by Jim Couper
“What about schools?” Jane protested.
“We’re continuing as normally as possible to minimize panic levels. Schools remain open. We have extra busses and all students go to school by bus in a protected convoy.”
Colonel Mayhew pointed to a picnic table covered with a red and white chequered tablecloth and offered a glass of wine, adding, “The winery has been very good to us.”
In tandem Jane and Jesse answered with clarity and volume, “We do not drink on duty.”
Jane asked if the army’s equipment included infrared sights and night vision binoculars. The Colonel said predators’ bodies apparently did not give off heat and thus the equipment proved worthless. He said more tanks and flamethrowers had been ordered and would be deployed to Peachland streets.
The two police departed with the feeling that army action was reactionary and no permanent solution would come from the winery atop the hill. Back behind her desk Jane called the regional health officer to check progress with steel coffins. “It’s a double negative,” the doctor replied. ”I can’t find anyone to build them for less than $7,000 and I can’t find anyone who would buy them for that price if they were available. Even if they were free no one wants them. They don’t want their dearly departed in a cold steel coffin, as if it matters.”
“But can’t you order that they have to be used?” Jane protested. “This is a public health issue. This is your jurisdiction.”
“When it comes to burials, religious rights and human rights prevail. The best I can get people to agree to is putting steel strapping around the coffin. At least you know they can’t be opened. Besides, most now opt for cremation, especially when I paint a picture of their loved ones rising from the ground and coming home for dinner. No one likes the idea of their mother chewing their brains out. It just isn’t pretty. Sorry, but that’s the best I can do.”
“OK, Doc. One more question. If you found someone willing to use a steel coffin could you finance it?”
“I could probably find the money. Right now I’m having one built for about $900, but it’s tin, not steel. Neither strong nor pretty. It should be at the morgue within an hour. Come over and try it − I’ll bury you just a foot or two of soil. Be interesting to see if you can kick your way free.”
Jane declined the offer and thanked him for his efforts. Her last call went to forensics in Vancouver where bits of flesh blown off by bullets went under the microscope. “Same thing again,” the chief physician reported. “No blood in the veins. Some sort of low voltage electrical charge travels through stagnant blood. It also looks like neurons have become supercharged and spread throughout the body. That’s all I can report. Never seen anything like it and hope I never see it again. Don’t understand it yet. How are you guys doing? I hear it’s bad.”
Jane conceded that bad was an understatement and the situation had deteriorated. She described the slaughter of army men and when the Vancouver scientist asked why the town had not been evacuated she could only answer that the same thought had occurred to her. The army now called the shots, she explained, and Colonel Mayhew rejected evacuation. He equated it with defeat.
Jane finished her list of mundane tasks by assigning duties to her remaining officers and preparing for new recruits arriving from Regina.
Television announcers verged on hysteria as they updated the situation and one crisis faded only when a new, more dramatic one could be deployed with more hype and more fervour. For that reason Jane hated to rely on TV as an info source. Newspapers delivered news a day late so it was actually an oldpaper. Radio stations couldn’t afford reporters and the internet relied on rumors and half-truths, so there was little else.
Today nothing supplanted a story of a zombie attack so Jane let the TV babble in the background. Only an overnight return of the ice age or a Korean train crashing into an overloaded ferry could compete with a rampage of cannibals. No hype required − just sombre, puzzled faces delivering depressing facts, figures and forecasts. Jane clicked a new channel and an ad for a zombie trap ended. Another anti-zombie ad she hadn’t seen before commenced. The announcer sounded like the dam that held back his tears would break as he spoke:
“No one wants a loved one coming back and attacking them. The Zomb-Bomb spares the horror of having to fight, to maim, to behead a loved one who has risen from the grave. Imagine your recently buried mother … no, it’s just too horrific. The Zomb-Bomb spares you from both images and actions. Simply attach it to your loved-one’s coffin. When movement is detected it detonates. The recently departed stay departed. Technology is based on land mine use in Afghanistan. Security and protection, thanks to Zomb-Bomb. Available at undertakers and retailers. ”
Wow, thought Jane, free enterprise may have the answer. Why didn’t the coroner come up with that? Her phone rang, as it did constantly, but she didn’t pick up. Voice mail said, “You have 43 new messages.” Every news service from New York Times through the website Upfromthegrave.org wanted to talk to her. Pressing number nine to delete kept her mind off how helpless she felt.
20
A day had passed since Mort stumbled beside his comrade Mona. Together they had done some night walking and stalking, but came up empty handed. Mona couldn’t talk and seemed unable to understand the simplest of sentences so they had little in common. The look of her made Mort want to regurgitate both Mary and Uncle Albert who sloshed around in his lower regions with bits of alley cat. Maggots were winning the battle for territorial turf on Mona's chest and on her leaky black scalp only a few strands of stiff, mildewed hair remained. Little wonder she smelled worse than the rest. Quickly, by his understanding of quickly, Mort walked ahead, putting a few yards between them and giving his nose relief.
Compulsively, yet cautiously, he again edged his way towards Peachland Cemetery. Before he got close the sound of explosions introduced fear to his icy heart. He slunk from tree to tree until he found a rocky outcrop that overlooked the necropolis. Flak-suited soldiers surrounded the three grassy acres. Gravestones had been blasted to dust. Bazookas and mortars, with twitchy fingers at the ready, pointed at lush grass beneath which, for hundreds of years, Peachland citizens had found peace in their final resting places.
Mona trod forward, oblivious to the dangers that caused Mort to stop and observe. With arms outstretched in classic zombie form, she trudged onward to warmly envelop the closest soldier, eat his offal and dig for skullcandy. Selected soldier, standing alone with grenade launcher, made the all too common error of focusing his attention on the target ahead of him, ignoring what approached from behind. She chomped a huge chunk from his neck and both lost their balance. As they fell she plunged her hand, up to the elbow, into his abdomen and pulled out plum-sized pieces. When they hit the grass his prostate had reached her mouth and its seminal juices spilled down her throat. The soldier’s final scream rose above the general din and attracted attention.
Knowing his buddy was a goner, a young private lobbed a grenade that detonated between Mona’s feet and blew off arms, legs, maggots and whatever held her together. Mona and the gutted soldier became a downpour of flesh. Mort moaned in despair. The loss of a fellow walking dead and the waste of an edible human pained him. Near his feet a parched pancreas thudded into the dirt. Waste not, want not. Mort stuffed it into his mouth, but it must have belonged to Mona for it gagged his throat and he ejected it as he would mouldy dog food.
Beside a white grave-marker a thin arm reached through the dirt and a second arm followed. Then a head pushed from the ground like a mutated dandelion emerging in spring. The rear of its skull was missing and brains absent. Upwards its arms pushed and beneath the emerging decomposing shirt no innards did their part in holding him upright. The stout man, a butcher who had retired early to Cream Bay, got to his feet and took his first two stumbling, slouching steps. Soldiers, breathlessly watching the birth of an undead, finally unloaded their fury. Guns and well-aimed grenades sent flesh and bones in all directions including up into the air. A moment of
silence followed the clicks of reloading. Bones landed on the ground and another barrage of firepower obliterated them.
Mort cringed at the needless overkill, but did not understand his revulsion at the destruction of a cannibal with no ability to think or retain nutrition. Was this creature his kin, he wondered? Had he sunk that low? Did he care how low he could go? His thinking impressed him.
Mort studied the perimeter and saw a young female soldier dressed in camouflage who had retreated behind rocks to disassemble her rifle in an attempt to repair it. She squatted, facing the action, and in less than a minute Mort emerged behind her and had his teeth in her neck and his hand over her mouth. He ripped ravenously and she spurted onto his fresh clothes. Blood was not his cup of tea so he dug beneath her bullet-proof vest where he had no interest in her plump breasts or muscular shoulders. With talon-like nails he sliced open her vulnerable cavity. Experience taught him where to find kidney and liver and they tasted like they had been sautéed in the finest virgin olive oil and garnished with exotic herbs and spices. He had eaten Marks and Spencer’s steak and kidney pie, but her organs exceeded the British store’s product 1,000 fold. Below her stomach he uncovered a cluster of cancerous tumours that detonated in his mouth like Marechal Foch grapes that had achieved a perfection of ripeness, still on the vine. Mort considered that this poor woman had but a few years to live and was impressed with his consideration. Surely, had she known, she could have spent her time doing something more worthy than hunting zombies. Mort tediously thought that maybe she could have been a waitress or a Mary Kay rep and given something back to society before she succumbed.
Like a crazed coyote he dug in, favoring small tasty morsels that added little bulk to his distended belly. Heavy organs, like lungs and heart, got ignored as he made a stab at dieting. His waistline would become a concern if this eating habit continued and why wouldn’t it, given the addicting pleasures? Thoughts of constipation crossed his mind.
In his travels Mort had picked up a rucksack that contained a tire iron discarded at roadside: he now knew why he kept it. The tire iron’s sharp end chipped against the soldier’s skull as Mort carefully worked his way around her hairline as if cutting into the rind of a grapefruit before peeling it.
With circle complete he whacked her head with the lug end and unhinged her lid with his fingers. His teeth pulled at the meninges and then his face dove inside, sucking and slurping as he shamelessly moaned and groaned. After his tongue unseated the last mushy dribble he rested against a tree, shivering, exhilarated, elated and wishing he had some Exlax.
Mort stared at his victim expecting to feel pride in the job he had done. Her pretty young face looked skyward and he saw moisture in her left eye. A tear? Had her last thoughts been of her mother answering the door to find two men in uniform prepared to announce the news most feared? Did she think of her father, on the day of her funeral, re-reading her last letter? She wore a gold ring. Did her final thoughts go to a husband? Or children: a little boy and girl who would never know the woman who had brought them into the world? Did she think of her family as he thought of Abacus, Calculus and Malodious? Did she die knowing she could rise again and devour those who remained on the top side?
Mort considered sobbing over what he had done to a woman who had done nothing to him, but his eyes stayed dry. He concentrated on her sins and how she deserved her fate because she had taken up arms against a sea of strangers without trying to understand them. Cancer would kill her anyway, although doctors might have found her disease and saved her.
Was there help for addicted flesh-eaters, Mort wondered again? An AAA: Anthropophagi Anonymous Association? He didn’t want to be addicted. A little peer support would go a long way. In front of a group he could say, “I have a problem: I am an addict. I eat people.” He could reform.Schools had counsellors; perhaps he could see one without charge. He was a teacher, after all. Would they comprehend that a chemical imbalance made him do it? There was no forethought, no conscious decision, no planning. A jury would plainly see temporary insanity.
Mort leaned over the slain soldier, put her skull back in place and pulled her clothing over her red stomach hole. He lifted her and the top of her head toppled onto the dirt. If he could have vomited her brains back into the empty cavity and up-chucked her guts into her torso he would have done so. But her vitals mixed with his other stomach contents, including the cat. He might regurgitate a fur ball into her skull.
After fumbling to undo a bow tie in her shoelace, Mort yanked off her left boot, removed her sock, stretched it and slid it over the top of her head so it held her skull together. She looked good, like a rapper.
When he hoisted her onto his shoulder she felt like a dead weight with her military equipment adding unexpected poundage. Blood loss and missing organs should have lightened her. Perhaps he had lost strength. He picked up a thick fallen branch and snapped it easily with his hands. Mort pushed up the bloody sleeves of his hockey sweater and flexed his biceps to admire them. A pair of pipes the size of household water conduits popped up and he wondered how such unimpressive bulges could snap deadwood the thickness of a model’s thigh.
With his burden bouncing on his shoulder, Mort walked uphill through the evergreen trees for 30 minutes until he found a suitable clearing with soft soil. Despite the long lurch his legs didn’t tire and he wasn’t out of breath. He noticed no intake of breathe at all and no movement of his chest. What’s with that, he wondered, he could run a marathon.
From deadfall littering the ground he picked up a branch, snapped it over his knee and used its sharp end to drag a trench in the earth at the edge of a glade. When sufficient soil had been scraped away he dumped the young soldier’s body into the trench. Before piling rocks and dirt over her, he checked her ID: Mandy H. McDonald. Into the soil he scraped overlapping M and M, like a pair of golden arches in need of support.
Emerging sunlight began burning into his eyes: he had to find a quiet spot to hide for the day. Checking into Holiday Inn wouldn’t be easy if he had to explain he would be checking out at sunset. A hollow tree that had it innards blown apart by a lightning strike looked comfortable so Mort squeezed in. Sleeping upright should have posed a problem, but since pain didn’t enter the picture and reclusiveness rather than rest rounded out the daytime requirements, any port in a storm was fine. Pounding guns disturbed the vale bellow.
As sun flitted through the trees and shadows decorated the forest floor Mort marvelled at how the mental dots started to connect: A led to B and B caused C. Linear logic returned with a vengeance: the volume of an isosceles rectangle contains a cute angel. A hole is equal to parts of its sum.
21
Vladimir’s Bar had been brokering booze in Peachland for as long as anyone could remember, yet few had stepped inside to enjoy good prices and understated decor. The dim drinking hole provided patrons with no televisions, no music, no strippers and no happy hour. It existed without theme, ambience, atmosphere or any quality whatsoever to attract clientele. Pool tables, dartboards and shuffleboard had never been added nor had video games or ATMs.
If not for lower than expected prices for beer and wine, the bar would have had no regulars and thus no customers. The few dependables consisted mostly of belligerent men and rude women who chose to drink alone because life provided no other option. Rounding out the meagre, regular clientele was an occasional couple requiring an anonymous meeting place, older androgynous singles and the owners themselves.
Every week a newcomer or two wandered in, had a drink and never returned. Such customers felt neither warmth nor hospitality and were not offered an opportunity to join a customer rewards program. Vladimir’s offered the same marketing challenge as a flea-bitten dog at the SPCA.
In the darkest corner sat an overweight woman, known to the bartender as Farting Fannie, who busied herself picking crusty green pieces from her left nostril. At the bar a young man in a business suit consumed vast quantities of draft beer, as was his routine on alternate d
ays of the week. The barkeep seldom talked to him and did not call him Norm or any other name. On occasions when the drinker had to be identified he got fingered as Barstool Bob, which became BB, as in “BB needs a refill.”
Two young men who looked like athletes from a visiting sports team held down stools at the end of the bar, wondering why, of all the taverns in all the towns, they had chosen the one least likely to stock women. The only females in the bar, save Farting Fannie, held hands and hunched over a table. They paid no attention to anyone else. Those six customers made it an unusually busy afternoon at Vladimir’s.
Echoes of emptiness within the dreary establishment didn’t bother the owners because a financial bonanza from a crowd of happy imbibers would have been opposite of what they required. A numbered company composed of 18 hollow-fanged citizens constituted joint ownership. Vladimir’s had two purposes, the primary one being to launder money, something the owners had in abundance and couldn’t get rid of without drawing attention. They loved technology and closely followed release dates for new gadgetry, but buying the latest in computers, cameras, cars and 3D TVs diminished their financial stronghold the way a leaky tap in Spokane diminished the reservoir behind Grand Coulee Dam.
The owners owned a cache of gold, stamps, coins, jewellery and other precious items collected over hundreds and hundreds of years. Many of these treasures had crossed the ocean in oak chests, centuries back. Only during the Great Depression did a few of these rainy-day savings need cashing-in. Otherwise the financial sun always shone and now certain government departments made matters difficult by keeping computerized records and doting on ever-livers with pension plans and old age security. Instead of solving problems these benefits of socialism created problems: cancelling a pension plan while alive meant entanglement in miles of bureaucratic red tape and endless questions. Collecting the same pension for more than half a century made matters far worse, particularly when picture ID showed someone who didn’t look a day over 30.