Soma (The Fearlanders)
Page 1
Soma
By
Joseph Duncan
Table of Contents
Prologue
1. She had a dream.
2. She turned her hands…
3. She did not know…
4. She saw the sign…
5. If her heart…
6. Soma peeked timidly…
7. The interstate signs…
8. When she was a girl…
9. The light was faint…
10. She was so certain…
11. He set a plate…
12. He didn’t say…
13. She found to her surprise…
14. Night fell.
15. They retired…
16. She noticed that dawn’s…
17. About midmorning…
18. Perry wasn’t exaggerating…
19. They drove into town…
20. “Found it!”
21. The next day…
22. Jake and his girlfriend…
23. They talked…
24. She woke with a lurch…
25. It continued to spit rain…
26. Perry brought the truck…
27. The first twenty miles…
28. Perry reached beneath the seat…
29. The landscape on the far side…
30. About twenty minutes later…
31. They saw just one more…
32. They lost an hour…
33. Night fell…
34. They were, they said, disciples…
35. The leader of the company…
36. It was still night…
37. They were assigned…
38. Perry apologized…
39. Sarge found them…
40. They spent the remainder…
41. The hotel…
42. Soma was lighting the candles…
43. “Holy shit!”
44. “Run!”
45. Shock and horror…
46. Her heart…
47. They put her in…
48. At some point she slept…
49. As soon as Big Boss left…
50. She found…
51. In the great church…
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright Page
Copyright © 2014 by Joseph Duncan
Cover image by Nagrobek
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First E-book Edition, 2014
Published by Cobra E-books
Metropolis, IL 62960
E-mail: cobraebooks@gmail.com
Edited by Ian M. Walker
Also By Joseph Duncan
The Oldest Living Vampire Tells All
The Oldest Living Vampire on the Prowl
The Oldest Living Vampire In Love
The Oldest Living Vampire Betrayed
Menace of Club Mephistopheles
Lair of the Luciferians
House of Dead Trees
Hole: A Ghost Story
Indian Summer
Frankenstonia
Apollonius
Cattle
Mort
Remnants of the empire
Artifacts of love
Will I meet the designer
What will he dream up?
-- My Morning Jacket
“Remnants”
And each strand of her hair
Is really insect eyes
And each hole in her tongue
Is always occupied by the milk of the sun
And each hair on her head
Is fields of gold wheat
Where I'm lying on my back
Where I'm falling asleep
And each lash in her eye
Is really white roots
And each line in her skin
Is really red roots
And the neck her head's on
Is a tunnel of dawn
But darkness will come
But darkness will come
For sure, it's gonna come
-- Devendra Banhart
“Insect Eyes”
Prologue
The world was blue.
An early snow was falling, had been all afternoon, and as the sun dropped below the scrim of trees on the far side of the road, the sugary accumulation on the two-lane highway seemed to absorb the deepening blue.
This particular shade of blue reminded Jim Bob of Easter eggs.
It had always seemed slightly magical when he was a kid. Dyeing Easter eggs. He could not remember a lot of the things he did when he was a boy (he had never had the best of memories) but he could remember that. The yearly ritual: boiling eggs on the stove, mixing tabs of brightly colored dye in bowls of vinegar, the pungent smell, not just of the vinegar but the gassy odor coming from their thirty-year-old cook stove and the ashy smell of his mother’s cigarettes. Then the moment came! The eggs had cooled enough for him to handle, and he and his brother Richie performed the annual ritual.
He remembered placing the hardboiled eggs on the metal egg dipper, one at a time, balancing them carefully on the little hoop of metal, and then dipping each one in the bowls of dye. You could do one whole color or half-and-half’s, or dip them even further in the solution so that the colors overlapped and made stripes. He was fascinated by the way the eggs absorbed the colors. It was a simple chemical process, he knew, the molecules of food dye bonding to the eggshell, but it seemed oddly profound. The way the eggs absorbed the colors made the transformation alchemic, almost mystical in a way.
His mother always oversaw their Easter egg coloring, a Virginia Slim dangling from the corner of her seamed mouth. She was a short, thin woman with a personality as sharp as the contours of her body, always quick to criticize if she thought they were making a mess or not taking the endeavor seriously enough, as if it was more than just a child’s activity, as if it were some kind of religious rite. But her baleful supervision was never quite sour enough to spoil the magic of dying those Easter eggs, not for young Jim Bob Gillette.
That’s what color the world is tonight, Jim mused. It’s the color of eggshell dipped in blue food coloring.
Not that any kids would be doing such damn-fool things anymore. Not since the Phage. The dead had arisen, just like it said they would in the Good Book, and the undead had gobbled up childhood’s conceits, all the Easter egg coloring and trick-or-treating and shiny wrapped gifts under the Christmas tree, just as voraciously as they’d devoured the children themselves.
But it wasn’t all bad, not for Jim Bob Gillette. He was a free bird now, like the Lynyrd Skynyrd song, flying high since Armageddon. No more lawmen to tell him what he could and could not do. No more lawyers. No more judges. If he wanted to parade down Main Street with his dick swinging out the front of his pants and a big ol’ doobie clamped between his lips, who was there to wag a finger or haul him off to the pokey? Equal rights were also out the window. His gang, the Highwaymen, had a regular Ali Baba harem, and Rule Numero Uno was “put out or get out”. Which, in this day and age, was more of a death sentence than an option any of the Pusses might seriously contemplate exploring. No sir, the Pusses didn’t squawk so long as the gang kept their bellies full and protected them from the deadheads. And if any of them even thought about getting mouthy, why, all they had to do was take a good look at Sheila. Sheila had gotten lippy once and Jim Bob had laid her out with a right hook to the temple and then kicked her fucking teeth in. When Jim Bob said jump, Sheila asked how high.
Jim Bob shifted inside the duck blind, trying to find a more comfortable position. It was a cold night, and that m
ade every little sharp stick and rock jabbing him in the ass that much more painful. His nose was running and his feet felt like two size 12 blocks of ice.
Just a couple more hours, he thought. Then his relief would come and he could hike back to HQ. He’d strip out of these insulated coveralls, pile a big plate with whatever vittles were leftover from Thanksgiving dinner, then warm his tootsies by the kerosene heater while he refueled.
But that was still two hours away, and he was dying for a smoke.
He had a pack of Winstons in the inner pocket of his coveralls. He had grabbed several cartons from the OK Corral just a few days ago, when he, Ray and the Duck Brothers went on a supply run to town. The OK was a large convenience store in the neighboring village. He would fire one up, only deadheads seemed to recognize the smell of cigarette smoke. To them it was an advertisement for an all-you-can-eat brain buffet. He might roll the dice if he thought there were no zombies nearby, but this old blacktop, as remote as it was, was a regular zombie expressway. The nearest town was a shitty little burg called Brookville (population 1,242), and it was a good twenty minute drive from the farmhouse, but there were deadheads marching up and down the road all day.
Maybe they’re migrating, he thought. Heading south for the winter.
Couldn’t say he blamed them. He wouldn’t mind migrating to warmer climes himself.
Jim Bob checked his watch again. One hour and fifty-five minutes to go. Damn! Why did time crawl so slowly when you were working, and fly so fast when you were having fun?
He leaned forward and peered through the slit in the blind, looking up and down the road. He didn’t see any deadheads so he leaned to the right and ripped off a hairy fart.
“Woo boy,” he muttered, as the smell wafted up through the collar of his coveralls.
Oh, well... at least it was warm.
The blacktop was not a blacktop anymore. The snow had finally begun to stick on the tarmac and the road was just a blank white expanse, marred only by the zigzagging tracks of the last deadhead to shuffle past, and those tracks were growing fainter by the second.
That one had doddered by about half an hour ago. A big spade in bib overalls, frizzy hair dusted white, jaw hanging slack like some kind of retard. It hadn’t sniffed Jim Bob out, just shambled by, making a kind of sad gurgling sound in the back of its throat.
Jim had let the creature pass.
He didn’t let the creature pass because he was afraid of it. He had long since grown accustomed to living among the living dead, treating them more like snippy dogs than the monsters they’d once seemed to be. He wasn’t worried about the noise either. He was equipped with a crossbow, or as he liked to call it, Silent Death. He just did not like exerting himself if it wasn’t necessary. If he shot the big black one, he’d have had to get up off his lazy ass, walk out in the middle of the road and pull the bolt out of the zombie’s head.
Besides, they weren’t supposed to shoot the things unless a deadhead showed some interest in their side of the road. Orders from Big Boss.
Jim Bob checked his watch again. One hour, fifty-two left.
“Aw, fuck it,” he said.
He leaned forward, checked the road.
No zombies.
Setting aside his crossbow, he unzipped his coveralls and fished his Winstons from an interior pocket. He had to shift around a bit so he could get his fingers to the bottom of the pocket and snatch out his lighter, but he finally snagged it out, and he re-zipped his coveralls and leaned back to enjoy a cigarette.
“Another nail in your coffin, buddy boy,” he muttered.
That was something his mother used to say whenever she saw him light up, not that she had room to talk. By the time the dead started walking – or running, more often -- his ma had to plug the hole in her neck to keep the smoke from leaking back out anytime she indulged.
He didn’t have to remove his gloves to smoke. He had cut off the index and middle fingers of both gloves so he could pull a trigger. Or scratch. Or pick his nose. He opened the flip top and plucked out a coffin nail, then flicked his Bic and blew out a cloud of smooth, satisfying carcinogens.
“Ahhh! That’s good stuff now, innit?” he sighed.
He coughed, wiped his runny nose, and wondered how he was going to kill himself when the world ran out of cigarettes. He was pretty sure all the people who worked at the cigarette factories had been calling in dead the past five years or so.
Sure, there were plenty of Winstons Light 100’s out there in the big dead world and not a whole hell of a lot of dedicated smokers left alive to smoke them, but you had to leave Fort Fuck to get your fix and all the Injuns wanted to eat your brains. It was a real dilemma: zombies or nicotine withdrawals.
Maybe they’ll all freeze to death this winter, Jim Bob thought.
This was looking to be a bad winter. Probably the first bad winter since the zombie apocalypse. There was quite a bit of debate amongst the Highwaymen about the particulars of zombie physiology, and one of those questions was this: would they freeze if the temperature stayed below zero for a while? And if so, would they start moving again when they thawed out come spring, or would they just keep wandering around, cold or no cold, with icicles hanging from their naughty parts? The boys had even debated catching one and putting it in a freezer, just to see what happened, but that proposal had never quite come to fruition.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Big Boss had said.
A low-pitched groan drifted suddenly out of the gloaming.
Jim Bob lurched, biting back a cry of surprise. He snatched the smoldering cigarette from his mouth and smashed it out in the gravel beside him.
Fuck!
As quietly as he could, Jim leaned forward and peeked from the duck blind.
Deadhead, three o’clock.
It was a male, middle aged, dressed in a pair of tattered boxer shorts – red silk boxers, no less! The deadhead’s belly was fish white and bloated with gas. Its feet were ground to hamburger from years of ceaseless wandering. It tottered along near the shoulder of the road like a sleepwalker, would pass perilously close to Jim Bob’s position unless it veered off in the other direction.
Shit!
Bubbly green mucous dangled from its slack mouth. A greasy-looking black fungus had overgrown half its body.
It stopped and snorted the air as fluffs of snow swirled around it in a little vortex. For a second it looked like a scene from the world’s ugliest snow globe. Jim Bob ever so carefully lifted his crossbow into his lap. His nose had begun to itch maddeningly, but he ignored it, eyes locked to the creepy crawler standing just a few yards away. The zombie craned its head back and forth, nostrils flaring, blue-tinged fingers curling and uncurling. The light was almost gone from the world but they had good sniffers, those deadheads, and really good hearing.
Jim Bob flicked the crossbow’s safety off.
The zombie’s head swiveled toward the duck blind.
Fuckshit!
Its eyebrows furrowed over soulless, cataract eyes, and then it was running at him, hands held out in front of it like Boris Karloff in an old MGM horror movie. It came at him fast, howling like a banshee, and Jim Bob stood up, bringing the crossbow to bear.
Tried to stand up.
He had been sitting on the ground so long his right leg had gone to sleep. His knee buckled like a loose hinge, bowing in the opposite direction it was supposed to bend, and Jim Bob almost fell back down.
“Damn!” he hissed, hopping on his good foot.
He swung the crossbow back up, sighted on the ugly fucker’s head.
It was almost too dark to see now. The snow had turned the whole world into a fuzzy TV picture.
“Hold still for a second, you rotten motherfucker!” Jim Bob snarled, and then he pulled the trigger.
The weapon twitched in his hands like a living thing. He was already reaching for his Bowie knife, letting his crossbow, Silent Death, drop with a clatter to the gravel at his feet. He would have to kill it with his p
ig sticker if he missed the lurching creature. There was no time to reset the bow and nock another arrow.
No need.
Despite the numb foot, the dark and fingers that felt like frozen fish sticks, he got the ugly sucker smack between the eyes!
The deadhead took about three more running steps, then fell on its face with a thud, going down hard just five feet from Jim Bob’s duck blind. When it fell, the weight of its body came down on the shaft of the arrow and the bolt punched out the back of its skull with a disgusting spurt of cranial fluid. A hunk of rotten brain matter quivered on the tip of the arrowhead.
“Ew-hewwwww!” Jim Bob leered, swiveling his chin back and forth Ernest P. Worrell style. He checked up and down the road and then stomped toward the deadhead, flapping his arms. “How you like me now, bitch?” he yelled. “You like that arrow stuck in your head? Huh?” He snatched his handkerchief from his back pocket and used it to pull the arrow from the deadhead’s skull, holding the dripping shaft at arm’s length. “Jesus jumped up Cootie Brown! Your brains fucking stink, you undead faggot!”
He started to walk around the deadhead so he could roll the remains into the ditch--
--And that was when it got him.
“Rarrrrh!”
Jim Bob wailed as powerful fingers seized the collar of his coveralls, wrenching him back and forth like a pit bull with a kitten in its jaws. He lost control of his bladder and squirted about half a quart of hot piss into his Hanes. His knees buckled -- both of them this time -- and his ass kissed the pavement.
That was when he realized he’d been had, that one of his buddies had snuck up behind him, not some hungry deadhead with visions of human brains dancing in its head. Mainly because said buddy was laughing his ass off.
“Ray, you fucker!” Jim Bob snarled.
Ray backed off, still laughing, as Jim Bob jumped to his feet.
“Sorry, dude, I couldn’t help myself!” he snorted, holding his hands out in front of him.