by Holly Black
Then, before I could react, she ran.
I wanted to chase her.
But while I had been asleep, she’d used the rope and all the clever knots she had learned. They tightened when I struggled, and I had time to think.
So she lived. I won’t try to find her. I never want to see her again.
Because she was right.
About everything.
I think I’ll head northeast. Why not?
“Prom Night”
Justine: A fitting end to the anthology is one of the book’s most haunting stories. I could say a whole lot more but I don’t want to ruin it for you. Read, enjoy, and appreciate how much richer and more poetic a tale of zombies is than a tale of—well, I think I’ve said enough on that subject.
Holly: “Prom Night” creeped me right out. You know what I need? A nice unicorn story to get the taste of zombies out of my mouth!
Justine: I’m going to ignore Holly’s inability to appreciate one of the best stories in the anthology. It’s never polite to dwell on someone else’s complete lack of good taste. Instead, I would like to thank those of you who tortured yourself by reading the dread unicorn stories in addition to the brilliant zombie stories.
I know you could have easily skipped the stories with that horrifying little unicorn icon. But you didn’t. Proving that you’re made of sterner stuff than most of us. (Including me. I’ll admit now that I only skimmed those stories.) You’ve gone above and beyond any reader’s responsibilities. I’m proud of you. As a reward may I suggest a George A. Romero zombie movie festival? Go on, you know you deserve it.
Prom Night
By Libba Bray
The horizon was one long abrasion, the setting sun turning everything an angry red as it slipped below the dusk-bruised mountain range. Tahmina stood on the security platform and raised the binoculars to her eyes. A human skull appeared, the eyeholes absurdly large until she adjusted the magnification, shrinking the skull and bringing the stretch of desert into wider focus.
“Hey, got a new one for you,” her partner, Jeff, said. “What’s the difference between an undead and my last boyfriend?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“One is a soul-sucking beast from hell and the other is an undead.”
“Good one.” Tahmina swept the binoculars over the stark landscape till they found the figure lurching quickly toward the electrified fence. “See him?”
“Yeah. About fifty yards out?” Jeff answered.
“Forty, I’d say.”
“Damn. Is that … Holy shit. It is! Connor Jakes. Guess he didn’t make it to Phoenix after all.”
“Guess not.”
The figure in the desert wasn’t too far gone yet. His skin was gray, but it was mostly intact, just a few sores on his face. His eyes were milky, though. And from the looks of his bloody mouth, he’d feasted recently.
Jeff put his binoculars down and shouldered his rifle. “Man, he used to be so hot. I had some serious jerk-off fantasies about him.”
“Not so much now, though, I’m hoping.”
“Nope. Can pretty much say this puts a bullet in that happy place.”
“Ready?”
“I was born ready.” Jeff’s rifle fractured the stillness of twilight, and the flesh eater’s head exploded. The body dropped, shook for a minute, and lay still. “And that puts a bullet in Connor Jakes. Boo-yah! High-five me, beyotch.”
Tahmina kept her eyes and her rifle trained on the body lying ten feet from the electrified fence. “No popping corks until we see if he’s reanimating.”
“Dude, that was a direct hit. He’s gone,” Jeff said, a little hurt. They waited a minute, two. The body of Connor Jakes did not move. “Told you.”
Satisfied, Tahmina shouldered her rifle, and they trudged down the wooden steps to the ground. She took the key from around her neck, opened the small supply cabinet, and took out two pairs of latex gloves and an extra large heavy-duty garbage bag, which she tossed to Jeff.
“Hey, how’d you like that line? ‘I was born ready.’” Jeff tucked the bag under one arm.
“Not exactly original.” Tahmina handed him a pair of gloves, and he thrust his fingers into the latex haphazardly.
“I’m telling you, we could put this shit on TV.”
“There is no TV, Jeff.”
“That’s what I’m saying, partner. When it starts up again, they’ll need talent and programming. We could be the new reality stars: Zombie Cops!”
“Uh-huh.” Tahmina put on her own gloves.
“We should jump on that shit.”
“You loaded?”
“Totally.”
Tahmina cut the power to the fence, and they slid up the metal hatch that allowed them into the steel-plated walkway.
“You know tonight’s prom night. ’S gonna get insane,” Jeff said, sweeping his eyes along the thin slits in the metal, searching. “I hear the chess club went in for these crazy tuxes.”
Tahmina gave a small laugh while also keeping a lookout. “Oh, my God. Not the powder blue seventies numbers?”
“Indeedy. With the ruffled shirts. Two words: hideously awesome. Too bad there’s no yearbook. That would be a great picture.”
“No doubt. Okay. Here we go—eyes up.” Tahmina dropped into shooting position. Jeff flipped the four locks on the gate. He pushed it open and swept his rifle left and right. Nothing. He poked the decimated body with his gun. It didn’t move.
“Anything?” Tahmina called. She had her rifle trained on Jeff, just in case.
“Nah. We’re good. Let’s go.”
Moving quickly they manhandled Connor Jakes’s graying corpse onto the bag. A loose finger fell off, and Tahmina tossed it onto the body. She secured the straps and helped Jeff lift the package onto a raised platform of stones just off to the right. It was hard work, and the desert was hot and windy. It blew soot from the sacred fire into Tahmina’s eyes, and she blinked furiously against the pain.
“Let’s take him up to the tower now,” Jeff panted.
Tahmina shook her head. “In the daylight. Has to be daylight. Besides, there might be more tonight.”
Tahmina surveyed the desert again. Nothing. Not a jackrabbit or even a tumbleweed. They stripped off their gloves, dropped them into the ash can for burning, and closed the gate, securing all four locks. Jeff electrified the fence. Tahmina took down the clipboard and noted the time. It was eight o’clock, the beginning of their ten-hour shift. In the morning, when the sun spread its angry wings over the land, they would throw the body of Connor Jakes into Coach Digger’s Hummer, the one he used to take to away games to intimidate the other teams. They would drive the body the five miles to the Tower of Silence, a small, flat hill with a deep hole in the center, near the base of the mountain range. There, according to the customs of Tahmina’s faith, they would lay him out and tie him down on the flat surface far enough away from their town so that his corpse could not defile the earth. The vultures would come. They would clean him down to bones, which the sun would bake clean of impurity. Whatever was left of the body would be pushed into the center hole for burial. Tahmina would say the prayers and hope. It was all they had left. Nothing else had curbed the infection.
Robin Watson emerged from the shadows. She was wrapped in her mother’s too-big sweater over a white formal gown. Her hair had obviously been set with rollers; her face was wet with tears. “That was Connor, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Jeff answered without looking at her.
“You shot him, didn’t you?”
“Sorry. No choice.”
The crying became sobbing. “He was my boyfriend!”
Tahmina disinfected her hands and checked her handgun. “Not anymore.”
In the battered cruiser, Tahmina and Jeff drove streets pockmarked by light from the few unbroken streetlamps. The siren stayed silent. Using it might attract unwanted attention. Same for the cruiser’s red-and-whites. As it was, they kept the electricity use to a minimum. Blackout
was mandatory after nine. In the looted Wal-Mart a fire burned in a trash can. Somebody was wilding tonight. Somebody was always wilding.
At the intersection of Monroe and Main, they stopped at a red light. Observing traffic rules was silly—their blue-and-white was one of the few cars on the road, what with the gas rationing. But law was law, and order was necessary in a world of chaos. Somebody had to enforce that law now that the adults were all gone, dead or undead. Jeff and Tahmina had become cops by default. They’d been in student government together at Buzz Aldrin High School. He’d been treasurer; she’d been vice president. Over the summer, when the infection was a report on the Internet, a distant fear hitting places that were only thumbtacks on a school map, Tahmina and Jeff would get together and make plans for the coming school year: a rock musical to replace the tired Rodgers & Hammerstein bullshit, overhaul of the debate team, LARP nights, maybe even a battle of the bands. No lame bake sales or craft fairs. In July they organized a roller boogie car wash and made five hundred bucks for prom. It was going to be the best senior year ever. They didn’t even feel worried when the infection moved westward, and the adults built the fence.
Across the overpass the cineplex loomed. The C and P had burned out, making the word look like a first-grader’s snaggle-toothed mouth.
Jeff thumped his finger against his window. “Wonder what’s playing.”
“Same thing that was playing last week and the week before that and ten months ago.”
Jeff chugged a warm Pepsi. “Couldn’t this shit have waited until after we got the new X-Men movie?”
Tahmina thought about the last time she’d been to the cineplex. It had been in September. She’d gone with three of her friends. They’d shared a large popcorn. The movie had been about vampires; the lead actor had been incredibly hot, and they’d nudged each other and squealed during the kissing scenes. They’d had no homework that weekend. Their English teacher, Mrs. Hawley, hadn’t been well. She’d missed the whole week. That Sunday she’d died. Monday, during the autopsy, she had come suddenly awake and driven her ragged teeth into the coroner’s arm, severing it. Then, before the terrified assistant could stop her, she had torn open his skull and eaten his brain. It had taken a hail of bullets to tear Mrs. Hawley apart for good, but she’d already passed the sickness on to her oldest daughter, Sally, who had been Tahmina’s babysitter once upon a time. Tahmina remembered her at the kitchen table, them playing Monopoly by their own rules, Sally slipping the kids secret hundred-dollar bills. They’d had to set Sally ablaze when she’d reanimated. Father O’Hanlon had splashed her with gasoline. Someone else had tossed the lit rag. Her hair had ignited first, a halo of fire that had quickly engulfed her entire body. Tahmina had had no idea how fast a person could burn. Sally Hawley had staggered and twirled, emitting a high-pitched scream that had died down in the end to something that had sounded almost human.
The sickness had then passed from house to house, always taking root in the grown-ups, who would go straight for their children. By the fourth week, the kids had had to quarantine the adults, pushing them out into the desert. Some families had decided it was better to die together than to be split apart. They’d packed up their cars and fled in the night, leaving their homes behind, silent accusers. On the drives to the tower, Tahmina had seen some of those same cars in the desert, sand-encrusted, bloodstained, doors open, a doll or shoe half-buried nearby. Some teens had run off to find their parents, but when those same teens had started coming back to the town, hungry for flesh, the survivors had had to put everyone on lockdown. Nobody in or out, except for the drive to the burial ground. It was the only way to stay safe. Tahmina thought at times like this that it was weird to have to play cop with your friends. Like some kind of mock trial experiment in social studies where each person played a role and somebody always broke character by giggling. Nobody was laughing these days.
The radio crackled with static, followed by the deep, garbled voice of the night’s dispatcher, a Goth girl who had been in Jeff’s geometry class. “Yo, Joe Law. Got a call. Possible unlawful shenanigans at the Gas ’Er Up out on Pima Boulevard. Somebody’s handing out happy pills. You copy?”
Jeff picked up the handset and pressed the side button to speak. “Copy. We’re on it.”
“Over and out. May the force be with you.”
“Over and out,” Jeff said, laughing. He put the handset back. “See, that’s what I mean about snappy one liners. We should use that for our show.”
“Whatever, Holmes.” The light turned green. Tahmina signaled, a reflex, and turned left onto Pima.
Since the infection, drugs were a prized commodity. Now that the banks were useless, the ATM had been bled dry, and all the best stuff had been looted from the stores, money was worthless; bartering happy pills was a means to power. Prospective dealers broke into the pharmacies or raided their parents’ medicine cabinets, and traded drugs for car parts, food, sex, generators, whatever they needed or wanted. Tahmina had to keep an eye on the drugs. Strung out teens couldn’t be counted on to mount a counterattack. They might do something stupid, like fry themselves on the fences or possibly become more vulnerable to infection. Those Percocet and OxyContin would be necessary if somebody broke a leg or had to have a tooth pulled. And if things got really bad, they would need enough to end it.
The gravel crunched under the cruiser’s worn tires as it eased into the parking lot of the Gas ’Er Up. The headlights caught the ghostly images of several kids huddled near the rusted-out ice cooler. At the first sign of the lights, the kids scattered, except for the two dealers, who had fumbled their precious stash and were hurriedly retrieving their pills from the ground.
“Freeze!” Jeff yelled.
The two boys popped up, hands behind their backs. They were young, Tahmina thought. Maybe sophomores or freshmen. “What are you guys doing out here?”
“Nothing,” the shorter one with the long brown hair said. His words had the frayed ends of a voice stretching from boy to adolescent. Not even high school. Middle school. The taller boy still had braces. He’d have those braces for as long as the infection held.
“Don’t bullshit me,” Jeff demanded. “Show me your hands.”
When the boys didn’t, Tahmina repeated the order.
The smaller boy smirked. “What are you, his bitch?”
Jeff whacked the kid’s head with the palm of his hand. “Watch it, shithead.”
“Hey, that’s police brutality!”
“Fine. Make a report. If you can find somebody to take it.”
“Partner,” Tahmina warned, shaking her head. “What’re you guys holding?”
The taller boy, the follower, held out his palm full of round white pills. “This shit’s mine. I got it from when I had surgery last year. So why can’t I do what I want with it?”
“Because it’s called drug dealing and it’s illegal,” Tahmina said. “Besides, we don’t know how long the infection will last. We might need those.”
The smaller kid smirked. “What I need is cash. Then I’ll own this fucking town.”
Tahmina laughed. She gestured to the smashed windows of the ruined Gas ’Er Up, the burned-out streetlamps, the litter skittering across the parking lot, the half-starved cat skulking near the trash can. “Be my guest. Run for mayor.”
“Whatever,” the kid said. “Who died and made you God?”
“Everybody,” Tahmina said quietly. She looked from one kid to the other. There was no remorse to be seen. No fear or hope. Just a relentless need, an angry want that would never be satisfied no matter how many pills they sold. “Just give me the drugs and get out of here.”
“Repent! The end days are upon us and we must be purified by the holy fire!” The figure caught Tahmina and Jeff off guard.
“What the fuck!” Jeff gasped, fumbling for his gun.
The boys took their chance and sprinted across the open field, taking the cache of pills with them. “Hey!” Tahmina shouted after them, but it was no use and
she knew it. “Dammit!”
“The fire of heaven will save us all,” the figure said, stepping closer. He was a tall, skinny guy in shorts and an ASU cap, a poster-board sign hanging from a string around his neck.
“It’s our old buddy Zeke. Gonna be a banner night,” Jeff said, holstering his gun. He approached Zeke warily. “Hey, Zeke. Whassup, buddy?”
Tahmina could read Zeke’s sign now: REPENT OF YUR SINS! GOD’S RATH IS JUDGEMINT UPON YOU! Zeke’s spelling was no match for his zeal.
“The end days have come. We have to repent, repent.” Zeke’s eyes scanned the road constantly, unable to rest on any one spot. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and Tahmina wondered if he had stopped taking his Risperdal for the schizophrenia that the shrink in Phoenix had diagnosed his junior year. Two red gasoline cans rested at his feet, though Tahmina knew the Gas ’Er Up’s pumps were empty. There was only the one by the precinct, which was for the Hummer. These cans were probably left over from his family’s lawn care service.
“Zeke, what’s in the cans?”
“The fire of heaven. It will cleanse the earth. Not like what you’re doing on the mountain. That’s an abomination.”
“It’s … Whatever. Never mind.” Explaining Zoroastrianism to Zeke would take more trouble than it was worth, and Tahmina needed to save her energy. It was prom night, after all. No telling what was ahead.
“Hey, buddy, you want to ride with us? Come on. We’ll take a nice ride in the car,” Jeff said, like he was talking down a grumpy toddler.
“No! I have to purify!” Zeke zigzagged in the empty parking lot. His foot caught a squished Twinkie pack, and he tracked fake cream filling across the asphalt in little white heel marks. “Don’t you get it? This is a punishment on us. We have to be cleansed. Then it will stop. I’ve heard the voices. They tell me it’s so.”
“What’s it a punishment for, then?” Tahmina asked sharply. “What did you or me or Jeff or anybody else in this town do to deserve this?”