Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  No animal was visible as they approached, but the closer they got, the less what they were looking at resembled a random piece of driftwood and the more it took on a human form, like an outstretched corpse with tendrils of brownish-grey flesh hanging off of its bleached bones, half-buried in the wet sand. Darren assumed it was the zombie movie from the night before playing tricks on his mind, but that didn’t stop his heart from racing.

  They didn’t get close enough to know for sure. At the point where they were only a few feet away, whatever it was in front of them moved again. Darren was convinced, at that moment, that what he saw was a corpse, denuded of much of its flesh and all of its organs, reaching towards him with a rattling groan. He could make out a worm-eaten face with empty eye sockets and shrivelled chunks of lips, its leathery tongue lolling out of the place where its cheek should have been. Only patches of brittle-looking hair remained attached to the dry off-white skull, barely visible among the seaweed that rested there.

  Darren’s breath caught in his throat as the bony fingers extended towards him, choking off the scream that wanted out. He didn’t wait to gauge Byron’s reaction. In a panic, Darren turned and ran.

  Byron was actually two steps ahead of him, and the pair galloped away as fast as their legs would carry them, almost tripping several times as the mud clung to their boots, the suction refusing to release them at first. Both boys spilled the topmost clams from their buckets but did not take the time to stop and pick them up, far too frightened to interrupt their flight. In fact, they did not come to a breathless halt until they were practically at Darren’s doorstep, gasping for air with limbs trembling.

  “What was that?” Byron asked, once he could finally speak again.

  “I don’t know. I thought it was driftwood until I saw it move, but now I’m not so sure,” Darren replied.

  Byron’s expression shifted from fear to shame. “Maybe that’s all it was, just a big ratty piece of driftwood. Do you think we could have been imagining things – because of the movie last night?”

  Darren shrugged; he wasn’t sure either. He might have been seeing something that wasn’t there, his thoughts dwelling on their late night elicit entertainment. “Maybe – I don’t know, but if it was just driftwood and seaweed, then why did it move?”

  Byron looked thoughtful for a moment, contemplating potential explanations. “Maybe the sand shifted underneath it, or maybe a stiff breeze caught it and made it shake.”

  Neither boy was willing to go back in order to test this theory. Instead, Darren conceded that Byron must be right.

  “If that was a zombie it would have been dead for a while, and we ain’t heard anything about nobody going missing around here. You probably guessed it right. We’re still spooked from the movie.”

  Without further mention of the incident, the two boys carried their bounty into the house. The clam bake that night would be extra awesome, with plenty of clams for everyone. They both should be pleased with themselves and thoroughly excited.

  So why were the butterflies in Darren’s stomach the negative, anxious kind?

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Darren was surprised at the size of the crowd that had shown up for the yard party. Since he and Byron had brought home such a sizable haul, despite the few lost to spillage on the way back, his parents had invited several extra people. The music was already blaring out on the back patio, and the beer bottles were in the process of being pulled out of the cooler and passed around. Darren’s father had started the fire in the fire pit and his mother had finished rinsing the clams, tossing any that were broken or appeared to be dead. Most of them seemed shipshape, and she commented that they had so much on hand that they were going to have to steam them in two smaller batches, instead of the usual big one. She said that with a certain amount of pride, mussing Darren’s hair before carrying the hefty pot outside.

  The boys hung around outside enjoying the hustle and bustle, and snacking on the chips and other party foods that had been laid out on the patio table so that guests would have something to eat while waiting for the main dish to be ready. People seemed jovial, chattering and laughing and relaxing in the patio chairs until the clams were done. Darren had heard that Byron’s older brother Trevor had brought his guitar, that he would probably play after they were done eating, and Darren had spotted a couple of giant bags of campfire marshmallows in the kitchen, that they would no doubt get to roast once everyone had eaten their fill of clams.

  Before long, Darren’s father announced that the clams were almost ready.

  “I’ll go get the melted butter,” Darren’s mother said.

  “You better hurry. I don’t know about anyone else here, but I don’t think I’ll be able to wait until you get back. I can almost taste those clams already. They’re going to be delicious,” he told her.

  As she passed Byron, the boy reached into the pop cooler, but came up empty handed. He looked thoroughly disappointed.

  “No more root beer,” he sighed.

  “There’s more in the fridge,” Darren assured him. “Come with me to the kitchen. We’ll go get a new batch for the cooler.”

  The two boys slipped through the patio doors and made a beeline to the fridge. When they arrived, Darren’s mother was in the process of giving the big glass bowl of buttery goodness one last stir.

  “I’ll see you guys out there,” she said with a smile, as she lifted the bowl and turned to go. “I bet you anything they started in on those clams without us. Your father was never any good at waiting for anything.”

  Darren smiled back, but he still had bad butterflies in his stomach. His thoughts kept drifting back to the conversation they had once had about the red tide and the idea that clams were the ocean’s filter, ingesting whatever garbage was in the water.

  Darren was shocked back into reality by the ice-cold cans of root beer that Byron was foisting into his arms. It had taken longer than expected to get at them, that particular flavour of pop shoved far in the back and therefore difficult to reach. Darren chastised himself for being such a big baby and a scaredy-cat. Zombies weren’t real. All smart people knew that. He even promised himself he would go back to the beach tomorrow, when some of his courage had returned, so he could confirm that truth for himself.

  Byron was the first through the patio door and into the backyard. Darren paused before stepping out, seeing his father kissing his mother rather vigorously. He rolled his eyes as he placed the cans on the table, waiting for Byron to move out of the way to the cooler. His father was not big on PDAs, which meant he had already had too much beer – how embarrassing. That was when Darren noticed the entire bowl of melted butter had been upended on the patio planking… and nobody seemed to be making a fuss about it.

  Puzzled, Darren looked over at his mother, who should have been upset. His father was still kissing her, or so Darren believed at first. Then his father pulled his head back, a few bloodied strands of his mother’s face hanging from his clenched teeth. He hadn’t been kissing his wife’s face, he had been eating it.

  The scream that Darren had choked back on the beach now escaped. Flooded with panic, he turned to run back into the house, but Byron’s brother, Trevor, was already there, blocking Darren’s path. The older boy did not smile or say a word, his eyes as lifeless as Darren’s dad’s. Instead he lunged for Darren’s throat, his teeth bared and a strand of unswallowed but slightly chewed clam dangling from them.

  Darren thought it was ironic that all he could see was red, as the tide of zombies swarmed him and joined Trevor in feasting upon his flesh.

  HUNGRY GHOSTS

  Michael Matheson

  Zhou Lei-Fang felt the weight of her long years as an ache in the marrow of her bones. Kensington Market was noisy around her with its too-full streets, blaring music, and the heavy clang and rumble of streetcars rattling along their tracks; the 505 Dundas eastbound well overdue. Not long ago she’d have walked the few blocks from Bathurst to Augusta, but even the short trip from the Toronto
Western Hospital now left her exhausted and crumpled in pain: walking more than a few blocks had become an agony after fracturing her hip the year before.

  Lei-Fang leaned back against the glass of the TTC shelter and closed her eyes, her breathing ragged, and reflected on the cold seeping into her flesh. “A fine state for a wuyi to come to,” she muttered into the empty enclosure. Queasy self-loathing sloshed in her guts at her forced reliance on Western doctors and their endless sea of pills. Six decades she had ministered to her community, and now after all the spirits she had sent to their rest, all the ills she had cured, and all the incantations she had sung, to be slowly falling apart herself? The heavens had a funny way of showing their gratitude. Her hip throbbed and the arthritis in her hands prevented her from brewing her own remedies, let alone wielding her exorcising spear – not that she’d been called to cast out a spirit in more than twenty years. Not since Liang Fu’s poor, dead, foolish children had gotten their hands on an authentic jufu talisman; Lei-Fang still had no idea who had written the inscription for them. Liang Fu’s girls had been too young to see the danger in raising a jiang shi after watching a copy of Geung si sin sang. Mr. Vampire, Lei-Fang amended, forcing her thoughts back into English – that was getting harder too; she didn’t used to have problems staying in her adopted tongue.

  The old wuyi sighed and opened her eyes to examine her aching hands. Still long and delicate, they were weathered with age and their joints gnarled. Bao had always loved her hands and she missed the touch of his fingers against hers. Lei-Fang inhaled sharply and wiped her eyes where tears had begun to pool at their edges. She looked west, watching for the streetcar, and caught her reflection in the glass. She frowned, and the elderly woman in the glass frowned back at her.

  The 505 clattered along the street, slowing as it bore down on the Bathurst stop. She eased her tired body off the shelter seat with a groan; even broken she stood tall and willowy, her hair bound elegantly back in a bun pinned with a pair of lacquered hair sticks. Lei-Fang reached for her cane as the streetcar came to a rolling stop.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Lin Quon’s control did not falter as he held the delicate brush; his hand moved like a slow river, tracing liquid curves as the chi flowed through his arm, down through his fingers, and into the characters. Stroke by stroke they became words, their black designs forming a neat line down the yellowed paper.

  When he was done he closed his eyes, his arm aching from the chi that he had forced through it. He leaned into the plush chair, remembering quiet days like this twenty years ago, here, in his father’s study. Remembering the boy he had been, watching his father work with the old characters, straining to force his chi into them. It had been Lin Changgong’s pursuit of forbidden knowledge that had driven Quon’s mother away from the house on Oxford Street. None of the members of his family spoke her name after she left, only daring to whisper it in quiet rage when Changgong killed himself seven months later.

  Quon was still waiting for her to return and explain her decades-long absence, to tell him why she had never come to rescue him from the extended family for whom he was the unworthy son of a failed father, second always to his cousins. He dreamed of her often: dreams where he was a small boy again and she would sweep him up in her arms, hold him close, and never let him go.

  He opened his eyes and leaned forward, feeling the ache in his chest that marked the part of him she had taken with her when she went away. In all the time his aunts and uncles had spent raising him, he had thought only of her. And, of course, his father.

  It had taken twenty years of failed effort to finally tap the chi necessary to reproduce his father’s work – to craft an authentic jufu. He held his aching arm in tender fingers as he rose and exhaled slowly. Quon stared down at the talisman on the table. He couldn’t bring his mother home with it, but then, the jufu wasn’t for her.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Lei-Fang shuffled slowly along Augusta, leaning heavily on her cane as she headed home. She stopped in front of her house, shook her head at her own weakness and breathed deeply, her purse tucked under one arm.

  “Wuyi Zhou?” Lei-Fang turned to see Song Xiu standing behind her, Xiu’s sleeping daughter, barely six months old, cradled in the young mother’s arms. Xiu still carried some of the weight of her pregnancy and Lei-Fang stared at her, trying to picture Xiu without her daughter and could not; in six months the child had become so much a part of her that it seemed as though Xiu had always been a mother. It suited her. “I am sorry to bother you, Wuyi Zhou—”

  Lei-Fang waved off the young woman’s distress and motioned for Xiu to follow her. “Come inside.”

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Lei-Fang settled her weary bones into an inelegant, hard-backed chair, its rigid spine a comfort for her sore back. Like her furniture, the apartment was ascetic; neither she nor Bao had cared for frivolous things. The small shrine to Bao was the only luxury she allowed herself.

  The old wuyi listened as Xiu rattled around in her kitchen. “You said the cupboard on the right?” Xiu called around a corner.

  Lei-Fang smiled. “No, that’s the herbal teas. Xiu—”

  “Yes?” asked Xiu, peeking around the corner, one arm still holding her sleeping child tightly, a packet of green tea dangling from her other hand as the tiny girl nuzzled in against her shoulder.

  “You’re going to make the tea while holding your daughter? Ridiculous. You’ll burn the child, and I have nothing prepared for that. Give her to me.”

  Xiu pursed her lips before gently lowering her daughter into Lei-Fang’s waiting hands. The baby stirred and cooed in her sleep, but did not wake.

  “Go,” shooed Lei-Fang. “Brew the tea. She’ll be fine.”

  Lei-Fang held the infant in her arms, watching the unusually quiet child squirm as she slept. Lei-Fang traced the pudgy features of Xiu’s child with one long finger, wondering what her own children might have looked like; by the time she and Bao had thought to try, it was too late.

  Xiu came in from the kitchen carrying two steaming cups of tea, one in each hand, and Lei-Fang nodded her head at the empty chair across the table. She handed Xiu her daughter once the young woman’s arms were empty, and waited while Xiu settled in, hugging her child to her breast and rocking gently back and forth.

  “Now,” said Lei-Fang as she reached for her tea with both hands, her flesh drinking in the warmth of the cup, “what can I do for you?”

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Quon stood in his doorway in the warm evening, brandishing the hundred dollar bill he had promised the two teens, their eyes wide as he held it out for them to take. The elder of the two boys took the proffered money and Quon raised the talisman in his other hand, drawing their attention to it. “Exactly as we discussed. Agreed?” The two boys nodded sagely as the younger child took the jufu and cradled it in his hands in awe.

  Quon waited until the two boys disappeared down Oxford Street before he retrieved his coat from where it hung near the door, and stole into the evening after them.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  “You owe me nothing, Xiu,” said Lei-Fang as they walked out into the cool light of the evening.

  “Are you sure, Wuyi? It’s true that between Xue’s being let go and the mat leave things are…tighter…than they were, but we have a little money put aside. And I would not have you think less of me.”

  “Bao made sure I would be looked after,” Lei-Fang tutted as she escorted Xiu and her daughter out.

  “But after what you’ve done for our daughter—”

  “You have nothing to worry about, Xiu. She’s not possessed. She’ll start crying soon enough, you’ll see. And then you’ll wish it were spirit possession,” smiled Lei-Fang. “She’s healthy, just quiet,” Lei-Fang stroked the hair of Xiu’s sleeping child. “And unusually well-behaved. Enjoy it while it lasts.” Lei-Fang’s smile became a grimace as a spasm tightened the muscles of her ribs, and she curled towards the pain.

  “Wuyi Zhou?” solicited Xiu, leaning in to s
teady the old woman.

  Lei-Fang shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Xiu, holding Lei-Fang up with one hand while the wuyi leaned against her doorway, her cane left inside. “It doesn’t seem like nothing.”

  “It’s close enough,” Lei-Fang said slowly, trying not to collapse under the weight of her own body. “At my age everything is something. It’s knowing which something is worth getting excited about that makes a difference.” Lei-Fang breathed her way through the pain, though the tightness in her chest did not fade. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone,” she cursed under her breath, and looked pointedly at the young woman whose hand was still on her shoulder. “If at all possible, Xiu, die young enough that your body is still your own.”

  Xiu stepped back and looked askance at Lei-Fang, instinctively clutching her child tighter to her. “Wuyi?”

  “Never mind,” Lei-Fang coughed. Some things you couldn’t explain. The wuyi waved away the young woman’s fear. “May you live long enough to appreciate the truth of my words, and not long enough to utter them yourself.” The spasm passed and a different kind of tightness settled in. A long shudder passed through her bones and Lei-Fang straightened, her pain forgotten and her spine a steel bar as she listened to something only she could hear. “Do you feel that?” she whispered, turning to the east.

  “Feel what?” asked Xiu, following the wuyi’s gaze.

  “Xiu, does your husband still have his car?”

  “Of course. Xue has been making the payments. Barely,” Xiu added under her breath, leaning on one hip to better support the weight of the child in her arms.

  “Then I will accept your offer of payment, provided you allow me a favour in its stead.”

  “Of course, Wuyi Zhou. Do you need us to take you somewhere?”

  “You and the child can’t come for this,” Lei-Fang said gently, noting Xiu’s relief. The old strength flooded back into her bones, and she flexed her hands, ignoring the arthritic joints.