Best New Zombie Tales, Vol. 3

by Anthology

  She puts her face in the bowl of her hands and makes crying sounds. No tears come out, obviously.

  I almost put my arm around her, but I don’t.

  “I can’t keep living this way, Hadley,” she says. “I’m a Remade. I’m tired of hiding it.”

  I want to tell her, “Don’t worry.”

  I want to tell her, “I’ll love you no matter what.”

  But I fail.

  I thought Hafwen was happy before. But she tells me she wasn’t. She says she was smiling on the outside and crying on the inside.

  Now, she cries a lot.

  Now she’s pale, because she’s stopped wearing makeup. She’s cold, because she’s stopped wearing heated clothing. Her hair is white, because she’s stopped dyeing it. She looks dead, and says she’s the happiest she’s ever been.

  I should be happy for her. Instead, I keep thinking about how someone else used to inhabit her body. I can’t look at her the same way anymore.

  She’s used.

  Second-hand.

  Impure.

  She says a lot of Remade girls try to pass for living, because they’re ashamed of who they are. They buy into the whole natural is ugly paradigm. But natural isn’t ugly, she says. Death isn’t ugly.

  Whether she’s right or not, I don’t know.

  If there is a beauty in death, I don’t want to see it.

  I hate death. I hate that my mom died of thirst in a ditch on the side of the road. People drove by, but they didn’t see her. They didn’t hear her. Now when Hafwen stands right in front of me, I try to look through her. When she talks to me, I try to tune out her voice. Deep down, I know she doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment. I also know that Porter doesn’t deserve the beatings I give him every Tuesday morning.

  I just don’t care.

  “Animal brains have to be illegal,” I say. I say it with conviction, but I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I defend the living and the systems controlled by the living only because doing otherwise would feel like a betrayal. “They’re a gateway to human brains.”

  Hafwen laughs. “You really think there are hordes of Remades out there feasting on the brains of the living?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It could happen.”

  “Hadley, animal brains are illegal because Remades eat them. They make us feel good.”

  “Have you ever eaten any?”

  “No, but that’s not the point. The point is, prisons are filled with Remades, and most of them are there just because they’ve eaten animal brains. The government sells these prisoners to corporations to use for manual labor, and every living person involved makes a lot of money. Doesn’t this seem wrong to you?”

  “I guess,” I say. “But you have to admit, violent Remade crime is a big problem.”

  “If you read the statistics, you’d know that violent living crime is an even bigger problem. It only seems like a Remade problem because the media publicizes Remade crime a lot more often. A lot.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “But we are talking about it, Hadley. It’s important to me.”

  A few days ago, Hafwen told me the story of her parent’s divorce. I expected her to say that her mother lied about being a Remade, and when her father found out the truth he left her.

  But that’s not how it happened.

  Her father, Barry, knew her mother was a Remade from the very beginning. He was an activist for Remade rights and that’s how they met in the first place. He loved Cambree and he wanted to start a family with her. So they had a baby. Her name was Bronwyn. Since she was born from a Remade mother, Barry and Cambree knew that at any time she could pass away and be Remade with a new personality. This happened when Bronwyn was 19 years old. Barry loved Bronwyn, and refused to connect with Hafwen in any meaningful way, and all the while he blamed Cambree for his daughter’s death. One day he left for work and never came home again.

  Now, this story buzzes in my head. I know that Hafwen’s just looking for some living person to listen to her. To understand her. To say, “You’re right. These things are very unfair.”

  But instead I say, “I’m going to bed.”

  This is our coffee-shop, Hafwen’s and mine. Neither of us drink coffee but we enjoy the comity and the photographs of dancing mannequins on the walls.

  Today, I don’t invite her. I’ve never seen a Remade in here before, though I tell myself the reason I don’t call her is because I need some alone time.

  A man and a woman at the next table converse in loud whispers.

  I stare at my book like I’m reading.

  “I’m no racist,” the woman says. “But they have no legal right to be here.”

  “I say send them back to where they came from,” the man says. “Start paving all the cemeteries and let that be the end of it.”

  At least I’m not them. I don’t want to get rid of the Remades. I’m all for equal rights. Hell, I’m even dating one of them.

  I’m not a terrible person. So why do I feel like such a monster?

  Minutes later I’m in my car making a call.

  “Porter?” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Hey, man.”

  “Do you want to hang out?”

  “Hang out?”

  “Yeah. We could go bowling or something.”

  “I hate bowling.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I don’t know, man. I don’t usually hang out with clients.”

  “Come on.”

  “Alright.”

  Fifteen minutes later, and I’m in a Remade bar. My mind spins, but I still notice that this is a shitty place. Like it hasn’t been cleaned since it opened. Maybe that’s true.

  The waitress, who’s either a living person or one of those Remades who buy into the natural is ugly paradigm, hands me my chai, and gives Porter a wad of tin foil.

  “Thanks, man,” he says to the girl.

  She smiles and walks away.

  Porter unwraps the foil.

  “What is that?” I say.

  “Brains,” he says.

  “I know that. I mean, what kind?”

  “Human.”

  “Oh.” I swallow.

  “I’m just fucking with you, man. They’re pig. Want to try some?”

  “No!” I’m louder than I expect.

  “Calm down, man.”

  I try.

  Porter nibbles at the brains. He trembles.

  After a few sips of my tea, I say, “Is it really so bad being dead?”

  “What do you mean?” he says, gazing at his hands.

  “I mean, why do so many Remades eat brains? Is it such a horrible existence?”

  “No, man. Being dead is cool.”

  “Then why do you eat brains?”

  His expression changes to one that I’ve never seen on him before. It’s one of the looks my mother used to give me, when she was disappointed in me, but showed sympathy at the same time. “Figure it out yourself, man,” he says, very quietly.

  “Fuck you!” I say, standing.

  “Let go of me.”

  I realize my hand is squeezing his arm. My other hand, it’s in a fist.

  “I think you should go, man,” he says.

  Part of me wants to stay and beat the non-living shit out of him. I want to blame him. Not just for how I’m feeling right now, but for everything. My mother’s death. The state of the world.

  Everything.

  Instead, I release him and say, “Yeah.”

  Say you’re lost in the orange groves behind your apartment complex because you’re not ready to go home again, and you find three guys dragging a tied-up young woman toward a hole in the ground, with three shovels nearby. They’re alive and she’s not. You tell yourself that if they were dead and she wasn’t, the scene wouldn’t be so disturbing, because it’s supposed to be the dead who do things like this. Deep down you know that’s not true.

  You think, “Get your fucking ha
nds off her.”

  Say all of this happens. You’d be here too, like me. You’d crouch down behind the nearest trunk you can find, waiting and watching, with a wrenching knot in your gut.

  For a moment I consider racing out into the clearing, bellowing and swinging my fists. But these guys, they’re not like Porter. They’d fight back. They’d kill me.

  So I watch them bury the poor girl. I listen to her muffled screams.

  They dump her in the hole and start shoveling.

  They say things like, “You like that dirt in your face, don’t you, bitch?” and “Fucking zombie whore.”

  I try to study their faces, so that I can identify them later, but it’s so dark. And I’m crying too much.

  When they finish with the dirt, they pound the backs of their shovels against the grave, over and over and over. They laugh, and high-five.

  Finally, they leave.

  I dive onto the ground and start digging with my bare hands.

  What I’m uncovering isn’t just a young dead girl.

  From deep within myself, I pull out a truth that I’ve always known but never wanted to admit. Remades don’t eat brains because of the pain of being dead. The real pain comes from how the living treat them. How I treat them.

  I pull her out of the hole. I remove the gag.

  She looks at me with fear in her eyes.

  I’m afraid she’s going to scream.

  I’m afraid she thinks I’m one of them.

  But her face changes. It’s one of the looks my mother used to give me, after I did something bad and then made things right. “Thank you,” she says, very quietly.

  I put my arm around her, and in my heart I’m embracing Hafwen at the same time.

  I see her when I close my eyes. She’s beautiful.

  I’m ready to go home.

  The Traumatized Generation

  MURRAY J.D. LEEDER

  Land sniffed at the air. He felt a kind of peace out here, so different from the city thick with industrial fumes and soldiers. The prairies sprawled in every direction, wilder and more overgrown than they had been in more than a century, and the Rockies were lost in a pink haze to the west. All of it sent Land back to a childhood spent traipsing around the countryside, when he didn’t need to be worried about what might be hiding in the wheat.

  He rapped on the front door. Eventually a woman answered in her nightgown, slightly older than him, and glowering. She knew what was happening, and Land’s heart sank when he realized what he was about to do.

  “Mrs. March? I’m Michael Land, Paul’s homeroom teacher. I’m here to pick him for today’s…” He hesitated. “Today’s field trip.”

  “I didn’t give permission for any field trip,” she snorted, and Land put his hand against the door to stop her from closing it.

  “I’m afraid the school board doesn’t require parental permission when the field trip has been made mandatory by the government of Canada.”

  “The government,” she said. “You mean the military, don’t you? Either way, I’m not about to send my son away to be traumatized by your bloodshow.”

  “Mrs. March,” he told her. “In that car is the sergeant they sent to escort me up here. If Paul doesn’t come out of this house in ten minutes, she’ll have to come and talk to you herself. Nobody wants that.”

  There was desperation in her voice. “Mr. Land, you and I remember a time before the military controlled our lives. You’re an educator… how can you stand idly by and––”

  “Just get your son, Mrs. March. Please. Just get Paul.”

  Mrs. March breathed in deeply. “Wait here,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  She returned a few minutes later with the round-faced, serious little boy, dressed in unfashionable garments that made him a target for jeers too often.

  “It’s good to see you, Paul,” Land said, and the boy half-smiled up at him. Land knew the boy all too well––smart, shy, sensitive, and far too vulnerable for this world. Just like the young Michael Land, back when CNN reported that the dead were rising from their graves.

  The car door opened and Sgt. Hazelwood walked over to the door just as Paul was slipping on his coat. She was blond and beautiful but Land disliked her intensely. She was just the kind of rhetoric-spouting career army type that Land had encountered too often during his own tour of duty in Alaska. “All ready to go?” she asked, wearing a false smile that Mrs. March did not return. Ignoring the sergeant’s presence, Mrs. March dropped to her knees and embraced her son.

  “Remember not to be too scared,” she said, and Paul nodded uncertainly.

  “Do something for me,” Mrs. March said to Land. “Promise me you’ll sit by him. Try to keep him from being too scared. He has a weak heart.”

  Land nodded; before he could speak Hazelwood interrupted. “Then we’ll just have to strengthen up that heart a bit,” she said, ushering the trembling boy toward the car.

  As Land looked back at Mrs. March he wanted to gaze into her eyes and assure her that everything would go all right, whether it was true or not, but found that he couldn’t do it.

  ~

  The huge chain-link fence encircling Calgary was intended to keep the zombies out, which it did, but it also served to keep the people in. The rule of law didn’t need to enforce this, for few wanted to leave. Officers waived Sgt. Hazelwood’s transport through the military checkpoint at the city’s north gate. They continued down the vacant Deerfoot Trail, bound for the Saddledome. In the distance Calgary’s downtown was silhouetted against the morning sky, postcard pristine, like a snapshot from Land’s childhood.

  Paul was quiet the entire time. His parents certainly taught him to avoid talking to anyone in a uniform. Land felt like he was ferrying a prisoner to an execution. He always hated this day, the worst of any school year. Nothing he’d seen up in Alaska bothered him half as much as the sight of ten thousand schoolchildren screaming for gore.

  Yellow school buses dotted the Saddledome’s parking lot, and Hazelwood weaved through the crowds of kids before they found Mr. Land’s grade-seven class. Land hoped they’d arrive first, to spare Paul the humiliation of arriving under military escort, but no such luck. Built for the 1988 Olympics, the Saddledome had served for years as sports arena and concert venue. Now the military had appropriated it and remade it into their modern-day Coliseum.

  “You get out here,” Hazelwood said. “I’ll go park in the barracks and join you inside.”

  “What?” Land said. “Isn’t your duty here finished?”

  “No.” The sergeant flashed him an unreadable smile. “I’m with you for the whole day.”

  Land coughed in disgust. She probably thought he’d let Paul slip away from the show at the first occasion. She was probably right.

  The rest of the class caught sight of them as they stepped out of the military vehicle. Land saw Bruce Tomasino say something to Jason Barrows, and they sent their whispers all along the line.

  “Don’t worry about them, Paul,” Land said softly. “Just take your place in the line.”

  His student dutifully shuffled over to the uneven row of students. Land addressed them: “I don’t want to see any shoving or shouting. When we get the signal, I want us to go in a straight line inside and take our seats. Any questions?”

  “I got a question,” asked chubby Jimmy Schwab. “Is it true… I mean, we heard a rumor that Zombie Bob will be here.”

  Please, no, Land thought. That would make it even worse; the presence of a TV celebrity would change this field trip from a military demonstration to a rock concert. Robert Smith Harding went with a camera crew behind the lines in lost cities and in infested countryside, found zombies and inevitably killed them in daredevil ways. His weapons of choice ranged from a jackhammer to a katana. The kids loved him, wore his picture, talked about him constantly. Land watched Paul’s face grow grimmer still at this news.

  A whistle blew somewhere across the parking lot, and the rows of students started
proceeding up the concrete stairs and into the Saddledome itself. A uniformed officer waved Land’s class ahead, and he took up the end of the line to watch them keep their course. Amid all the noise of kids gabbing away, he could barely hear Bruce and Jason talking about Paul. He made out one sentence: “That corpse-hugger’s going to wet his pants when he sees this.”

  Land was always impressed by how little the Saddledome had changed since his childhood. This wasn’t a real surprise; though the military owned it now, it was still a sports arena of sorts. The floors were still sticky and the plastic seats still painful. The Jumbotron was still there too, leftover from hockey games. Now it flashed messages like “ENJOY THE SHOW” and “THIS IS FOR YOU KIDS.”

  The most visible changes were the sideboards. The protective glass now went up much higher than in the old days, and they needed to be cleaned of splattered blood and brain meat nightly. As usual, the arena was covered with a layer of freshly tilled dirt. At one end there was a raised platform with a few microphones, and at the other there was a black velvet drape, which hid the zombie cage. A trained crew with cattle prods were ready to send the zombies into the arena on cue.