“What the Hell? Have them slaves lost their minds?” Reeves said rhetorically. Ten overseers lived in the barracks. Five sat at the table playing cards, and the other five had retired to their bunks. The activity outside had everyone up and scrambling for weapons.
Reeves opened the door, and immediately pulled the revolver from his side. He was face to face with a ghastly looking zombie standing in the doorway.
What scared Reeves even more than the looks of the creature was he recognized him as the slave that died under his whip just two months before. The decrepit man was naked from the waist up. The only clothing he wore was a simple pair of trousers with a rope tied at the waist. Live worms writhed on the outside of his skin. His eyes were darker than any night had ever been.
Reeves’ hand shook when he pulled the trigger on the revolver. The bullet punched a hole in the zombie’s chest. It staggered back at the impact, and it then fell forward on top of him.
More members of the walking dead entered from the door as deafening gun blasts filled the air. The pungent odor of gunpowder stung the eyes of the terrified men, and mixed with the stench of rotting meat from the walking dead.
Reeves screamed in terror until the last spark of life exited his body. The zombie fed ravenously on his tender flesh.
The others fell to the onslaught of the hungry horde as revolvers snapped against empty shell casings. The final yells of the cruel overseers replaced the sound of gunfire.
Oil filled lanterns crashed to the floor in the fray. Pools of burning oil spread quickly, creeping up the walls, and lapped across the roof in a matter of minutes.
Darque, her mother, and the rest of the slaves watched as their brothers and sisters sacrificed their lives once again for the survival of the village.
The dying screams of the slave masters faded into the snap and crackle of the fire.
“What now, Mother?” Darque asked.
Mambo Alma closed her eyes and looked inside her mind. “Our journey just now begins.”
The End
Lord of the Flies: A Zombie Story
“Say it! King Zeke. Come on, say it! Call me King Zeke!
Jeremiah’s face turned a deep purple. His brother, Zeke, had him from behind in a chokehold. He couldn’t speak. He almost couldn’t breathe. The tips of his toes barely touched the floor. He struggled to pull out of the deadly grip, digging his fingers deeply into the hairy forearms of his older brother.
“Stop it, Zeke. You’re going to kill him!” Sarah pleaded.
Zeke gave her a wicked grin, exposing his left canine. “I ain’t going to kill him. He just needs to learn a lesson.”
“He’s trying to say something but you’re squeezing him too hard.” Solomon was only eleven, but puberty had kicked in early with him. The extra testosterone helped him find his voice against his older brother.
Spit foamed at the corner of Jeremiah’s lips. His eyes started to rattle in the sockets as if they were going to roll into the back of his head.
“Zeke!” Sarah shouted. Little Esther began to wail, building the tension in the room to a final crescendo.
Zeke relaxed his grip and let Jeremiah slide to the floor. He stood over his younger brother, hands on his hips, and with an expression on his face that said, I’m waiting.
With eyes still bulging, Jeremiah laid on his back gasping to fill his lungs with life sustaining air. He had known better than to cross Zeke, who was seventeen years old, thus four years his elder. But he had an ornery streak his Paw had said he got from his Maw’s side of the family, and always had a problem with authority. His Paw kept him in line over the years by beating the fire out of him with an old leather strap that kept the edge on a straight razor.
Since Paw turned sick and woke up dead, Zeke had been in charge of the family and farm. Zeke spent time every night talking to his Paw through the cellar door. His Paw now spent all of his time in the cellar, ever since he had developed a taste for living human flesh.
For the first couple of months the daily routines went much like before Paw died. But lately it seemed Zeke acted on his own authority, saying that ‘Paw said this,’ and ‘Paw said that.’ Jeremiah didn’t believe him, and didn’t like the way Zeke treated him and his six other brothers and sisters. He knew his Paw would never tell them to call his older brother ‘King Zeke.’
“I’m waiting,” Zeke placed his boot on Jeremiah’s stomach.
“King . . . King Zeke,” Jeremiah said.
Zeke gave a smirk of satisfaction. “Well now, I’m glad you see things my way.” He looked at his three other siblings in the room. “Let that be a lesson to you all. We do as Paw says. I tell you what Paw says, and you do it. Or else.”
Esther was the only one giving him a nod of understanding, her alabaster cheeks wet with tears, and her bottom lip poked out. Sarah gave him an angry gaze but said nothing. Solomon ignored his gloating and helped Jeremiah on his feet.
The door to the kitchen, where the entire ruckus occurred, popped open. Ezra led with his long face, perpetually dropped chin, and opened mouth. “They’s coming.” Ezra was second oldest in the family at sixteen. Mentally though, he was somewhere around Sarah’s age of eight.
“Who’s coming?” Zeke asked.
“Rebecca, Beth, and a stranger,” Ezra said, his eyebrows lifted.
“Okay now, everyone in your place. We’s going to do this just like the other times.” Zeke clapped his hands together as the children readied for their new guest.
The sounds of footsteps echoed off the wooden porch. Rebecca entered the kitchen and gave Zeke a nod. Behind her, a man somewhere in his late twenties in age. Beth followed.
It was easy to tell by the way he dressed he wasn’t a local. Whatever designer clothing he wore had lost its luster a long time ago. This wasn’t the first time a city dweller had stumbled upon their farm. Locals weren’t a problem. They had their own land to attend to. Crops and animals provided food and still had to be cared for. No time for locals to wander around. Their time dedicated to the struggle of survival and battling the living dead that crawled out of graves looking for fresh meat.
The young man had an olive completion further darkened by weeks of grime ground into his oily skin. Standing at just under six foot, his oversized clothing hung loosely on his large frame. The deposits of fat from a sedentary lifestyle had withered to half their size as his body cannibalized itself from his stomach going empty for too long. His head was none the smaller and looked unusually large. Thick gold chains around his neck hung as a sad reminder of what was once important in his life.
“Yous guys for real?” he asked, looking about with dull eyes at Zeke and the others.
Zeke’s left eye twitched. He forced a smile. “Howdy, partner. My name’s Zeke. These are my brothers and sisters.”
Sarah was at the stove stirring a pot. Solomon and Jeremiah stood at attention looking at the floor. Ezra, Rebecca, and Beth moved slowly behind Zeke. Esther ran to Beth’s side. Beth was only ten, but since their Maw’s death, she nurtured Esther like she was her own.
“Pauly. Pleased to meet you.” His courtesy came automatic, instilled in him from a proper upbringing. His gaze darted around the room, and came to rest looking over Zeke’s shoulder at Rebecca and Beth. “The girls, they said that you could give me some water . . . and something to eat.”
“Yes, sir. That we can. Solomon, get our guest some water. Put some ice in it too,” Zeke said.
“You have ice?” Pauly looked around and noticed a pot simmered on the stove and that lights were on in the kitchen.
Zeke indicated to Pauly to sit at the table with a hand gesture. “Yes, we have ice. Have a seat and we’ll get you a tall glass of water and some stew when it’s finished. This here farm has a natural gas well. It fuels the generator for us to make electricity. We got our own water well too, so’s there’s enough fresh water for us and the livestock.”
“What about the zombies? Have many been through here yet?” Pauly asked, as Jere
miah served him a large plastic cup with ice water. Pauly quickly picked it up and turned the bottom toward the ceiling. A small amount of water trickled down his chin. Ice clinked as it shifted in the cup. He set the cup drained of its precious liquid down on the table. He acted as if he had forgotten he had even asked a question.
“Zombies? Tell you the truth, I don’t much care for that name,” Zeke said. He shot a look at Solomon, who filled Pauly’s cup again with water. “Zombie sounds too much like hoodoo voodoo, black magic, and witches. That ain’t what’s going on around here.”
Pauly drank slowly from his cup this time, crunching a small piece of ice between his teeth.
“Now, when you’re asleep and you get up and walk they call you a sleepwalker, right? So, when you’re dead and you get up and walk, that makes you a deadwalker. Pretty slick huh? Deadwalker. I made that up myself,” Zeke said.
Pauly’s stomach gurgled loud enough for everyone to hear. The hearty smell of stew cooking on the stove wafted through the air. Pauly’s eyes were wide in anticipation.
“Sure, we get our share of deadwalkers around here. Fact is, our triple barbed wire fence keeps our cows in, keeps them zombies out. Good thing they don’t know how to climb. They just walk around and around looking for a way in. We have to inspect the fence line on the whole property a few times a day. One reason is to check the fence. The other is to get rid of any deadwalkers that are hanging around. A quick swing of the axe to the head puts them down forever.” Zeke kept talking but he wasn’t sure if Pauly was listening. It didn’t matter. The stew was ready to be served.
Sarah looked at Zeke and lifted the ladle. Zeke nodded. She scooped out two ladles of beef, potatoes, peas, and carrots onto a white plastic plate, then brought the plate to Zeke.
Zeke waited across the table from Pauly. The hot plate of food made Pauly’s mouth water. Zeke set the plate in front of him. “We’re just trying to do our Paw proud. Do enjoy his hospitality.”
Pauly picked up a fork and looked around the room. “Oh thank you, thank all of you, and your father too.”
Before his fork hit the plate, Jeremiah brought a black iron skillet crashing down on the back of Pauly’s head. A slight ringing sound from the vibrating metal filled the air.
Pauly’s head slumped forward. Crimson spilled from his broken skull through his thick black hair, and down his forehead and the sides of his face.
Zeke snatched the plate of stew out of the way before anything of Pauly’s came in contact with it. “Dangit, Jeremiah. Did you have to hit him so hard? Paw likes his food fresh.”
“I was scared. I wanted to make sure I knocked him out.”
Zeke raked the stew off the plate back into the pot. “Blood is still pumping out the back of his head. He’s still alive. Good. Paw is some hungry today.” Ezra came to Zeke’s aid and the two dragged Pauly into the pantry and down the stairs that led to the cellar door.
The others stayed behind. They were afraid to go near the cellar. The smell, the flies, the cold eerie presence of evil that emanated from the cellar kept them all away. Only Ezra was brave, or stupid enough to follow Zeke. As for Zeke, he was no longer the good and reasonable son and big brother they all grew up to admire.
Zeke would stay down by the cellar door and talk, sometimes for hours, to Paw during the night. No one ever heard Paw speak back, but Zeke swore that he did. Zeke’s personality had changed completely since his Paw died.
The door to the cellar was old and splintered. A metal latch on the outside kept it securely closed. Only Zeke had the key to the lock. The lock kept what was in the cellar from getting out.
Flies buzzed around Ezra’s and Zeke’s head. The pungent odor of their nasty bacteria mingled with the smell of putrid rotting meat. Zeke dismissed Ezra when they reached the door and removed the key from his pocket.
Bloated black flies danced around the doorknob, and worked their way into the cracks and crevices of the old wood for the prize that lay beyond.
The flies covered his hand as he twisted the key. The lock fell off in his hand. He pushed the door slightly open, flipped on the light switch, and then opened the door all the way.
His Paw stared at the small window near the cellar’s ceiling, used primary for ventilation. Even in death, he could sense the daylight coming in also meant a way of getting out, a way to freedom, a way to find the living flesh that he now craved. But the window was too high for the cannibal corpse to reach and too small to crawl through even if he did.
Paw turned around, his face even more sunken in than the last time Zeke saw him. He was a ghastly sight of a withered and dried out old man. He wore blue overalls and a brown cotton shirt. It was the same clothing he wore when he had died from a stroke. The wedding ring of his deceased bride still hung from his neck on a rawhide necklace as a reminder of their eternal love.
Flies crawled over his entire body. Sometimes so thick it looked like he wore them for clothing. Human bones picked clean of every piece of flesh lay strewn about the room.
“Howdy, Paw. It’s me, Zeke. I brought your supper.” Zeke pulled Pauly’s body across the floor and left it in front of his Paw.
Zeke took a step back for every step his Paw took forward. The dead man’s walk was slow and determined. The atrophied muscles struggled to carry him without falling. Maggots spilled to the floor at each step from his dead rotting flesh.
Pauly let out a moan. The sound of life motivated the deadwalker to move faster.
Like a turtle snapping at an injured bug on the water, Paw went to his knees and tore into Pauly just as he returned to consciousness. The screaming didn’t stop until a half hour passed.
* * *
Rebecca washed dishes at the sink after cleaning up from the evening meal. Even though she was only fifteen, in her mind she saw herself as an adult. She remembered her Maw, how she would stand at the sink and hand wash the dishes, just like she was doing now.
Children grew up fast on a farm. Doing any job they were capable of and adding to the list as soon as maturity allowed. But Rebecca had never imagined life like this. Life without Maw had been bad enough. Now Paw was gone, or at least, changed. Zeke said that even though Paw was a deadwalker now, he was different than all the rest. Because he could still talk. Zeke could hear him. And as the oldest, and more importantly, the strongest, no one had the real power to challenge him.
Rebecca jumped when a hand grabbed the dish she washed. A towel appeared and started drying it. She was even more surprised to find it was Zeke helping her.
“Zeke. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I just left Paw. We’s had a little after dinner chat.”
Rebecca didn’t look up from the sink. “There’s something just not right about, you know, about feeding him.”
“He’s gotta eat. That city slicker would have ended up food for some other deadwalker. Better that Paw eats him than another. ‘Sides, Paw can think better on a full stomach.”
“Does Paw really talk to you?” Rebecca said what she had been thinking almost before she realized it. The ensuing silence made her regret that she did.
“Yes. Paw, talks to me,” Zeke said, his voice taking a different tone. “It’s different than the way he used to talk. Paw used to talk at us, telling us what to do. He was distant, just working and running the farm. Now, now he talks to me with feelings. It’s like I’m inside his head and he’s inside mine. He’ll tell me he’s been thinking and I can tell him what he’s been thinking before he tells me. If it weren’t for Paw, I could never have kept this place running.”
Rebecca washed dishes faster. They piled up next to the sink as Zeke slowed his drying effort.
“You know, Rebecca, Paw told me something special.”
The words ran cold down her spine. She didn’t know why, she could sense something ominous coming.
Zeke moved his body behind hers and slipped his right arm around her waist. She went to spin around but Zeke pushed his chest against her back in a tight embrac
e.
“Paw says this place needs a man and a woman’s touch if it’s going to make it,” he whispered in her ear.
Before she could protest, she felt something long and hard rub against her left hip. He pressed his groin against her.
“Paw tells me that you and me are going to get married. We’s going to have children. Not just us, but eventually all the children must marry. ’Cept, Ezra. We don’t need more like him anyways.”
The more Rebecca resisted his advances the more he tightened his embrace. Her ribs started to ache with pain. Her left hip felt like it was going to be bruised. She wanted to scream but was afraid it would only make matters worse.
“I need some water.” Jeremiah’s unexpected presence shattered the moment.
“Boy, I thought I told you to go to bed?” Zeke said.
Jeremiah walked to within arm’s length of Zeke. “I needed some water.” He had witnessed Zeke’s unwanted advances on his sister.
Rebecca left the kitchen and headed up to her room as the two brothers locked stares.
“I needed some water, what?” Zeke turned his head and cupped his hand behind his ear.
“King Zeke. I needed some water, King Zeke. Now, are you happy?”
“Happier than a pig in shit,” Zeke said, repeating one of his Paw’s favorite sayings.
* * *
“A-Rod steps up to the bag,” Ezra said, swinging the baseball bat slowly through empty air, warming up his muscles before connecting with his target. He set the bat to rest on his right shoulder, waiting for Jeremiah to call the pitch. Impatiently, he repeated, “A-Rod steps up to the bag.”
Jeremiah rolled his eyes. “Roger Clemens stands on the mound. He shakes his head once, he shakes his head twice, and now he gives the catcher a nod.”
A fresh looking walking cadaver pressed against the fence, its arms gouged by the three strands of barbed wire at the top that kept it a bay, its fingers inches away from Ezra.
A Fistful of Zombies: 12 Zombie Tales Page 5