water. He swam only three strokes towards where the dog had gone down when something clutched at his ankles. The swimming man was held fast in the water. More and more clutching hands tugged at his legs and lower body.

  “Oh God!” he cried out just before he was yanked under the black surface.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  When Martin heard yelping and sounds of splashing, he turned to his right towards the sounds. He ran up a slight incline and skidded to a stop. Below him yawned the “death hole.” He scanned the area in all directions.

  The first thing he saw was Nikolas’s hat floating two metres from the pool’s edge. Then he saw the dog cowering in a stand of willows. The animal quivered with fright and gave out a keening wail.

  Martin hurried around the rim of the sinkhole to the dog.

  “Hey there, boy. Where’s your boss?”

  The dog raised itself on its bleeding forepaws and bared its teeth in a menacing snarl.

  “River. What’s got into you? What chewed you up like this?”

  The Labrador dropped on his belly and did a wiggling crawl backwards through the willows. Martin pushed through the brush and saw the dog, tail between his legs, howling and running as fast as his wounded legs could carry him down the trail to the camp.

  He moved back to the sinkhole. Nikolas’s hat had floated to the very edge. Martin knelt down to retrieve it. It felt heavy in his hand, as if snagged on something. He set down his rifle and used both hands to pull the leather hat from the water.

  The hat gave way suddenly, and Martin fell on his backside onto the slick moss and gravel. Nikolas’s severed head, the hat still firmly tied to it, fell into his lap. Martin scrabbled sideways away from the horrible object.

  He raised his head and yelled as loud as he could. “Peter! Goddammit, Peter, get over here! Quick!”

  Martin moved backwards through the willows just as the dog had done and ran as fast as he could down the same trail.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Fifteen minutes later, Freddie and Alex knelt looking at moose tracks leading to the edge of the circle of black water.

  “Uncle Alex. This is what I wanted to show you.”

  The old man looked down at the mud. Freddie pointed. Alex saw three sets of tracks; one set made by a big bull.

  “That’s a big moose. See how deep he sinks into the mud?” Alex said. “That other set of tracks is a cow moose. Her hooves ain’t as pointy as the bull’s.” He moved a few feet to his left. “Look here, Freddie, the cow had a yearling with her, too.”

  Freddie studied the bull’s tracks. His mouth felt dry and he moistened his lips with his tongue. “Somethin’ ain’t right here. Come and look at this.”

  Alex looked where Freddie touched the slurred tracks with a willow stick.

  “These tracks are real deep and messed up. See how they are bunched up close together with the dew-claws showin’ in the prints?”

  “I see that.” Alex said.

  “What does that tell you?”

  “It tells me it was a damn big bull moose, and that he was pullin’ backwards trying to get away.”

  “Trying to get away from what?”

  “From whatever was tryin’ to pull him into the sinkhole.”

  “Whatever was pulling him in had to be monstrous big,” Freddie said.

  “Maybe it was several things all pullin’ together,” Alex replied.

  “What?” Freddie scratched his head at the thought.

  Alex studied the other tracks. “Something pulled the cow and the yearling calf into the water. Look around, you won’t see no tracks comin’ out!”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I think somethin’ got the three moose we been huntin’ before we did.”

  “Whaaat?” Freddie dragged out his question.

  “And now I think we best get away from this place fast as we can.”

  “What about the canoe?”

  “Forget about the canoe. What killed them moose will kill us, too. Let’s go. Rose knew what she was talkin’ about!”

  Old Alex started down the trail away from the bog at a wobbly trot.

  “What are you talkin’ about, Uncle Alex?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get back to camp. You’d better get a move on if you want to keep livin’.”

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Martin heard the padding of feet behind him. When he turned, he saw the willows were shaking. He cocked his rifle and held it at waist level, the barrel aimed at the spot where the willows moved.

  Alex and Freddie came through the willows and stopped in their tracks when they saw Martin in the trail with his rifle pointed at them.

  “Martin! Don’t shoot!” Freddie yelled.

  Alex saw the fear Martin struggled to hide. “So you know about the bog things?” Uncle Alex said.

  “Something killed Nikolas – in the death hole place.”

  “Let’s get as far away from here as we can. Come on. It’s a long way to run.”

  “What about Peter, we can’t go off and leave him up there.”

  “Pretty sure the things got Peter, too.”

  “Why would you think that? We gotta look for him!” Martin said.

  “Old Rose said two people would die on this hunt. It’s too late to save Peter. He’s gone. Them dead, flesh eatin’ things – those damned creatures took him or we’d have heard from him by now.”

  “Martin. Let’s go! I wanna get outta here.” Freddie ran down the trail.

>   ∆ ∆ ∆

  Rose sat staring up the trail. Uncle Alex hobbled to his sister. The others rushed to greet the hunters. The group encircled Auntie Rose. The old woman’s eyes were open but not seeing.

  “Rose,” Alex said. There was no response. “Rose?” The old woman’s eyes fluttered shut and she began to moan.

  Alex shook his sister. “Answer me!”

  Sophia explained. “Yesterday, a little time before noon, I heard her scream. Prunie heard it too, and we thought a bear had come into camp.”

  “About an hour ago, that black dog came runnin’ in here. His legs were all chewed up but he wouldn’t let anyone get near him,” Prunie said.

  Ephraim said. “Rose just been sittin’ there and mumblin’.”

  “She began to say words that frightened all of us,” Nettie said.

  “What in hell did she say?” Alex demanded.

  “She called Peter’s name. She said ‘Matchi wanisid manitou got him’ and the words ‘they pulled him under. Madagamiskwa nibi; ginibowiiawima manadas matchi ijiwebad – wissiniwin, matchi! The water is moving, he is dead, just a body now; the evil ones are eating!’”

  “I thought she’d gone crazy.” Sophia swallowed hard and continued. “Next she hollered, ‘Nikolas! Look out! Get away from there!’”

  “I don’t understand what’s goin’ on,” Nettie whimpered.

  “I do,” Alex said. “What she saw in the bones came true. Peter is dead and Nikolas too. We have to go back to Cranberry and give them the sad news.”

  Rose exhaled a great breath and shuddered and opened her eyes. “I have seen it all,” she said.

  “It is finished,” the old man said.

  “No. It is not finished yet.” Rose struggled to her feet. “Are you ready to listen to me now?”

  “Say what you want to say, Sister,” Sophia said.

  “Strike camp and pack up. We must be gone from here before dark comes.”

  No one doubted the old woman’s words. They hiked the trail to Martin’s hunting camp, where there was shelter. Uncle Alex and Ephraim coaxed the wounded black dog to follow.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Alex, Freddie, Sophia and Nettie packed the freight canoe for the return trip to their village. Prunie and Martin insisted Old Rose spend the winter at their cabin and Rose agreed.

  Two weeks later, a flotilla of seven canoes from Cranberry Portage made their way to Rabbit Lake. Forty men from Prunie’s village carried cans of fuel oil and gasoline two miles inland to the sinkhole.

  The men did as Old Rose had instructed them. They spread oil and gasoline on the black surface of the death hole, dropped in a sealed case of dynamite with a timed detonator and hurried down the trail. The resulting explosion was heard miles away. The fire burned for several days, but died out beneath the heavy rains of mid-September.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  When the first heavy frosts crusted the ground, four young men from Flin Flon appeared at Martin’s cabin. They told Prunie and Rose they intended to hike to Rabbit Lake and see what remained of the sinkhole.

  “There is nothing there. It is finished,” Rose said. “You should not go.”

  The boys were polite to the old woman but paid no attention to her words. They left that afternoon, promising to return the next day. Snow clouds massed in grey billows overhead began to drop light flurries.

  Rose made her way to a dark corner of the cabin.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  The boys found the dynamite and fire had obliterated the sinkhole and left metres of burned brush and scorched trees. Farther away from the ruined bog, the taller trees and leafless willows were untouched by the fire. The boys moved into the shelter of the trees and set up a lean-to of canvas and spruce branches before exploring the area.

  “Hey, Lucas, look over here. There’s a whole bunch of trails and tracks,” a slender boy said.

  The tracks were barely visible in the quickly melting snow and the slanting late afternoon sun muddled their shape.

  “Looks a little like black bear tracks,” the slender boy said. “Some prints have claw marks.”

  “There sure are a lot of them,” the boy called Lucas said.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Four days later, the boys had not returned. At Prunie’s urging, Martin and a neighbouring Cree man went to search for them. The first snows of the season had melted and the tracks and trails in the forests surrounding the old bog were no longer visible.

  What the men found was the collapsed and destroyed lean-to shelter. The white of the canvass was spattered with rust-red stains.

  The boys’ backpacks were ripped and scattered about. Two rifles, their stocks broken and the barrels stuffed with chunks of lichen-moss, lay near the campsite.

  Martin and his neighbour searched farther into the forest and found four neat piles of human bones. The skulls in one pile, the leg bones in another and the ribs placed in two mounded stacks.

  ON THE WINGS OF THIS PRAYER

  Richard Van Camp

  There are two stories my great grandfather told me. He said a long time ago before them – the Shark Throats, he called them, during the time of the warming world – there was a family in the way of the Tar Sands of Alberta. One day as the mother was gathering water, she stepped on teeth in the ice and muskeg. The jaws of an old man, a trapper, had thawed enough to bite her. She ran but she had not escaped. The woman got very sick: buttons of pus boiling through a body rash, the paling, her hands hooking to claws. She asked her husband to bring her glass after glass of water. She was thirsty and panting. He kept bringing her more, yet she never drank. She said something was coming through her. Something starving.

  Her voice then turned to a low growl as she began to rock for hours hissing, “Kill me now. Kill me now or I’ll kill you all before the sunrise. Do it do it if you love me. Kill me please. Your meat is magnificent and what roars in your veins is calling me. It’s calling me to drink you open and warm me so sweetly. Oh let me start with your scars and scabs. Let me. Let me taste you. You’d let me if you love me.”

  As her husband returned with help, she snapped at the air with her teeth and rasped before striking out wildly at all of them with her nails. After they subdued her, she begged again for all of them to kill her – before the sunrise, she insisted. They tied her fists and feet and ran for more help. When they returned, she was gone. She’d torn her binding and fled, but the strangest thing – the oddest thing – were the glasses of water he’d brought her. They’d all turned to ice. The husband never saw his wife again. They think she was the first and they say she is still here as their queen, that she gives birth to them through her mouth. Hatching them through her over and over. More and more. The Boiled Faces, we call them – zombies, our son said – and they remember faces.

  The Tar Sands of Alberta had tailing ponds and excavators, and I am sure those teeth belonged to that old trapper who lived out there before them. That old man, no matter how much money the oil companies offered him, would not budge, so they built and dug around him. He quit coming to town. There was a family who went to visit him, to bring him supplies, but he had changed. He had gone to white and had eaten his own lips and fingers. He had stepped in bear traps spiked to the floors on purpose. He could still speak and said the devil was in him now and that they had to cut him up. They had to burn his heart and scatter his ashes after they cut his head off.

  They did everything he asked them to, but the land was uncovered and turned for years by excavators, tractors and the curiosity of men. We think those machines must have moved the heavy rocks that covered his limbs. We think his fingers were able to crawl back to the torso and legs and head. We don’t think they burned his heart to ashes because they saw him again and he killed many, many people by biting at them. Burning, cutting, stabbing, shooting – all of it was wasted until his family heard of him walking again, so they told the people how to stop him. And that’s how we knew. That was how we knew to stop the Boiled Faces with the old ways.


  There is a ritual to things now: a lunge shot with the Decapitator through the skull. It’s a longer harpoon with a cross-axe on the hilt to ram and split the skull so zombies can’t grab you. It detaches so you can begin chopping. Only good one on one. Useless against many. Scramble the brains. This blinds and confuses the body. With a quick twist, the top blade comes off to free the axe. Then you hack the right arm (the reaching one) off before the left (the grabbing one) is to be cut. Then you take the right leg and the left before cutting the heart out. As the heart is burned with a sharpened flare, the Known People turn, look away and chant in Apache, “Deeyá, deeyá” for “Leave, leave.” We believe that what is left of the soul still rises and the spirit of the person inside will know to look away, as well, so it doesn’t need to see what has happened to its body. There is respect and fear in this. Then we bury the limbs far apart and weigh them down with stones. The Known People buried everything and everyone pointing north, even though we’ve all seen some of them come back marked and scored. (Are they unburying each other or themselves?)

  I can still speak Dogrib, me, but Apache is the common tongue for the Known People – or it was before the three of us were banished. For some reason, when the Hair Eaters come, it slows them when you sing or talk to them or chant in the first tongue. It’s like they’re listening. They weaken when you chant and that’s when you take them.

  All those old movies were true: body shots are wasted. Even with a shattered spine, they crawl. You’d think by now we’d be used to this, but they’ve a hot, sweet smell like dead fish that turns your stomach when they near. We then burn their limbs to ashes and scatter them. This is why the air tastes as it does. Their wild, rolling cry is used to paralyze, but it is not as strong as their mother’s. I heard it a few times in the sky and felt the strength leave my legs, but our drums drown them out. If you drum you can stop their mewling cry, turn it to ice in their throats. Also, our little group has discovered that The Boiled Faces are terrified of butterflies. They run screaming – as if set to flames – when they see a butterfly and that’s why we’ve camped here. Also, this is why we bottle them. All it takes is one butterfly and when one runs, they all do. It is hilarious. I laugh every time I see this. I wish I could have done the Butterfly Test to the Known People. I bet they would have all run away. I would have laughed so hard I would have thrown myself upon a Decapitator throat-first and not come back.