All this time, Joe had thought it was his imagination.
A gaggle of the freaks had been there in Cass’s front yard waiting for him, so he’d plowed most of them down with the truck so he could get to the door. That was the easy part. As soon as he got out, the ones still standing had surged. There’d been ten of them at least; an old man, a couple of teenage boys, the rest of them women, moving quick. He’d been squeezing off rounds at anything that moved.
“Daddy?”
Had he heard her voice before he’d fired? In the time since, he’d decided the voice was his imagination, because how could she have talked to him, said his name? He’d decided God had created her voice in his mind, a last chance to hear it to make up for the horror of the hole his Glock had just put in her forehead. “Daddy?”
It had been Cass, but it hadn’t been. Her blouse and mouth had been a bloody, dripping mess, and he’d seen stringy bits of flesh caught in her teeth, just like the other freaks. It hadn’t been Cass. Hadn’t been.
People said freaks could make noises. They walked and looked like us. The newer ones didn’t have the red shit showing beneath their skin, and they didn’t start to lose their motor skills for a couple of days—so they could run fast, the new ones. He’d known that. Everybody knew that.
But if freaks could talk, could recognize you…
Then we can’t win.
The thought was quiet in Joe’s mind, from a place that was already accepting it.
Ten minutes, Little Soldier had said. Maybe five.
Joe tried to bear down harder on the gas, and his leg felt like a wooden stump. Still, the speedometer climbed before it began shaking at ninety. He had to get Little Soldier as far as he could from Mike’s boys. Those boys might run all day and all night, from the way they’d looked. He had to get Little Soldier away…
Joe’s mouth was so dry it ached.
“We’re in trouble, Little Soldier,” Joe said.
Joe couldn’t bring himself to look at Kendrick, even though he wanted to so much he was nearly blinded by tears. “You know we’re in trouble, don’t you?” Joe said.
“Yes,” the boy said.
“We have to come up with a plan. Just like we did at your house that time.”
“A danger word?” Kendrick said.
Joe sighed. “A danger word won’t work this time.”
Again, Kendrick was silent.
“Don’t go back to the cabin,” Joe said, deciding that part. “It’s not safe.”
“But Mom and Dad might…”
This time Joe did gaze over at Kendrick. Unless it was imagination, the boy was already sitting as far from him as he could, against the door.
“That was a story I told you,” Joe said, cursing himself for the lie. “You know they’re not coming, Kendrick. You said yourself she wasn’t right. You could hear it. That means they got your father, too. She was out in the front yard, before I got inside. I had to shoot her, Little Soldier. I shot her in the head.”
Kendrick gazed at him wide-eyed, rage knotting his little face.
That’s it, Little Soldier. Get mad.
“I couldn’t tell you before. But I’m telling you now for a reason…”
Just that quick, the road ahead of Joe fogged, doubled. He snapped his head up, aware that he had just lost a moment of time, that his consciousness had flagged.
But he was still himself. Still himself, and that made the difference, right? He was still himself, and just maybe he would stay himself, and beat this damned thing.
If you could stay awake…
Then you might stay alive for another—what? Ten days? He’d heard about someone staying awake that long, maybe longer. Right now he didn’t know if he’d last the ten minutes. His eyes fought to close so hard that they trembled. There’ll be rest enough in the grave. Wasn’t that what Benjamin Franklin had said?
“Don’t you close your eyes, Daddy.” Cass’s voice. He snapped his head around, wondering where the voice had come from. He was seeing things: Cassie sat beside him with her pink lips and ringlets of tight brown hair. For a moment he couldn’t see Little Soldier, so solid she seemed. “You always talked tough this and tough that. Da Nang and Hanoi and a dozen places I couldn’t pronounce. And now the one damned time in your life that it matters, you’re going to sleep?” The accusation in her voice was crippling. “We trusted you, and you walked right into that store and got bitten because you were laughing at Archie Bunker? I trusted you, Daddy.”
Silence. Then: “I still trust you, Daddy.”
Suddenly, Joe felt wide awake again for the last time in his life.
“Listen to me. I can’t give you the truck,” Joe said. “I know we practiced driving, but you might make a mistake and hurt yourself. You’re better off on foot.”
Rage melted from Kendrick’s face, replaced by bewilderment and the terror of an infant left naked in a snowdrift. Kendrick’s lips quivered violently.
“No, Grandpa Joe. You can stay awake,” he whispered.
“Grab that backpack behind your seat—it’s got a compass, bottled water, jerky, and a flashlight. It’s heavy, but you’ll need it. And take your Remington. There’s more ammo for it under your seat. Put the ammo in the backpack. Do it now.”
Kendrick sobbed, reaching out to squeeze Joe’s arm. “P-please, Grandpa Joe…”
“Stop that goddamned crying!” Joe roared, and the shock of his voice silenced the boy. Kendrick yanked his hand away, sliding back toward his door again. The poor kid must think he’d crossed over.
Joe took a deep breath. Another wave of dizziness came, and his chin rocked downward. The car swerved slightly before he could pull his head back up. Joe’s pain was easing, and he felt stoned, as if he were on acid. He hadn’t driven far enough yet. They were still too close to Mike’s boys. So much to say…
Joe kept his voice as even as he could. “There were only two people who could put up a better fight than me, and that was your mom and dad. They couldn’t do it, not even for you. That tells me I can’t, either. Understand?”
His tears miraculously stanched, Kendrick nodded.
READ REVELATIONS, a billboard fifty yards ahead advised in red letters. Beside the billboard, the road forked into another highway. Thank Jesus.
The words flew from his mouth, nearly breathless. “I’ll pull off when we get to that sign, at the crossroads. When the truck stops, run. Hear me? Fast as you can. No matter what you hear…don’t turn around. Don’t stop. It’s twenty miles to Centralia, straight south. There’s National Guard there, and caravans. Tell them you want to go to Devil’s Wake. That’s where I’d go. When you’re running, stay near the roads, but keep out of sight. If anyone comes before you get to Centralia, hide. If they see you, tell ’em you’ll shoot, and then do it. And don’t go to sleep, Kendrick. Don’t let anybody surprise you.”
“Yes, sir,” Kendrick said in a sad voice, yet still eager to be commanded.
The truck took control of itself, no longer confined to its lane or the road, and it bumped wildly as it drove down the embankment. Joe’s leg was too numb to keep pressing the accelerator, so the truck gradually lost speed, rocking to a stop, nose down, its headlights lost in weeds. Feeling in his arms was nearly gone now, too.
“I love you, Grandpa Joe,” he heard his grandson say. Or thought he did.
“Love you, too, Little Soldier.”
Still here. Still here.
“Now, go. Go.”
Joe heard Kendrick’s car door open and slam before he could finish.
He turned his head to watch Kendrick, to make sure he was doing as he’d been told. Kendrick had the backpack and his gun as he stumbled away from the truck, running down in the embankment that ran beside the road. The boy glanced back over his shoulder, saw Joe wave him on, and then disappeared into the roadside brush.
With trembling fingers, Joe opened the glove compartment, digging out his snub-nose .38, his favorite gun. He rested the cold metal between his lips, past
his teeth. He was breathing hard, sucking at the air, and he didn’t know if it was the toxin or his nerves working him. He looked for Kendrick again, but he couldn’t see him at this angle.
Now. Do it now.
It seemed that he heard his own voice whispering in his ear.
I can win. I can win. I saved my whole fucking squad. I can beat this thing…
Joe sat in the truck feeling alternating waves of heat and cold washing through him. As long as he could stay awake…
He heard the voice of old Mrs. Reed, his sixth-grade English teacher; saw the faces of Little Bob and Eddie Kevner, who’d been standing beside him when the bouncing Betty blew. Then he saw Cassie in her wedding dress, giving him a secret gaze, as if to ask if it was all right before she pledged her final vows at the altar.
Then in the midst of the images, some he didn’t recognize.
Something red, drifting through a trackless cosmos. Alive, yet not alive. Intelligent but unaware. He’d been with them all along, those drifting spore-strands gravitating toward a blue-green planet with water and soil…filtering through the atmosphere…rest…home…grow…
A crow’s mournful caw awakened Joe, but not as much of him as had slipped into sleep. His vision was tinged red. His world, his heart, was tinged red. What remained of Joe knew that it was in him, awakening, using his own mind against him, dazzling him with its visions while it took control of his motor nerves.
He wanted to tear, to rend. Not killing. Not eating. Not yet. There was something more urgent, a new voice he had never heard before. Must bite.
Panicked, he gave his hand an urgent command: Pull the trigger.
But he couldn’t. He’d come this close and couldn’t. Too many parts of him no longer wanted to die. The new parts of him only wanted to live. To grow. To spread.
Still Joe struggled against himself, even as he knew struggle was doomed. Little Soldier. Must protect Little Soldier. Must…
Must…
Must find boy.
Kendrick had been running for nearly ten minutes, never far from stumbling, before pure instinct left him and his mind woke up again. Suddenly, his stomach hurt from a deep sob. He had to slow down because he couldn’t see for his tears.
Grandpa Joe had been hunched over the steering wheel, eyes open so wide that the effort had changed the way his face looked. Kendrick thought he’d never seen such a hopeless, helpless look on anyone’s face. If he had been able to see Mom and Dad from the safe room, that was how they would have looked, too.
He’d been stupid to think Grandpa Joe could keep him safe. He was an old man who lived in the woods.
Kendrick ran, his legs burning and throat scalding. He could see the road above him, but he ran in the embankment like Grandpa Joe had told him, out of sight.
For an endless hour Kendrick ran, despite burning legs and scalded throat, struggling to stay true to the directions Grandpa Joe had given him. South. Stay south.
Centralia. National Guard. Devil’s Wake. Safe.
By the time exhaustion claimed Kendrick, rain clouds had darkened the sky, and he was so tired he had lost any certainty of placing his feet without disaster. The trees, once an explosion of green, had been bleached gray and black. They were a place of trackless, unknowable danger. Every sound and shadow seemed to call to him.
Trembling so badly he could hardly move, Kendrick crawled past a wall of ferns into a culvert, clutching the little Remington to his chest.
Once he sat, his sadness felt worse, like a blanket over him. He sobbed so hard he could no longer sit up straight, curling himself in a ball on the soft soil. Small leaves and debris pasted themselves to the tears and mucous that covered his face. One sob sounded more like a wail, so loud it startled him.
Grandpa Joe had lied. Mom had been dead all along. He’d shot her in the head. He’d said it like it hardly mattered to him.
Kendrick heard snapping twigs, and the back of his neck turned ice-cold.
Footsteps. Running fast.
Kendrick’s sobs vanished, as if they’d never been. He sat straight up, propping his shotgun across his bent knee, aiming, finger ready on the trigger. He saw a small black spider crawling on his trigger wrist—one with a bloated egg sack, about to give birth to a hundred babies like in Charlotte’s Web—but he made no move to bat the spider away. Kendrick sat primed, trying to silence his clotted nose by breathing through his mouth. Waiting.
Maybe it was that hitchhiker with the sign, he thought.
But it didn’t matter who it was. Hide. That was what Grandpa Joe said.
The footsteps slowed, although they were so close that Kendrick guessed the intruder couldn’t be more than a few feet away. He was no longer running, as if he knew where Kendrick was. As if he’d been close behind him all along, and now that he’d found him, he wasn’t in a hurry anymore.
“I have a gun! I’ll shoot!” Kendrick called out, and this voice was very different from the one he’d used to ask Grandpa Joe for a Coke. Not a little girl’s voice this time, or even a boy’s. It was a voice that meant what it said.
Silence. The movement had stopped.
That was when Grandpa Joe said the danger word.
Kendrick’s finger loosened against the trigger. His limbs gave way, and his body began to shake. The woods melted away, and he remembered wearing this same jacket in the safe room, waiting. Waiting for Grandpa Joe.
There had never been a gunshot from Grandpa Joe’s truck. Kendrick had expected to hear the gunshot as soon as he ran off, dreading it. Grandpa Joe always did what needed to be done. Kendrick should have heard a gunshot.
“Go back!” Kendrick said. Although his voice was not so sure this time, he cocked the Remington’s hammer, just as he’d been taught.
Kendrick waited. He tried not to hope—and then hoped fervently—that his scare had worked. The instant Kendrick’s hope reached its peak, a shadow moved against the ferns above him, closer.
“Breakfast,” Grandpa Joe’s watery voice said again.
Zombieville
By Paula R. Stiles
Paula R. Stiles is the author of more than two dozen stories. Her work has appeared in Nature, Albedo One, the zombie anthology History Is Dead, Shine, Writers of the Future XXIV, Jim Baen’s Universe, Space and Time, and in many other venues, such as the South African magazine Something Wicked, where this story first appeared. She is also the editor of Innsmouth Free Press. From 1991 to 1994, Stiles served as an Aquaculture Extension Agent with the Peace Corps in Cameroon, West Africa.
Resident Evil, a 1996 video game set in a haunted mansion, combined polygonal characters with pre-rendered backgrounds, and was one of the first games in the “survival horror” genre, following the model of Alone in the Dark. The game has spun off numerous sequels, as well as three feature films starring Milla Jovovich and written by Paul W. S. Anderson, most recently the Mad Max-inspired Resident Evil: Extinction. The most recent video game in the franchise, Resident Evil 5, is set in Africa, which has provoked some criticism of the game’s handling of racial imagery.
The author of our next tale says, “I kept hearing they wanted to do a Resident Evil movie set in Africa, and I groaned a little, thinking about how many boring clichés they’d come up with for that. Then I thought, ‘Well, self, why not do your own take on an African Zombocalypse?’”
Stiles made the protagonists of the story Peace Corps volunteers because she used to be one. “AIDS was already at epidemic proportions in Cameroon by the time I left in ’94, and that’s a pretty scary atmosphere to be in for two years,” she says. “So when I was hearing people talk about the zombocalypse as if it would be this catastrophic event, I kinda laughed and thought, ‘You know, I should just write a zombocalypse tale that’s a metaphor for AIDS in Africa.’ It’s not actually the first AIDS-in-Africa metaphor tale I’ve written. Probably won’t be my last, either.”
The gendarme had wandered out into the middle of the road. His already well-fleshed form had swelled to bursting,
and his skin, once the color of the stash of dark chocolate we’d traded for in Yaoundé, looked almost as green as his stained army uniform. He looked like he’d been from the Bulu, a tribe down in the South Region near the port of Douala, down the railroad line from Yaoundé. He stood there, waving his arms in a parody of his old contrôle-point routine of stopping bush-taxis and other traffic to check their papers, hunt up the odd bribe.
Our taxi, a gray Peugeot, stuffed with ten live passengers and driver, cleared the hill and slammed down on all four wheels into a nasty pothole. We hit the gendarme about dead center five meters later to the tune of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” which the Hausa Muslim driver had been blasting on the Peugeot’s tape deck. The gendarme flew up over the roof, landing hard—and in pieces—on the paved road behind the car. The driver didn’t so much as ease off the gas. Just as well. We’d all sooner stop for a cobra than a zombie.
“That was pretty spectacular,” Josie said. She was a reasonably good-looking blonde and my housemate, crammed half onto my lap and half up onto the armrest of the right rear door. That might sound like a good thing, but only if you’ve never been stuck in a Peugeot with ten other people for three hours on a tropical afternoon. Our only break was the half-hour we’d spent on the side of the road to allow the six Muslims in the car to pray and the rest of us to pee.
“Yeah, pretty spectacular…if you like blood and guts splattering all over the road,” I said. “Bet he’d have stopped if the guy had been Muslim.”
“Since he was obviously a gendarme, he couldn’t have been Muslim, so I’m sure the driver thought it was perfectly reasonable to run him down,” Josie said.
Cameroon’s president just before everything had gone to zombie hell had been from the South. His predecessor had been a Fulani Muslim from the Extreme North. There’d been bad blood between the Muslims and the Government ever since. Considering this was a country where a Muslim friend had once told me that his Christian neighbors were “cannibals” because they ate cats and a good host always popped the top off your beer in front of you to prove he or she hadn’t poisoned it, it was a wonder the driver hadn’t turned around and run over the gendarme twice.
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