by Ian Whates
Her sweet face was sombre, her eyes staring intently into mine. She was imperious and intimidating, yet vulnerable, soundlessly imploring me for help.
I fell to my knees.
“I’ve waited so long,” she said, her voice soft, sad, infinitely patient. She held out her hand to me, palm facing upwards. “Did you find anything, anything at all to give me hope?”
Silent, I dropped the tiny cylinder of ivory into her hand.
She clasped it to her heart and closed her eyes, lips parted. “There is an Aetherial legend that every bone of Kern’s body is a stitch that holds the Earth and the Spiral together. If ever I found the whole of him, the two worlds would tear apart. Would I chance that, to have my beloved one with me again?”
I found my voice with difficulty. And I dropped my gaze, for I knew that if I looked at her for one moment longer, my fate would be that of Bartholomew – always to search, never to know peace.
“I think you would chance anything to find him, my lady Estel.”
“Ah well,” she said softly. “It is only a tale.”
dc
“An Owl in Moonlight” is dedicated to Charlotte Burton and Thomas Firth.
Heaven Of Animals
John Hornor Jacobs
1
“Once we lived with common sense,” Red Wolf said to the man on the horse next to him. He looked back over the rump of his mount at the herd. “Back then, it was necessary to live off the land. We respected the elements, and we understood that death was a harmonious part of life.”
“Goddammit, Red, why do you have to talk like that?” Dap said, shielding his eyes from the morning sun with his hand. “You ain’t even a real Indian, for christsakes. And we are forced to live off the land, if you haven’t fucking noticed.”
Red Wolf remained quiet, watching the herd. The two men sat on a small hill, looking down at a lush valley bisected by a stream. The herd milled nervously on the far side of the running water, lowing. The sound of moans came softly across the valley, along with the stench.
Dap shook his head and resettled his rifle across the pommel of his saddle. He raised binoculars and scanned the valley, panning his head back and forth.
“I’m rarer than an Indian, Dap,” Red Wolf said. “I’m a phony Indian. The last of a dying breed.”
“Ain’t we all?” He sat straighter in his saddle. “Look over there, Red. Looks like we got a freshie.”
A dead man shambled out of a stand of trees near a ruined farmhouse.
“He’s gonna outpace the herd. That’s trouble. And one of us is gonna have to go down there and lure them across the stream, looks like.”
Red Wolf nodded. He twisted in his saddle and squinted at Dap.
“Because we killed everything that moved, we imagined ourselves safe from wolves. Now look.”
“Yeah, I hear you, Hoss,” Dap said, his voice thick with tobacco. “Who’s gonna lure those revs?”
Red Wolf watched the larger man for a moment, took off his hat and wiped his pate with a handkerchief, then said, “I’ll do it. You take out the freshie.”
“Awright. I’ll lure next time. You’re a miserable shot anyway.”
Red Wolf kicked his horse and rode down the hill, toward the stream. As he got closer, the revenant spotted him and changed course.
Swinging a leg off his horse, Dap dropped to the ground and laid his rifle across the saddle.
“Be still, girl. Be still.” He squinted his left eye and tightened his finger on the trigger.
The sound of his shot echoed across the valley. The pinwheel of vultures following the herd fell away. Crows erupted from the copse of trees behind the dead man.
“Shit.” He worked the bolt, sending a shell flying. His horse nickered. He could hear the herd lowing, coming across the valley, their moans louder now.
Looking over the saddle, he saw Red Wolf sitting on his horse, looking up the hill at him, face inscrutable. Having screwed up their courage – or hunger – the herd began moving across the stream. Off to the right, the dead man closed the distance between himself and Red Wolf faster than Dap expected.
He placed a hand on his horse to settle her.
“Whoa, girl. It’s all right.” He slid the 30.06 across the saddle again and sighted the revenant. Dap took a deep breath and held it.
Again the shot echoed loudly, the sound beating the air, then diminished. Dap smiled, looking at the motes of blood hanging in the morning light. He saw that Red Wolf held his pistol and waited, staring at the prone body of the freshie.
He waved at Red Wolf, beckoning. Red Wolf kicked his horse into motion and walked slowly back up the hill, leading the horde of zombies out of the stream.
“We’re getting our common sense back,” Red Wolf said, once at the crest of the hill. “Living with the wolves inside us has made us see.”
“Dammit, Red,” Dap said, spitting into the dust. “Why do you have to talk like that?”
2
In the afternoon, they came out of the valley and onto the interstate. Dap cut the barbed wire fence adjacent to I-40 with bolt-cutters and walked his horse through. Red Wolf followed, scanning the rise of interstate for any stray zombies. The herd moved easily through the fields, moaning and shambling, occasionally falling into irrigation ditches or getting separated by barbed wire. Dap sniped the laggers as best he could. The heavens darkened and the wind changed.
Dap looked up at the sky. “Couldn’t you let us get one herd in without all the damned weather? Is that too much to ask?”
Red Wolf nodded. “We’re all wreckage. Each one of us a collection of tissues, powered by a beating heart. But not them.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Red Wolf opened his mouth but Dap held up a hand and said, “Wait, don’t tell me, Tonto. I’d rather not know.” He paused. “You know how to ride before? Or you learn in the chain-link fields?”
“The fields.”
“Huh.”Dap spat. “You ride pretty damned good.”
Thunder rumbled in the west.
He looked at the dark clouds moving in, a sour expression on his face.
“Shit. The wind at our back is gonna make this twice as hard,” he said, wrinkling his nose. He turned and looked back at the herd making its way up the embankment and onto the interstate, two hundred yards distant. “Hard and fragrant. Okay, listen, Red. I gotta save ammo for sniping. But you got that pretty little pistol. And beaucoups of ammo. Without the revs able to smell us, it’s gonna be hard to keep them on our tail unless we get closer to them, and I don’t want to do that,” he paused, looking at the smaller man. “Or we make a big ruckus. So I want you to shoot off that little noise-maker every few minutes until we get back to camp. All right?”
Red Wolf tilted his head and looked at Dap, unmoving, except for the shifting of his horse.
“We got ten more miles to get back to the races, and we can probably make that before dark if we hoof it, but the sound is gonna be drawing them from all over, not just the ones on our tail. There might be ones in front of us too, so stay alert.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Tapping his horse with his spurs, Dap trotted ahead, moving between cars. Red Wolf looked after him, then raised his gun in the air, and fired. The undead behind them lowed. The wind blew the stench of the dead toward the men on horseback.
By the next exit, it began raining, coming down in fat, warm drops. A summer rain.
Dap picked off two corpses lumbering toward the approaching riders, shrugging themselves out of derelict cars. He fired three times.
“This rain’s throwing off my aim,” Dap said, sucking his teeth. He looked back toward the herd. “We’re gonna have to let ‘em get closer. See how they’re all drifting apart? They can’t smell us. This here rain is getting them all confused. Plus we’re downwind. Damnation. Rein it in.”
They stopped the mounts in the interstate, away from nearby cars. Rain dripped off of Red Wolf’s hat and down his neck.
> “Go ahead and fire that pop-gun, Red. Let ‘em know we’re here.”
Red Wolf fired and then all fell silent, except for the patter of rain and the lowing of the zombies, who shambled toward the waiting men.
“So, whatd’ya do for a living, you know, before?”
“A teacher. A poet. I made a living with words.”
Dap nodded and pulled a pack of Red-Man from his back pocket. He stuffed his cheek full of tobacco and chewed.
Red Wolf peered at Dap through the rain.
“Do you think I’m crazy, Dap?”
“Yep.” He didn’t even hesitate. “Crazier than a shit-house rat.” He shook his head. “Hell, Red. We’re all crazy. And why not? Everybody dies. Eventually. And becomes one of them. Makes me batty just thinkin’ about it.” He hooked a thumb at the herd behind him. “Inside everybody is one of them waiting to get out. ‘Cuz of some virus or something.”
“Lesch-Nyhan necrosis.”
“That what they call it?”
“That’s what they called it until the TV stations went off the air.”
Red Wolf turned back to the herd. One of the zombies tripped on a piece of debris and spilled forward onto its face.
Dap laughed, a hard sound thickened with saliva.
“And you? What did you do before this?” Red Wolf turned to look at him, reseating himself in his saddle.
“Rancher.” He shook his head. “Don’t that beat all? It’s the end of the world and I’m stuck doing the same damned thing I been doing for the last twenty years.”
“We’re just smoke, Dap. Smoke and flame and our lives move like water down a stream. If you can have any continuity between one moment and the next... Well... I envy you, sir.”
“Smoke, huh?” He reached out an arm and pointed at the herd shambling forward. “And that? Their flames been snuffed out. But they’re still burning. At least with hunger.”
“They’re pure. They exist, all their senses focused on one thing. They’ve rendered down all of human existence into hunger. Instincts, long forgotten, tamped down, bloom. They hunger. They rise.”
“What’s that? Poetry?”
Red Wolf nodded, then smiled. “I used to be in love with my own words. But I love other men’s words as well.”
Dap barked a laugh.
“If they’re so pure, why’d you have your gun out to shoot the freshie at the stream? Huh?”
“I didn’t want Dharma to get hurt.”
“Dharma?”
“My horse.”
“Jesus, you’re a piece of work.” He sniffed, gauging the distance between himself and the herd. “Come on, let’s go. They’ve got our scent, the pure sons-a-bitches.”
He tugged his reins, and walked his horse into a zombie.
The corpse threw its arms around the horse’s neck and buried its face in the fur, black teeth snapping. The horse screamed, a high pitched whinny that made Dap freeze. Rearing, the horse pulled the corpse off its feet high into the air. Dap flipped backwards, somersaulting over the rump of his horse, landing face down on the asphalt of I-40. His chin banged hard against the pavement. He felt his teeth crack and tasted the salty well of blood springing in his mouth.
Red Wolf pointed his pistol at the zombie and fired, Dharma moving unchecked beneath him. Dap’s horse screamed again, a red flower blooming on her neck. The horse jerked toward the median, dragging the zombie – and Dap’s gear – with it.
Dap pushed himself off of the ground, blood streaming from his mouth. He reached out and grabbed Red Wolf’s reins, stilling the wild movement of the horse.
“Raise up,” he said, the words strange and tasting foreign in the new configuration of his mouth. “I gotta get on. Herd’s coming. Scoot forward and I’ll swing behind.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Scoot up, goddammit. Herd’s coming.”
Dap swung behind Red Wolf, gripping the smaller man tight around the waist.
“Gimme the gun. You ride. Take it slow. Gimme the ammo.”
Red Wolf handed back the pistol, then pawed at his waist. He unsnapped his fanny-pack and handed it back to Dap, who slung it over his shoulder like a bandolier. Ammunition spilled from the pack.
“Don’t you zip up anything you stupid...”
He popped the clip, inspected it, and then slammed it back home.
The herd was thirty feet away. Dap’s horse stopped screaming from the median.
“Shit. I can’t believe you shot my horse.”
Dap slid off Dharma easily, despite his injury, and dropped to his hands and knees, blood dripping from his mouth. He scooped up loose rounds from the asphalt, stuffing them into his pockets.
“Dap,” Red Wolf said, voice still calm. “The zombie that got your horse is coming back.”
“Damn.” He turned on his knees, pistol out. The corpse lurched forward in the rain, his jaw working, horse blood down his front looking like black ink in the low light. A hoof must have caught the corpse’s stomach or pelvis, tearing it open. The zombie appeared to have an enormous penis. Guts swung from its lower body cavity.
Dap fired. The zombie wheeled, intestines swinging, then righted itself. It moved forward again. Dap fired once more, and the corpse’s head rocked back. It dropped to the pavement.
He swung behind Red Wolf.
“Go. Go.” He popped the clip, and began digging bullets from his pockets. The herd was ten feet away, moaning.
Red Wolf spurred the horse forward, and Dharma responded, moving into a trot. With each bounce, Dap’s mouth throbbed with pain.
“Move us away from the herd, but don’t go too far. We still gotta bring these undead bastards home.”
Dharma stopped fifty yards away from the herd. Dap reloaded the pistol, worked the action, then tucked it into his belt.
“Damn, that was close. I can still smell them on me.”
“They fall, they die. Their instincts stir. They rise.”
“Would you stop? My mouth hurts.”
The herd of zombies moaned in the rain. Dap slumped against Red Wolf’s back.
“Get us home, Red.”
3
They brought the herd over the rise and in sight of the races just as the sky turned dark. A pillar of black smoke rose from the corpse fires. They rode past fields locked behind chain-link fences. In the fields, men and women with hoes trudged back to the dining hall, going through interconnected gates. They stopped and waved as the two men rode past, leading the mob of zombies. Dap waved them away, so as not to confuse the herd.
The halogen beacons burned like stars, the smoke from the corpse fires making the blue light waver. The mouth of the races stood open, waiting for the riders and herd to enter. The sound of a generator buzzed in the distance.
“Damnation, that looks good to me,” Dap said, lisping slightly. He’d pulled the fragments of two shattered teeth as they led the herd of zombies back to the fort. If he didn’t spit, his mouth filled with blood. “You ever been through the races before, Red?”
Red Wolf shook his head.
“We took the old cattle races and refitted them for the revs. When you bring cattle to slaughter, they don’t like sharp turns, so you gotta lead them down these soft curved chutes – the races – so that they don’t turn around and head back to the fields. Zombies act pretty much the same way, as long as you got the lure in place.”
“What’s the lure?”
“Us.”
They walked Dharma into the race’s mouth. She neighed and danced sideways. Dap wrinkled his nose.
“Didn’t use to smell like this. It smelt bad all right, but not like this. All the dead folks have left little pieces of themselves smeared all along the walls. Hold up. Let’s let em catch up before we get out of sight.”
Dap hopped down and spat blood.
“Might as well walk the rest of this.” He patted Dharma on the rump, keeping his hand there as he walked around the horse. “Thanks, Red. For what you done.”
“What?
”
“Get me out of there. There I was drifting off, chatting up a storm, and you pulled my bacon out of the fire.”
“I save you, I save myself. It’s all connected.”
“Yeah. I guess. But you did shoot my horse.” He shook his head. “I’ll tell you what. I won’t tell anybody if you don’t.”
Dap smiled and patted Dharma’s haunch again. The herd shambled into the circle of light thrown by the halogens. When they were thirty feet away, Dap said, “Okay, let’s go.” He took Dharma’s rein and led her through.
They walked around the curve of the race where the wall became thick bars. Men in motorcycle gear and blank, reflective helmets waited with hooks, grapples, axes and long spears. One man stood away from the rest, hand on the lever of the gate. Seeing Dap and Red Wolf, he pulled the lever. The gate slid out with a hiss of air.
“Got about sixty behind us!” Blood sprayed as he yelled. “Get ready!”
They moved into the small holding pen. The man at the lever pushed it forward this time and the gate slid shut behind them.
One of the waiting men popped the visor on his helmet. He smiled.
“Just hang-out there for a second, Dap. We don’t want the herd to get wind of someone else and bolt.”
“Simmons, you goddamned fool. This ain’t a game.” Dap moved forward until he stood at the end of the pens. Black blood and pieces of rotting flesh caked the bars. An angry cloud of flies whirred and spun in the air as Dap approached. The moaning of the herd grew louder, and the waiting men began checking their gloves, refastening the velcro strips on their motorcycle armour.
Dap turned to another man and bellowed, “Miller, open up this murder-hole, for christssake!”
Miller, also blank visaged behind a motorcycle helmet, jumped toward the gate, surprised. Simmons raised his hand and he stopped.
“Just wait a second. Just a little bit more.”
The zombies took the last turn of the race, shambling into view. Simmons slammed his visor down with a gauntleted hand, nodded at Miller, and together they pulled the pins on the gate, swinging it open.