Soma (The Fearlanders)

by Joseph Duncan

“You made me piss my pants, you asshole!”

  Ray looked down at Jim Bob’s crotch, where a Florida-shaped wet spot was currently spreading down the man’s leg, and flew off into fresh gales of laughter.

  “Oh, my lawd! You did! You pissed your pants!”

  “I’ll fucking kill you!” Jim Bob yelled, and he launched himself at the other man.

  It wasn’t much more than a schoolyard scuffle. Ray had saved Jim’s ass more times than he could count since the dead rose up and took a bite out of planet Earth. Jim Bob just shoved his laughing companion around the road until he’d blown off some steam. He did land a few satisfying rabbit punches to his buddy’s chest and shoulder, but they did little damage and then he was spent. He leaned forward with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath, while Ray wiped his eyes. The black man’s laughter had wound down to the occasional snicker.

  “You okay?” Ray asked contritely.

  “No thanks to you,” Jim Bob gasped.

  “Your face is all red.”

  “Need to... quit smoking,” Jim Bob wheezed.

  “No, seriously. You look like you’re about to have a coronary.”

  “Just gimme a minute,” Jim Bob panted.

  Ray returned to the blacktop, looked up and down the road while Jim Bob caught his breath. The narrow white lane, bordered on both sides by virgin forest, was deserted in both directions. Visibility was probably less than fifty yards because of the snow, but Ray figured the coast was clear. Most deadheads screamed their heads off when they shifted into kill mode and he didn’t hear any wailing. The landscape was cold, white and silent.

  Ray went to the deadhead Jim Bob had just killed and examined the corpse.

  “Nice shot,” he said, when Jim Bob joined him.

  “Thanks,” Jim said.

  “One shot?”

  “Yep.”

  “Nice.”

  The general consensus among the members of the Highwaymen was that Jim Bob Gillette was the best shot at Fort Fuck. He had once headshot a deader that was hanging from a tree spring trap at fifty yards, and the deader was still swinging upside down from the rope when he did it. He was all but illiterate, and he had a nasty disposition, but he could shoot. No disputing that.

  They dragged the carcass across the road and rolled it into the ditch, then headed back toward the duck blind, wiping their hands on their pants legs.

  “You come down to relieve me?” Jim Bob asked.

  “Yeah. I brought you some turkey, too. I knew the guys wouldn’t save you any.”

  “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

  Ray walked a little way up the gravel drive and retrieved the covered dish he had brought down from the farmhouse. He handed it to Jim Bob, who had already crawled inside the duck blind. Ray got down on his knees and joined his friend. Jim Bob had already stripped off the cellophane wrapping and was scarfing leftover turkey.

  Because they were simple men, they talked about simple things. The sports teams they had supported before the whole world went down the toilet. The cars they had owned: mostly pickup trucks, the bigger the better. And finally, women.

  “What do you think about the tall one, the one Big Boss is so hot for?” Ray asked.

  “Alexis?” Jim Bob asked, his cheek distended with food. With the grey streaks in his beard and the bulging cheek, he looked like a man-sized chipmunk.

  Alexis was a late middle age blonde who had recently joined the harem. They had found her scavenging for food in the Brookville Sak-N-Sav a couple weeks ago. She wasn’t too bad for an older woman, looked like an over-the-hill model in her heels and fur-trimmed leather jacket, but she was a little too tall for Jim Bob’s tastes. Big Boss had made it known, shortly after they returned with the bony broad, that the new gal was off limits to the other Highwaymen -- for the time being, anyway. Boss was romancing her.

  “I don’t think she’s technically a she, know what I mean?” Ray leered. Jim Bob looked confused and he pointed at his throat. “Adam’s apple,” he said.

  “You think Alexis is a dude?”

  “I think Big Boss might be in for a little surprise when he gets tired of playing games with her.”

  “Or a big one!” Jim Bob declared. He had finally caught up.

  They laughed together, then realized they were on guard duty and checked the road for deadheads.

  Ray leaned back, adjusting his package with a grimace. “Speaking of playin’,” he said a little more quietly, “I think one of those bitches gave me the clap or something.”

  Jim Bob set his plate and utensils aside. He’d all but licked the plate clean. “You’re lucky one of them ain’t give you AIDS already. You know you’re not supposed to be fuckin’ them bareback. Ain’t no telling what kind of diseases they got, and Big Boss will give you hell if you get one of the Pusses knocked up. We ain’t set up to be taking care of no babies. They’d probably be deformed, too, what with all the radiation. Hell, half this snow is probably radioactive!”

  Ray glanced up at the sky, eyelids lowered thoughtfully. “You’re probably right,” he said. A couple of snowflakes drifted down onto his face and he scrubbed them quickly away. He looked at Jim Bob grimly and asked, “You got a roll of toilet paper down here?”

  Jim Bob chuckled. “Yeah. Why?”

  “I got to shit.”

  Jim Bob laughed. “Why didn’t you go before you walked down here?”

  “I didn’t have to go when I left.”

  Jim Bob fetched his cardboard box of guard duty supplies and handed his friend a half-used roll of TP. Ray stood up and headed toward the woods on the east side of the driveway. There was a fallen tree back there with a limb perfectly positioned for the popping of squats.

  “Be right back,” Ray said, hopping across the ditch.

  “Hope everything comes out all right,” Jim Bob called after him.

  He listened to Ray crunching through the underbrush. His partner stumbled in the dark and cursed, then fell silent. After a minute or two, Jim Bob heard a very faint zip, then some very noisome elimination.

  “How about a courtesy flush?” Jim Bob called with a grin.

  “How about you come over here and suck my dick?” Ray called back.

  “Get it ready for me,” Jim Bob retorted.

  Jim sat in the duck blind, grinning, waiting for Ray’s rejoinder.

  He waited.

  Just in case his buddy hadn’t heard him, he called out, “You gettin’ it ready for me, big boy?”

  Nothing.

  “Ray?”

  Scowling, Jim Bob grabbed his crossbow and loaded it, then clambered to his feet.

  “Ray, you okay?”

  He heard something, but it was very faint. A sibilant sound, like a sharp exhalation.

  “Ray!” Jim Bob yelled.

  A limb broke with a sharp snap.

  “Goddamn it!” Jim Bob muttered, and headed into the woods after his friend.

  He hopped the ditch and plunged into the forest, the crossbow seated against his shoulder, ready to aerate the first critter that jumped out of the dark at him. “You better not be playing another prank on me, Ray,” he called. “You know I have a twitchy trigger finger.”

  He tried to walk as quietly as he could, but the ground was thickly carpeted with fallen leaves and small, brittle limbs. Every step he took sounded like someone munching on Rice Krispee cereal.

  He smelled something musky and animalistic in the air. Kind of like skunk. He sniffed again, his upper lip peeling back from his teeth. Rotten skunk.

  He heard a grunt and a not-too-promising ripping sound. It was kind of wet, like someone pulling apart a watermelon with their fingers. Taking a steadying breath, Jim Bob swung around the trunk of a tree. He sighted on the log where they shit when they pulled guard duty. Ray wasn’t squatting over the log though. He was laid out on the ground, his pants around his ankles. And there was something big and red crouched over him. Something that wasn’t a deadhead. Couldn’t be. It barely looked human
at all.

  Even in the murk, Jim Bob could see that his buddy was dead. It wasn’t the expression on his face that told him Ray was dead because Ray had no face. Not anymore. It had been ripped off like some gory horror movie special effect, all goggling eyes and grinning skeleton teeth. Rather, it was the sight of that big red thing pulling out quivering loops of Ray’s guts that told him Ray was dead. You couldn’t play in someone’s guts like that without your victim screaming bloody murder. Not unless he was already living-challenged.

  The thing’s arms were slick all the way to the elbows, as if it was wearing a pair of fancy ballroom gloves. It had big metal hoops in the flesh of its back, and pointy protrusions on its skull, as though it was budding horns.

  What the fuck is that thing?

  Jim Bob opened his eyes wider, trying to enhance his night vision, but he couldn’t identify the creature. It was too dark. Whatever the thing was, though, it was doing a passable imitation of a magician’s scarf trick with his buddy’s innards.

  Jim Bob could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up. What he did not feel was his bladder emptying the remainder of its contents down his left leg.

  He sighted carefully on the back of the creature’s lumpy skull, sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he did it, but the creature seemed to sense him just a second before he squeezed the trigger. The big bogey twisted around, ducking down low to the ground, and luminous silver eyes fixed Jim Bob where he stood.

  Jim Bob froze, staring into those silvery orbs. For a moment the air seemed to throb like a huge electric generator had started up and he knew what it was he was looking at, what had killed Ray while his friend was taking a dump. He just knew it, as if the thing was broadcasting it into his mind, and Jim Bob Gillette felt the courage drain out of him like someone had pulled a stopper out of his guts.

  Demon!

  “Oh, Jesus,” Jim Bob groaned.

  It didn’t howl or come racing through the woods at him. It just stared at him, silent as death, and then it rose, head tucked between its muscular shoulders.

  It stood with a kind of indolent majesty, arms out to its sides, fingers dripping. Even with its head tucked down, the demon must have been seven feet tall, not counting the horns. Maybe even seven and a half if it stretched its neck out.

  It grinned a picket fence grin, teeth white and filed to points. It had pointed devil ears and a large, hooked nose. It opened its mouth and stuck its tongue out at him and the two ends of the creature’s forked tongue wriggled back and forth in opposite directions.

  Jim’s finger twitched and the crossbow jumped in his hands. He hadn’t meant to shoot and the recoil made him cry out.

  The thing that had killed Ray reached up and snatched the arrow from the air. Its arm moved so fast it was just a blur, but it didn’t seem impressed by its own speed, didn’t even seem conscious of the effort. It merely plucked the bolt out of the air and tossed it casually aside.

  Jim Bob retreated with a whimper.

  With a laugh, the devil loped after him, crashing through the underbrush.

  Jim Bob ran for all he was worth. Bare branches clawed at his cheeks like skeletal fingers, tore at his clothes, tried to snag his ankles, and then he was jumping across the ditch at the edge of the woods, ready to beat feet up the driveway and get himself home. He would be safe, he knew, if he could get back to the farmhouse.

  His foot skidded on the loose gravel when he came down on the other side. Jim Bob fell, his right ankle twisting painfully beneath him, but he rolled over as quickly as he could, breath puffing out in clouds of white vapor. He reached for his Bowie knife, fumbling with the straps of its sheath.

  The big thing that had murdered his friend stepped out of the forest. It stretched one foot across the ditch, the muscles of its powerful leg rippling. Jim Bob swung out and up with his Bowie knife as the monstrous creature reached for him, intending to gut the thing, disembowel it, buy some time to escape. But the creature was so fast! It caught his fist with a soft clapping sound and then twisted his arm until the bones of his wrist snapped like brittle sticks.

  Jim Bob wailed as the Bowie knife dropped from his twitching fingers.

  “I’m going to eat you now,” the devil said, its voice a silken baritone.

  It was the most beautiful voice Jim Bob had ever heard.

  1

  She had a dream.

  In the dream there was a man.

  He was neither old nor young, but he had very kind brown eyes and bright white teeth set between full, soft-looking lips. He had glossy black hair, which he wore unfashionably long and swept back from his face, and a thick, curly black beard that she had always found slightly comical for no good reason at all. He had a long, thin, lithe body, almost too slim, and large hands with long delicate fingers. A surgeon’s hands or perhaps a musician’s. He was neither of those things.

  In the dream he spoke to her.

  “I know you want to stay here,” he said in the dream, “It’s familiar and we have plenty of food and water, but, baby, it’s not safe, and I don’t know how to convince your father it’s not. So far, everyone who’s stumbled across the farm has been peaceful. We’ve done a little trading and shared our food with them, but not everyone’s going to be so civilized. One of these days, someone is going to come along and they’re going to want this place for themselves, and they won’t hesitate to use violence to take it. It won’t be much longer, either. When the food runs out, people are going to get desperate, and desperate people do terrible things, things they might not otherwise do. We need to get prepared now. And if your father doesn’t come around, if he doesn’t take off his rose-colored glasses, I’m taking you and Aishani away from here.”

  That is what he said in the dream, with his kind brown eyes and bright white teeth, and she knew he was right. As much as she loved her father and respected his ideals, she knew her husband was right. They needed to fortify the farm if they wanted to survive. Even in the best of times men could be cruel and grasping. And these were far from the best of times. And things were only going to get worse as food supplies dwindled and people started going hungry. But how was she going to convince her father of that? Her sweet, absent-minded, pacifist father.

  She said her husband’s name when she woke up, as if she expected him to be there by her side, sleeping in the bed beside her as he had done every night of the seven years they had been married, before the Phage came and swept away her happy life.

  “But how do we convince him, Nandi?” she asked, and then she touched her throat with her hand because it hurt to speak.

  She cleared her throat and tried to work some spit up in her mouth, but the spit would not come. Her mouth was as dry as sun-weathered bone, and it stayed dry, no matter how she wriggled her jaw and tongue.

  “Nandi, where are you?” she croaked, and then she looked up to see where he had gone, and she saw that he was not there. She was alone in an overgrown meadow, and it was night, and a great silver moon was shining down, making the dewy grass sparkle.

  Fear jolted her like an electric shock.

  “Nandi?” she called.

  Softly, from somewhere behind her, a low moan pierced the night air.

  Not alone!

  Soma wheeled around and saw a small group of the living dead kneeling around a carcass in the cat-tail grass. She could not tell what the glistening mass of tissue and bones – black and white in the moonlight -- had once been. It was unrecognizable, but she did not believe that it was a human being.

  Please, don’t let that be a person!

  She realized that she had cried out a little, for some of the zombies looked in her direction, their eyes bereft of human consciousness, their faces slack and smeared with blood, but they did not seem much interested in her, and they returned to their meal without moving in pursuit of her. They tore the bloody meat with their hands. Brought it to their mouths. Chewed slowly and noisily.

  Why didn’t they attack? They s
hould have attacked. They should have started howling and given chase the instant they saw her. She was quite familiar with their behavior. She had evaded such creatures for the better part of a year. They should have attacked her the moment she called out her husband’s name, but they hadn’t.

  Why?

  Maybe this is the dream, and Nandi, speaking to me of safety, is the real world, the waking world, she thought.

  That did not seem right. She did not feel like she was dreaming. The field, the moon, the cool night air, all of those things felt very real to her. They had the constancy of reality. She could hear crickets chirruping, and they sounded just as they did in the real world. The stars in the sky glimmered much too realistically. And her body…

  She held her hands up before her eyes and let out a squeal of horror.

  They were the hands of a dead woman.

  2

  She turned her hands back and forth in front of her eyes, staring at them in disbelief. The flesh was gray and leathery and peeling off in patches, like the bark of a birch tree. It was paper-thin, too, so that she could see the muscles and tendons and veins running just beneath the surface. When she flexed her fingers, she could make out how the muscles and bones worked together to move the digits, like some mechanical prop from a low budget horror movie.

  She touched her face then and felt the same dry, leathery flesh and the hard contours of the bone underneath. Her nose was shriveled and rigid like a bird’s beak. Her ears felt like two slices of dried squash. And her hair, which had once been full and thick and glossy black like Nandi’s (her best feature, most folks said)… it was thin and brittle now, and came out in sprigs at the slightest tug.

  She held her fists out in front of her, staring in horror at the tufts of hair hanging from them, fine as spider silk.

  She flicked the hair from her fingers with a small sound of disgust.

  What am I? Where am I? How did this happen to me?

  She tried to remember. She closed her eyes and reached back in her mind for the most recent memory she possessed. She thought it would be of her husband, her child, but Nandi and little Aishani were very far removed from her most recent memories. They were like photographs at the back of a very thick and very dusty photo album. To get to those memories she would have to flip through a hundred intervening pages, or exert her will and turn all the pages at once…