Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  The zombies took our dogs first, systematically and determinedly. Once the dogs were gone we were blind and deaf to them. I miss the dogs. I can’t even think of their names or I will weep. A wise hunter looked where they looked, always, and dogs always know more about storms than humans. And we used the old ways when we took one down with the dogs: we poked their halfway-human-and-mean-as-starving eyes out so they wouldn’t see you the next time. We sliced the tips of their ears off and hung them high so they wouldn’t hear you the next time, but they do. The new ones can.

  I hear of things in the ravaged south (no word from the west), but they, I hope, are rumours: death cults who eat or rape the Shark Throats for power, building sod huts and using their stomach linings for windows. In the east, thousands of people wait with their eyes closed in fields to be taken at once so they can come back to roam together. And they say the new generation of the Boiled Faces can sing themselves back together. Let us pray that this is not true.

  Here in the north, the Known People dressed their children in rabbit fur and seal skins. I’m not sure if I agree with the practice of sewing bones under the skin, but I saw that most youths’ faces were tattooed in the way of Kakiniit, ghost marks in memory of the One Sun. The Known People were greedy to learn our songs for the slowing.

  If you are reading this, please know that I tell you these things because I love you and wish for the world a better way. I have sent this back to tell you this, my ancestor: the Tar Sands are ecocide. They will bring Her back. In both stories, it is the Tar Sands to blame. This is how the Wheetago will return.

  As far as we can tell, the exact pinpoint is around the time when they transport one atom from one part of the world to the other. This has something to do with all of everything during your time. You must stop the Tar Sands. At all costs. If you read this, there is still a spirit with a starving heart there. Waiting to be resurrected.

  I’ve seen them chase down an older couple as they ran in deep, black snow. One Shark Throat – a newer, smaller one, one with a long beak and hooks for thumbs, raced ahead and circled back, floating over the land. He cut his way into their stomachs with his claws. The elders’ stomachs opened like mouths and out poured their guts. The larger Hair Eaters began to eat their unravelling intestines as they stumbled away. It was a game to them. The younger one gripped and squeezed their grey, steaming leashes as the half-alive elders tried to scream, but all that came out of their mouths was slop. The younger one began to slowly braid their guts together while pulling them closer, nearer, playing with its food. The others feasted. The younger Hair Eater looked up and saw me and pointed but the others kept gorging. It opened its beak and let out a cry as it started to run towards me. The cry tangled my wings. Their sound: it rings through what is hollow inside you. It finds your marrow and squeezes it to weaken you. And I think once their song touches you, they can hear what you are thinking.

  At night, when I sleepwalk, my soul leaves my body and I fly. I could always fly and that was why I had to save Thinksawhile. I spied on the leaders of the Known People. They were boiling and eating old moccasins and mukluks and they were talking of having him fall through the ice and eating him frozen. This explained our last few meals. Oh Creator, the things we’ve done to survive. That night, we took the boy and his computers and left, travelling downwind, upwind and through the fog. East. Always moving east. Watching the skies for ravens as ravens follow them for what’s left.

  Four Blankets Woman covered my eyes with ash. “So the new ones can’t see you.”

  “Heh eh,” I said. “They are getting smarter, crueller.”

  She rubbed my back with palms of yarrow. “We need new medicine.”

  “You know what was beautiful?” I said. “Those elders they tore apart, they never stopped holding hands or trying to…”

  “Shhh,” she said as she rested on my chest. “I know how to beat them now.”

  I turned. “How?”

  “The new ones have beaks.”

  “Heh eh.”

  “And it has a tongue to direct sound?” I nodded.

  “I will chant on this to see.”

  The next morning I woke to find she’d tattooed my eyelids with syllabics. She’d also sliced her left breast open and marked our Decapitators with strange symbols of whips and dots. “For your weapons and wings,” she said.

  I closed my eyes and looked at the fire to see this magic again. “Are these from heaven?”

  “In le,” she said, stirring broth. “Gah. The Rabbit. There are only two left and they have passed their medicine to me. They told me how to beat them and the Bitch.” Thinksawhile looked up from his computer.

  “This will cost us one of our lives. We have to choose carefully.”

  Four Blankets knew the way of the four winds. I had seen her part the clouds. She knew which root and moss to braid to make wick for cooking and heat. Her medicine was rabbit medicine. When she was thirteen, she saved the life of a doe. In turn, she was given Gah medicine. Four Blankets Woman had tattooed our tongues, so the Hair Eaters could not hear us speak. Not even in this dream.

  She ran soot down her nose. “Whoever we choose will suffer, but it is the only way.” The boy was young, weak. I had a blown right knee and couldn’t stop talking in my sleep.

  “We choose tonight,” she said and left to slice her arm to ribbons. This was the cost of a Dream Thrower.

  Thinksawhile went back to his computer. “I have an idea,” he said. “A way to stop this. A way to undo all that’s been done.”

  I began to braid my hair. “Tell me,” I said. And he did.

  Before we fled, the sick cooked for us. The sick chanted for us. Scouts left. Our son vanished. Women gave birth to things that were killed immediately (except redheads), and there was a low growl from the cancered earth that trembled us. All Known Elders turned blind. What the last hunter brought was a hand that could be bear with an eye sewn backwards into the palm. Could be human, could be them. Knuckle sockets sucked dry. I touched one and singed my finger. It burns at night when I dream.

  Now the air is loaded with ash that coats us and the wings of the butterfly, and my dreams. My dreams.

  The Hair Eaters have eaten all the caribou, moose, bear, fox, wolf, bison, buffalo and everything under the earth here. We are too scared to check nets as they feast on our catch underwater and wait for boats. All we have left are creatures of the air: ducks and ptarmigan, geese, swans. We eat roots pretending they are what we used to love.

  This message comes from the future. From our Dream Thrower. Remember: there is a hard way and an easy way: stop the Tar Sands and that old man’s body from waking up. He – not she – is the beginning of the end. May your children – our ancestors – not know a time of being born hunted as we are all hunted now.

  As for us, our season’s done, and I miss smiling at my memories. It’s getting colder now. Soon the fist of the sun will surrender to frost. We see it on the lower mountains across the way. Soon the butterflies will leave (where do they sleep at night?) and they will find us. They say some humans are farming other humans and making deals with the Hair Eaters. At night, when I lower myself to the cooling earth, as I breathe through my palms to cool my roaring head, my finger burns. I think this is how they are tracking us.

  I heard a story once. It warmed even the hearts of the Known People. It was a story outside of Fort Providence. The buffalo ran with two giant horses, two Clydesdales: one white, one brown. When you approached the herd you could clap your hands and the buffalo would look one way, the horses the other. Wolves and the zombies could not come near for trampling and goring. I sometimes think about how the horses and buffalo adopted each other. What was their ritual for each other? I told that story the second night after moving with the Known People, and they marvelled until hunters from that region reported that two giant horse skulls burned among the mountains of bones. They also spoke of lakes now, filled with humans swimming in their own blood. Hundreds of women, men, children,
elders, harpooned and buoyed by jerry cans to keep them floating. “It’s the adrenaline,” a sharpshooter who got away said. “It sweetens our blood. They keep us terrified and once we die, they tear into us. They just keep adding more and more people to these lakes. There were lines of peoples for miles, as far as we could see.”

  I saw a grey whale once, rolling in shallow water. Hundreds of Hair Eaters poured over the body biting, ripping at the barnacles and sea lice. Others clawed into and reached into the eyes and blowholes. One dove into its mouth. Then others. Then more and more. It thrashed and couldn’t get away. The Shark Throats ate their way from the inside until I could see its skeleton. I watched a mile away and heard it scream. Their cries are supposed to be subsonic but I heard it. I still hear it.

  I’ve seen a pack of Hair Eaters down a pack of bison in slush. The lead bull flipped in the air as the opposing Hair Eaters forked to cut him off. As he flipped in the air, two were upon him ripping and tearing at his belly and balls. He was hollowed out completely by the time he landed, still kicking.

  We wish you luck. The future is a curse. There are no human trails left. I was born running from them as they are born starving and hunting for us. Now, we carry on in fever. We carry on for you and what you do next.

  Four Blankets Woman has thrown two dreams now: one for you and the other to prove it. In your time, Taiwan will shut down their biggest highway for seven suns to allow for the safe passage of one million butterflies. If this is so, you will know this warning to be true.

  I pray you remember this when you wake up.

  You must remember this.

  You must stop the Tar Sands. Do not bring cancer to our Mother. Do not unleash them.

  On the wings of this atomized prayer, we reach to you with all we have left.

  Now, they have expanded their range to the fullest here and are now crossing the ice of time to reach you – you who live in the time before the sun twins, when fish only had one mouth, when moose knew who they were.

  You can change the future.

  Now wake up.

  GROUND ZERO: SAINTE-ANNE-DE-BELLEVUE

  Claude Lalumière

  From her office window, Agent Parinita Gupta can see both the Jacques Cartier Bridge to the east and the Victoria Bridge to the southwest. Even without her binoculars, it’s obvious the situation is chaotic. The pictures and videos from the West Island went viral even before the federal government gave the okay to evacuate the Island of Montreal and blow up all the remaining bridges and tunnels. Every access off the island west of the Decarie Expressway had already been bombed by the military the previous day. There’s no way everyone will be able to drive off the island before the deadline. Not a chance in Hell. Even with all the metro, suburban, and Via trains commandeered and diverted to evacuate the maximum amount of people to the east, south, and north, there’ll still be hundreds of thousands stuck on the island; evacuation will have to continue by boat and aircraft. Thankfully it’s not her job to figure out the logistics of that. Her task is to help implement the directives once the big brains figure it all out. Which is why she was left behind in the Montreal office of CSIS with a skeleton crew of four other agents.

  There’s a knock at her door. She looks at her watch before peeking at who’s there. Less than twenty minutes left before they cut off all road access to and from the island.

  “Nita – there’s a guy here. A student. Says he has info about the cows.” Cows, she thinks. Her aunt Padma would be both horrified and smug, railing that it was Kamadhenu the cow goddess wreaking vengeance against the Western world for the industrial farming of cows.

  “Gilles – I don’t have time to deal with crackpots.” She turns back to stare at the bridges, counting down time in her head.

  “Yeah, but I checked him out. His dad is CSIS: Dr. Jack Chen. A molecular biologist at HQ in Ottawa. Anti-terrorism forensics.”

  “Molecular biologist? Fuck. Really?”

  Gilles nods.

  “Okay. Get him into Room 2 and start recording. Don’t question him – wait for me. Stay when I get there, but let me lead. Tell Jocelyne and Stéphane to watch from the other side. Put Derek on lookout, in case the cows come near the building.”

  “Will do, Nita.”

  Cows, she thinks again.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  The kid can’t be more than in his early twenties. He’s tall – over six feet; he doesn’t even have a hint of stubble on his baby face; hair so dark it’s black, but with a streak of red on the left and a streak of platinum blond on the right. His eyes keep straying to the floor, and he tends to mumble.

  Agent Gupta says, “Kid, look at me when I speak to you and when you answer.” Then, she repeats: “First – what’s your name?”

  He focuses straight into her eyes; there’s terror written all over his features. He’s about to open his mouth, but he pauses at the sound of distant explosions. The bridges.

  Nita checks her watch: only five minutes behind schedule. “Kid, we don’t have time to waste. Who, what, how, and where. Go.”

  The kid doesn’t have the demeanour of someone who’s lying or looking for attention. That makes him earn hers. She gives a subtle nod to Gilles.

  The kid collects himself. “My name is Tony. Tony Chen. You know who my father is.” He pauses. “Okay. I won’t waste time. The cows – it’s all my fault. Well, not all of it, but I…I instigated it. But then it got out of control. Completely out of control. I mean, how could I know that there was a secret cult worshipping Hathor and Kamadhenu in the department? Thea never told me.”

  “Back up, Tony. Explain things. Hathor? Cult? Department? Thea?” But Kamadhenu? Agent Gupta had never heard anyone except Aunt Padma mention the divine mother of all cows. But none of her stories had featured cows like these…

  “I’m a second-year Environment student at McGill. Thea was my girlfriend. Well, not really my girlfriend. I’d been trying to get her to—”

  “Kid. Tony. Focus. Back to what all this has to do with the cows. Worry about your love life on your own time.”

  “Okay, okay. So the last time I was home in Ottawa, I snooped around my father’s laptop. He thinks it’s secure, but I cracked the password and encryptions, no problem.”

  Tony’s self-satisfied grin does not endear him to Parinita.

  He continues, “It was mostly boring administrative stuff…until I found a folder called ‘China Cattle Projects’ – that was gold. But now I wish I hadn’t read it.”

  “What you did with the contents of that folder – that’s what caused the…the situation with the cows?”

  “Sort of. You see, at the beginning of the school year, the department—”

  Nita interrupts him with a gesture. “You mean, Environment at McGill?”

  “Yeah, exactly. So, every year, the department organizes this field trip to Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, where the university has its agricultural research centre, which includes a dairy farm. That’s when I met Thea. She was – I mean, we were appalled at what we found. They give a tour of the dairy farm, like they’re proud of how they torture the cows and their calves. All year, we made up plans about what we could do to sabotage the dairy farm and free the cows but never came up with anything practical that was ever really good for the animals. But doing nothing…how was that acceptable? But then, during summer break, I read the files on my dad’s computer. And there was our solution. So when I came back we—”

  Parinita’s phone won’t stop buzzing. “Hold that thought, Tony. I’ll be right back.”

  On the phone, it’s Burgess from head office. He wants a status report. While he’s talking, she looks out the window: the cows have made it downtown. They’re eating everything in sight: trees, lampposts, concrete, bricks, windows…everything.

  “Agent Gupta…are you listening?”

  “Sorry, sir. It’s just…the cows are here.”

  “Inside the office?”

  “No, on the street. Downtown.”

  “Well,
they’re on schedule.”

  “They move faster than I thought. Not like cows at all.”

  Agent Gupta is mesmerized; she’d seen the video – the one that was leaked everywhere, so that the evacuation order would be taken seriously, the one in which the cows tore into armed troops, devouring the soldiers and all their weapons, too – but seeing the cows in the flesh, even from five storeys above ground and a half-dozen blocks away, is…surreal. Too bizarre to accept as true, despite the evidence of her senses. There are holes in their hides, showing bone. How can something that looks so fragile, so barely alive, be so damned impossible to hurt or kill?

  The herd laid waste to Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue yesterday morning – they’d killed the entire population and razed the whole borough: all the buildings, all the vegetation – everything. The army had been sent in, pronto. But no matter what the armed forces threw at the animals – gunfire, artillery, grenades, air strikes – the cows shrugged off, continuing their single-minded destruction of Montreal’s West Island.

  Derek appears, with a panicked look. He mouths silently, The cows.

  “Agent Gupta, are you still there?”

  The cows are getting too close. “Sir. I’ll call you back.” She pockets her phone and tells Derek, “Time to move to the secure basement. We’ll be safer there. Take the stairs.” Derek gathers Stéphane and Jocelyne, while Nita goes into Room 2, to gather Gilles and the kid.

  Part of her thinks the kid is a waste of time, but there’s something about his manner…he could really know something important. Something that could help her save what’s left of Montreal.