Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “Oh, gaisi,” Lei-Fang spat, and lunged forward, ignoring the screaming protest of her hip. She angled her spear over Quon’s shoulder as the jiang shi threw him aside – the spear tip slashing a tight cut that bisected the jufu draped across the jiang shi’s face.

  Quon hit the ground in a heap as the jiang shi stopped moving, the lower half of the jufu drifting down to the ground like a fallen leaf. Lei-Fang stood her ground as the jiang shi’s corpse bent violently backwards, splaying like a marionette, the ragged, gaping hole where its mouth had once been facing the sky. Lei-Fang braced herself against the piercing, steam-whistle shriek that followed as the trapped hun was torn from its own corpse. The empty bones clattered to the ground as the hun of Lin Changgong coalesced before her: an angry, lost spirit, now doomed to wander like a po ghost; to drift farther and farther away from his humanity until Niu Tou and Ma Mian could find and claim him.

  Lei-Fang looked into Lin Changgong’s empty eyes, and thrust her spear into the centre of the gui hun floating above her, shouting to frighten him off and speed him on his way.

  When the last of Changgong’s chi had fled, sent back down to Diyu, Lei-Fang hobbled over to Quon, her hip grinding as if newly cracked. She bent down to the young man with a grunt of pain and stared into his mostly glassy eyes, too much of his chi drained by his father for him to linger long in the land of the living.

  “I don’t want to die,” he whispered, his eyes not focusing properly.

  “Shh,” whispered Lei-Fang, inhaling sharply as she sat on the ground and her hip collided with the earth. She set aside her spear and took him into her arms as she would an infant, and held him there. “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Quon,” he whispered, folding his head against her breast like a small child and hugging himself to her with the failing strength of his limbs.

  “Death comes to everyone, Quon.”

  He glared up at her. “Supposed to make me feel better?” he slurred.

  “No.”

  He looked away from her, and his chest heaved, all the breath going out of his lungs. “You…knew him?” he managed on the exhale.

  “I knew of him. But I know enough, now, to put together what would be pertinent to you. But ask yourself, Quon: do you want the truth, or do you want comfort?”

  “Truth,” he said through chattering teeth, his flesh going cold.

  Lei-Fang hesitated a moment, then cradled Quon’s body to her, and rocked him gently as she spoke. “Twenty years ago a man named Liang Fu, whose name will mean nothing to you, but it’s his, and I owe him the respect of using it, came to me. Both his children were dead, their corpses little more than desiccated husks. Like those two,” she said, jutting her chin at the two dead boys, though Quon couldn’t see the motion. “The police are never keen to investigate things that do not fit into the easy lies the world tells itself. And there were those who said that nothing came of the case because the Liangs were Chinese in a white country. That last part I don’t know the truth of. Perhaps. Perhaps not. What mattered was that Liang Fu did not know who to turn to in his grief. Until he was given my name.”

  “And?” breathed Quon, half-conscious.

  Lei-Fang stroked his hair, and swept it away from his face. “I looked into the matter of their death. And I found her – the jiang shi who had killed them.”

  Quon gasped for breath. “My mo—” he began, unable to finish the question.

  Lei-Fang nodded, more for herself than Quon. “I exorcised her, but her corpse had been deliberately defaced so that no one could identify her. The police suspected murder, and whoever had given Fu’s children the jufu had to have known where she was buried. I don’t know why he chose to bring her back after what he did to her, but your father is the only man, aside from you, who I have ever known in this country to craft an authentic jufu. It’s not certain. Very little in life is, but I don’t think your mother abandoned you, Quon.”

  Quon said nothing, all the breath in his lungs gone. He clasped the fingers of one hand on her arm.

  “Do you hear me, Quon? She didn’t leave you,” the wuyi whispered into his hair, holding his head to her breast.

  He drew in a final breath, and exhaled “Don’t…leave me,” as Lei-Fang held him close.

  And when he was dead she held him to her tighter still, and cried over him because his own mother could not.

  THE ADVENTURES OF DOREA TRESS

  Rhea Rose

  I was only a child when Baby bear bit me. That’s the part of the story they never tell. He bit me right on the knuckle, tore my delicate flesh clean away as if it were pale tissue, exposing the white pearly bone beneath. That bite hurt like a hundred hellfires, and I bled for days from that wound. Back then I was a star, a golden child on a movie set. I ran from the film shoot into the dark, green woods and got lost.

  It took the searchers three days to find me curled up in the roots of a large tree. They had to enlist an old Salish chief to track me. Ricky Joe was an elder, a chief and a shaman, a rare combination, and he’d grown up in this area where the woods and riverbanks were riddled with trails. He’d told the reporters that he could find a yellow-haired fish in a dark, green sea, but he would have to use magic.

  And he did.

  Legend has it that an ancient Salish family had once lived in these woods, a mother and father, two daughters and a small son. The youngest daughter often misbehaved and played bad tricks on her sister and brother. Over time her misbehaviour escalated. Her parents tried to punish her misdeeds in the hope that she would learn to respect her family. Instead, she ate her little brother. She tried to eat her sister but only managed to bite her. She ate her mother and then began to eat the animals in the woods. Her father took her sister away and abandoned Little-Daughter to the forest.

  I remember the day Ricky Joe found me. His face appeared from the tangle of sticks and leaves in front of me, floated in towards me like a large, papery leaf, fallen from a tree. His teeth were perfect, a mouth full of little white beach shells, and he smiled down at me and said, “Come out, little yellow hair. These woods aren’t friendly. This tree has been kind, but soon its roots won’t let you go.” He gave me his hand, and it was leathery, big and warm. “Take my paw,” he said, laughing, “and don’t bite me.” He pulled me gently from the roots. He told me he was over a hundred years old as he carried me down the trail. He called me Little-Daughter.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  After awhile I was sent to see Dr. Bruno. My therapist.

  Dr. Bruno says that Ricky Joe never really existed, that I’d made it all up, and that I hadn’t run very far that fateful day before one of the movie people found me and took me to the hospital. Dr. Bruno says the reason I continue to run the same trail so many years later is because I was forever-after traumatized.

  Against the advice of my therapist I was going for a little run in the woods to alleviate my anxiety. Having run this route often, I knew all the twists and turns on the path, all the rocks and roots to avoid. I could have run that path through the woods with my eyes closed. The scents on the air, the twilight, the dry sandy earth beneath my feet, and the smell of a long-dead rabbit, rank and bloated, filled my nostrils. I love to run barefoot with my yellow hair streaming behind me.

  And come to think of it maybe my eyes were closed when I ran into Christopher.

  I’m sure Dr. Bruno would nod wisely and agree when I say I fell over this guy and not for this guy. I literally ran him down and injured his ankle. When we crashed, we rolled all tangled together down the path.

  “I’m so sorry,” I apologized over and over. I was on top of him and staring down into his terrified eyes.

  “I’ve been lost for hours out here,” he said, clearly shaken.

  I tried my cell phone.

  “There’s no signal up here,” I told him. I examined his ankle. I noticed several sharp gashes. They looked like bites. He grabbed my arm for support and pulled himself up to sit.

  He whispered. “I don’t wish to a
larm you,” he said, glancing nervously past me and over my shoulder. “These woods are strange. I heard something. I mean – I heard – some thing.”

  “A bear?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Y-y-yes. I mean, I think it was – a bear. I hope it was and not something else. I mean. I think it was. There. Right there in that bush.”

  I twisted my head awkwardly around, then back the other way. “I don’t hear it. Did you smell him? They smell like unwashed laundry, but worse. They just want the berries.” I rattled on and on about all the bear facts I knew, until finally, to shut myself up, I picked a nearby huckleberry and ate it. I picked one for the injured man and offered it to him. He refused. Looking closely at him I saw he was very young, maybe twenty, maybe still a teen. His fair-haired looks gave him a boyish appearance, like my younger brother, if I’d had one.

  “Were you bitten by anything?” I asked.

  “No. No.”

  I tried again to see the marks on his leg, but he wouldn’t let me look. “What’s your name?”

  “Christopher.” He held out his hand. I shook it, sweaty palm and all.

  “My name is—” I hesitated then. In my head I heard Dr. Bruno’s voice, “You are Dorea. Dorea Tress.”

  “I’m Dorea.”

  “You don’t seem very sure about that,” Christopher said.

  “My parents never called me by that name.”

  “Oh?”

  “They called me – Little-Daughter.”

  He laughed. “Oh, well, nice to meet you, Dorea. Do you come here often – Dorea?”

  I nodded. “Yup. This is my running trail.”

  “A bit secluded isn’t it? I mean for a girl, alone in a hundred acres of woods.”

  “That’s the way I like it.” I smelled the blood on his leg. I reached for my water bottle. I wanted to wash the wound and get a better look at the injury. I pulled out the rag I carried in my running pouch, squirted the cloth with water and gently began to wipe away the blood. I saw a protrusion pushing his skin out.

  “Ooouch!”

  “I hate to say it but I think it’s broken, Christopher.”

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  While I waited for Christopher to recover, I told him my story. Christopher rocked his sore leg and listened politely but didn’t say much, until I got to the part about these woods. He insisted that these woods weren’t magic. I laughed then and told him he was well and truly lost. He got very quiet.

  “You need to try standing,” I suggested.

  “No. It hurts.”

  “I know but we can’t stay here all night. It’s getting darker and we have to get inside before nightfall.” I looked cautiously over my shoulder. The smell of the blood from his wound was making me nauseous and dizzy. He must have sensed my anxiety because he agreed to try and hop on one leg with me supporting him.

  Even with my help he could barely hobble on the crooked, narrow path.

  “I don’t think I can make it very far.”

  “No. You can’t,” I agreed. “There’s an old cabin. We can go there for the night.”

  “Cabin?”

  “A small old house.”

  “I know what a cabin is!” he snapped at me.

  “It’s abandoned. I used to go there as a child. I stop there sometimes, when I’m out running. It’s a pit stop.” I laughed. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. It was the old cabin built for that movie I was in as a child.

  Christopher was a slight young man. I knew I could lift him, carry him, even run with him across my shoulders. I suggested this and he agreed.

  I used the fireman’s lift to get him into position. I felt strong with him slung across my back and shoulders. A ravenous hunger took hold of me. How long since I had eaten?

  “What brought you out to these woods?” I asked.

  “Ah, I, ah, lost a pet,” he said. He seemed hesitant to talk about his lost pet. “Too bad there’s not more of a moon,” he said, changing the subject. “It would make finding our way through the woods much easier.”

  “Don’t worry, Christopher, this time I know my way.”

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  The first thing he noticed when we arrived at the cabin was the three chairs and three beds. I put him down, and he hopped and slid on his one good leg to the kitchen cupboards, opened them and handled the three bowls stacked there. Then he noticed the folder I’d left on the kitchen table. With some effort and squirming on his part, he managed to seat himself at the kitchen table where he picked up the blue file folder. The newspaper and magazine clippings spilled out. He began to read one, then another, quickly skimming through them, looking at the photos.

  “These articles about bears, why are they here?” I could taste something in the air then. Slightly sweet like tree syrup and sour too, the kind of musky reek that dampens the air when an animal is frightened. Christopher picked out one article and read it in the small spill of moonlight. “Those articles are mine,” I said. Christopher looked at me, a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Dr. Bruno says I have to read them until I can accept what has happened.”

  “These people were all killed by crazed bears, rabid beasts.” He read the headlines aloud: “Bear Chews Hot Tubber,” “Hiker Eaten,” “Children Attacked,” “Dogs, Cats, Pets Bitten and Ripped Apart By a ‘Crazy’ Bear.”

  Just then something began scratching incessantly at the door. A critter wanted in.

  “What’s that?” Christopher asked nervously. I went to the door. “No!” Christopher screamed. “Don’t open the door!”

  But I did open the door.

  “What the f—” Christopher climbed up onto the table. The dead rabbit I’d smelled on the trail was at the door. The brown bloated hare burst into the room like a rocket headed for Christopher, straight for his fresh flesh. But I caught the little Thumper before he tore a strip from Christopher. I ripped the rabbit’s head from its body. That was the only way to stop it.

  “Sorry,” I said. I threw the head into the stone fireplace, but not before I checked it for brains; alas, there were none, I’d sucked them out long ago. I lit a wooden match I kept in the drawer. I built a fire using some wood that had already been gathered. Then I took the rabbit carcass and bit into its hide. My teeth and hands ripped skin from muscle and sinew, and I tossed the fur and skin into a corner of the cabin. I threw the bug-ridden carcass into a water-filled cauldron on the wood-burning stove. I stoked the fire. “It’s not too bad when it’s cooked,” I said.

  “That rabbit was rotten. Dead and maggoty,” Christopher complained.

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “What? What could be worse?” His eyes looked large and frightened. I saw the moon reflected in his stare.

  “Night is upon us – the creatures are coming. They’ll be hungry. The rabbit’s only the beginning,” I said.

  I thought I could protect Christopher from every animal monster that came to the cabin. I’d created them. I’d bitten them all. Ricky Joe had known exactly who I was. He’d recognized my work, not as a child actress, but as the spirit that ran through these woods. When time first dawned in this forest, Little-Daughter ran here, misbehaving. As a child I had an insatiable appetite, but these days, Dr. Bruno reminded me, I was all grown up. Still, I wasn’t sure if I could save Christopher. “What’s – what’s happened to you? Are you rabid?” He asked. He threw a magazine article at me. The article Christopher tossed floated towards the roaring fire pit and caught the flames, then became ash. Outside the soft rustle and shuffle of forest creatures beneath the windows grew louder.

  Christopher sputtered; his spittle flew across the space between us and landed on my lip. I licked it away. I shouldn’t have. That put me over the edge. “They’re coming, Chris,” I said.

  “Christopher!” He insisted that I call him by that great long name.

  Christopher crept slowly closer to the fire, perhaps he felt cold, or safer there, or perhaps he sensed the truth about his predicament. His terror was evident in
his trembling hands which moved like cautious spiders across the stonework, seeking a crevice to crawl into. He took hold of Baby bear’s chair and dragged it over to support his injured leg, but the chair really was too small because the foot and ankle had swollen to an enormous size. The chair broke when he placed his weight on it. It was an old movie chair, designed to break under pressure. Christopher sat hunched over in Papa bear’s chair and this made him look small, and fragile, and very, very vulnerable.

  He looked at me, his eyes glassy with pain and fear. “I guess rabid is a close description of my behaviour, but you don’t die from what I have. You never die, but you don’t live happily-ever-after,” I tried to explain.

  “What then?” he asked meekly.

  “It makes me want to bite,” I said, gnashing my teeth. I didn’t want to gnash my teeth. I didn’t want to frighten poor young Christopher. But his spittle on my lips, the smell of his blood, the moon shining through the window, all of these worked against my control, my own personal choice as Dr. Bruno put it. I couldn’t help myself, yet the good doctor insisted that I could help myself, and I suppose I have helped myself, though not in the manner he’d suggested.

  I felt the golden hair on my head, arms and legs bristle. I clenched my teeth and began grinding them; this kind of behaviour was against Dr. Bruno’s orders. I tried to talk with my captor. Yet I burned inside, that part of me that would never die wanted out, wanted desperately to take control, and I yearned to taste Christopher’s flesh and brains, even though he was a skinny and bony meal. When I noticed how thin he was, I understood why the witch of the woods held Hansel and tried to fatten him up. I wanted to do the same, but then the three bears arrived in the yard, and I forgot my struggle. I became what I was, Little-Daughter.

  I heard the bears charging around outside, bumping the walls of the cabin like testy sharks. How on earth could I protect Christopher? He needed more time. The bite I’d given him on the leg was small and for that reason he would take longer to become what he must. I’d promised Dr. Bruno no more eating, and ripping, and swallowing whole, only small bites, and so I had been gentle with Christopher. He seemed like such a gentle young man. These were the small steps I had taken, but good ones, yes, I was doing well, the doctor even said so the last time we spoke. Yet the forest seemed to descend on us, Christopher and me, in this rickety cabin. All the creatures I’d bitten and, hence, the ones they’d bitten, were finding their way through the night to the cabin where they smelled blood and bones and boy.