Arcane

by Nathan Shumate

  “Or maybe the Beast heard us,” he whispered. He glanced over his shoulder. Still nothing, no sign of their flashlights or any of the posse that hunted him. Farther away than he could see, the dogs continued with their eternal yelps.

  No fear of him, Fred thought. Not an ounce. They wanted him to know how close they were, how they’d never ceased the chase. He assumed it was part of their glory—the chase—the hunt being more important than the actual kill. They probably had dozens of heads racked on their walls. His scrawny skull would be meaningless. Same as in life.

  They did this evil because that’s what they were born to do. That’s all, like a force of nature. No debating with a tornado—either get out of its way or enter the maelstrom… swept into the heavens by the finger of God until He cast you from His hand.

  Maybe one of Carol’s brothers ran in their midst. She had five, so the odds weren’t in his favor. He’d come willingly into their homeland, here in the nowhere town of Shiloh, Georgia, with its sprawl of backwoods and broken-down farms, where he’d lived for too many years because Carol wanted to be close to her family.

  Five brothers. Every one of them hated him enough to pull the trigger.

  And they had the right to hate him. God knows, they were justified in their vengeance.

  A louder bark echoed through the hollow. Fred crouched behind the weeds for nearly a minute before he summoned the courage to move again.

  He hurried across the field, tugging his limbs free from the thorns, and slid his way between the roof and the buckled door into the barn.

  The weeds continued a foot or so inside, but the lack of sun during the day must have killed off any further attempt at invasion. He sat on the bare earth. His hands opened and he buried his face within them, repeating his prayers.

  “Please, I just want to fix it. Let me give back what I stole,” he said to the skewed roof. “Then I’ll go. I don’t need to steal any more life that shouldn’t be mine to take.”

  When he finished he felt movement along his fingers. He withdrew his hands to examine the sensation.

  “I won’t let them burn you. I will save you. All of my children.”

  Along his fingers, a film of larvae stuck from his face to his hands and happily ate at the dead skin. An earthworm that had crawled from his nostril now whipped over his palm.

  He carefully lifted it by its tail and inserted it into a hole under his ribcage.

  On his right knuckle, perched between his middle and ring finger, Susie Q—his favorite—sat perfectly still, her russet head cocked upright, waiting for him to speak. She was the oldest, the first he noticed crawling free of his rotten skin days after he dug himself out the grave. He knew her from the others by the black discoloration near her mouth that looked like a winking eye.

  Fred winked in return. “Hey, little baby. Something wrong?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Go inside until I call you, okay? We’ll be with Momma soon.”

  Susie didn’t move. Her body had grown fat. The beginnings of legs dangled from her ribbed sides. Soon she’d cocoon, then change into a being free of any need for him. That’s what he hoped, if only they reached their destination, but her silent stare told better.

  Sometimes he missed the comfort of tears. His tear ducts had shriveled weeks ago. They were a waste anyway. He needed all of the nutrients left within him to nourish the many depending on his care—every last drop so they would survive, regardless of his own fate.

  And there lay the problem. If the hunters caught him, they’d burn his body once they killed him. They’d incinerate everything.

  “I won’t let them die. I promise, Carol. Not this time. You’ll see your babies soon. What a birth it will be…”

  He brought Susie to his lips and gave her translucent body a kiss. She inched onto his crusted lower lip and squirmed into his mouth.

  If he sat motionless enough, Fred could feel her brothers and sisters moving within him. A sea of existence churned within the hollow of his abdomen. Whole tribes migrated along the roads of his thickened veins. In his skull, trolleys of centipedes, beetle engines, and the tunnels of ants fed a beautiful metropolis expanding by the second until it threatened to break through the bone.

  In his mind, his hand rubbed another stomach near bursting with life, Carol’s fat belly where his child waited for one more month to be born. Under his palm, he felt his baby kick.

  Carol sat up in the bed, staring at the television, not showing any sign he was even in the room. She started to cry.

  He didn’t need to ask. The news warned of more attacks, the strange plague spreading that made the impossible somehow real, as if Hell had finally closed its doors and the dead were forced to return among the living. All around them the world died, rotted, festered, unfit for anyone to live.

  He understood exactly.

  “We shouldn’t have done this,” he said.

  He sat on the bed beside her. She scooted away.

  “So selfish.” Fred shook his head. What were they thinking, to bring another life into this living death? His baby shouldn’t have to suffer what the world had become. They’d all be better off dead.

  “Carol?”

  Her hands touched the bulge in her stomach. They became fists.

  In the present, Fred made a fist and a dozen or so maggots liberated themselves from his skin, shoving their way through the gashes where they’d eaten him raw. They fell to the dirt. He gently picked them from the ground and placed them again onto his bare shoulders.

  Fred scrambled backwards as he heard the sudden yowl of a coonhound, far closer than expected. By the sound of it, the dog had to be at the tree line. He listened and heard the beast winding a path through the weeds.

  He hurried to his feet. Outside the dog rhythmically bayed to its masters, each honking bark like a punch to his gut. Now he could see it through the spaces between the barn’s wooden planks. It froze for a moment, its eyes finding his. Fred saw its jaw snap shut, alert to his presence. There would be no running. It’d catch him before he made the trees, probably before he escaped the barn.

  The dog’s mouth slobbered open, its breaths an excited flurry. It ducked under the slanted door and raced toward him.

  Fred’s arm came up as the hound leapt. Its jaws missed his throat. Instead the beast’s teeth tore into the muscle of his forearm and its weight dragged Fred to his knees.

  The dog shook its head and Fred lost his balance. His skin in the dog’s mouth wasn’t strong enough to hold. A fist-size plug ripped away from his arm.

  It didn’t hurt—his nerves were too dead to respond to anything other than pressure and heat. Yet the loss of muscle made his arm rebel from the elbow down, his right hand curling into a stagnate claw. Out of the crippling wound a mass of grubs plopped onto the earth. They whipped their bodies over the dirt in a panic.

  “No!” Fred cried. He couldn’t save them. If he tried, the dog would find his throat this time for sure. Then they’d all perish too soon.

  Frantically he scanned the earth for anything to protect himself with but the ground lay barren. He managed to turn again to his attacker just as it sprinted over his torso and snapped its teeth at his face.

  Fred caught the dog’s muzzle with his good hand and stuffed his broken one into its mouth. Its jaw crushed down over his wrist but his fingers penetrated deep enough to gag the hound. It pulled away. Fred slung his good arm around its neck and fell forward, pushing the dog off its legs. His weight kept it pinned though he knew it would thrash free in moments.

  Fred yanked back the dog’s head to expose its tender neck and sank his own teeth deep into its throat.

  The hound let out a last pitiful whine before its pleas ceased forever. Fred tore his head to the right, ripping away the dog’s esophagus, then pushed the dead thing away from him.

  “Where’s the dog?” a voice asked outside, maybe from within the trees. Fred lifted his ear to the air. He already knew what they’d say next. “Barn.” />
  He hobbled to where the grubs had spilled and rushed to scoop up as many as possible. They flopped out of his hand and fought to squeeze through his fingers.

  “Goddamn it, stop fighting me!” he cursed, then immediately whispered a prayer for forgiveness.

  “Max!”

  Outside the dog’s master called for his stray. Fred saw him through the barn’s wall, a hefty bearded man covered in brown camo clothes. He carried something long in his hands. A shotgun.

  The hunter waded through the weeds to the crooked door.

  ‘C’mon,” Fred said. He smeared the grubs onto the skin of his chest until they stuck and picked the others one by one off the earth. Too many had been spilled. Several disappeared under the compost. There was no way to save them all.

  A light cut across the dirt from the barn’s entrance. Fred turned and was blinded.

  “It’s here!” the hunter shouted. The light stuttered out of Fred’s eyes as the man struggled to aim his shotgun.

  Only his attacker’s clumsiness saved Fred. In his hurry the gun unloaded its barrels too high. A few pellets sprayed Fred’s torso and shoulder, but not enough to maim him.

  “I’m sorry,” Fred whispered to the fallen grubs and ran on all fours toward the opposite end of the barn. He stopped when more flashlights peered through the cracks ahead of him.

  His hunters weren’t stupid, just afraid. Fred was sure they’d killed plenty of zombies since the undead’s revival a year ago, but no one ever got used to seeing a living corpse staring back at you. Hell, Fred thought, seeing a fellow walking dead scared the guts out of him too.

  The one inside scrambled to shove two more shells into his shotgun. Even scared, he couldn’t miss again, not in such close quarters.

  Behind Fred the barn’s wall suddenly gave, an unseen door swinging open only a foot from his right. Another hunter wasted no time coming through, his flashlight attached to the butt-end of a rifle. The light glared in Fred’s face. He saw the black circle at the end of the rifle’s barrel press toward his forehead.

  The moment proved too much. Fred’s knees buckled and he fell to the ground. His head tucked between his knees and his arms crossed over them in a futile shield against the coming bullet. He heard his voice beg for the man not to shoot but wondered if the words meant anything to them.

  Instead he abandoned the pleas and whispered a lullaby to his children. If any last words mattered, it should be ones spoken in love.

  Perhaps they wouldn’t burn him. His children would still live. He doubted it, but all he had left was the hope.

  Fred shook as the hunter’s gun fired.

  The gun’s boom echoed in his ears, reverberating as if it passed through water. He was surprised to hear the noise, thinking the bullet should have stabbed through his brain too fast for him to ever have known his second life was over. Briefly, he wondered if that was what the world sounded like while your head filled with blood.

  Somewhere behind him he heard a dog’s growl, yet too throaty, choking. A man yelled in fright. Another muttered gibberish. Fred clawed his fingers into his head and screamed.

  Yet when he finished, he was still here.

  His fingers smoothed over the dome of his bald head. Long flakes of lime skin came off along his nails but none of his fingers found a hole. He searched again then quickly scooted away from the door until his spine struck a splintered column that held up the roof.

  The man with the rifle lay in a heap in the secret doorway, his chest and face blew open from a shotgun blast. He was alive, only barely, his dying mouth murmuring nonsense.

  Another growl turned Fred behind him. The first hunter was sprawled in the dirt, his neck torn jagged and red. On his chest his own hound, the one Fred had killed now returned to life, was busy tearing open his chest, pulling away the man’s fat breasts to get at the juicier meat inside. It glanced Fred’s way and growled again, the threat bubbling out the hole in its throat.

  Fred got to his feet. He heard shouts coming from the trees, the rest of the hounds going into a frenzy at the sounds of the gunfire. He hadn’t escaped. These point men were only the scouts. They would let the dogs loose to rush to their quarry. If anything, this only slowed them down enough to gain him a few minutes, maybe less.

  He left the dog to its dinner, ignoring his own hunger. Inside he felt the craving for flesh tingle and burn. Without food he’d go manic and lose his mind to the instinct to feed.

  It wouldn’t matter soon enough. Either way he was dead. He just needed to live long enough for his children to have a chance, long enough for Carol to see her babies being born.

  Behind him, the undead canine went into a fit. Its master swatted it off him, the hunter returning to life like his pet. The two started to fight over who’d eat who.

  Fred left them to it. When the others got there, the new zombies would give him a much longer break until the hunters dealt with them, then returned to his trail again.

  He left the barn and ran as fast as his hobbled legs would take him.

  ***

  Fred stopped at the end of the trees. Open grass rolled over a series of hills ahead of him. Where they leveled, he saw the short brick wall that lined the Shiloh Cemetery, his destination, where his wife and his unborn child lay buried.

  “I can’t bring life into this world,” Fred heard himself whisper, what seemed a lifetime ago. “It’s not our right to bring something beautiful into this world only for it to suffer. So selfish…”

  The shame became guilt. Then the guilt became blame. The blame needed redemption and from there his hand sought for salvation.

  But it wasn’t his decision.

  It had never been his decision. God proved his point, by bringing him back but not Carol. Not their unborn daughter.

  The bullet he put in his wife’s stomach had gone true and found the baby’s skull. Carol was sleeping when he shot her. She woke screaming, but she never looked at him. Instead her fingers clawed at the hole in her stomach as if she was trying to dig their daughter out of her belly. Fred put the gun to her temple and fired.

  That shot went true too. Yet after he put the barrel to his own head, God reserved a different plan.

  Fred rubbed the indention above his ear where he’d shot himself. The bullet had ricocheted off fragments of his skull, not entering the brain. It proved enough to kill him, but not to end him.

  Now here he was. In Limbo.

  “We got to right this wrong.”

  Something soft flopped onto his tongue. He reached into his mouth.

  Susie Q crawled onto his fingers, her legs grown long enough for her to do more than wiggle. She coiled toward her daddy’s voice. Fred stroked the tip of her head with his thumb.

  “See? We’re here.” He put her in his ear and waited until she dug herself inside.

  Fred made his way across the field and to the top of the hill before he heard the men and dogs finally closing the distance behind him. He stumbled down the other side and fell over the cemetery wall as the flashlights came out of the trees.

  The hunters might have chased him off the road on his way here, but inside these grounds he knew the way to her grave with barely a glance up. Her brothers had refused to honor his wishes and have him buried next to her, yet he found his way to her side. Not even death would keep them apart, not when this final act needed to be finished… in order to save them both from what he’d done.

  Maybe she was already in Heaven, not damned like him. After all, here he walked while she rested.

  No. He knew her soul didn’t sleep. Not with the sin he forced upon her there at the last. The life inside his daughter still hung on the precipice, waiting to come into the world. Until that veil tore open, it would smother their souls under its weight.

  The howl of the hounds and the growing voices of his hunters made him quicken his pace, weaving around the gravestones toward the only one he sought. When he finally found it, his legs froze. He tripped onto her grave.

  Fred
raised his face from the soft grass to see the name of his wife, Carol Anne Marafioti, written in the stone. Loving wife, it said. And Mother.

  They’d had no other children except the one he murdered. Her brothers insisted on the epitaph. They knew she would’ve wanted it. In the end, they understood her more than the man that stole her away ever did.

  Inside he felt his organs quiver. Even with most of his nerves dead, a sensation like heat swelled through his abdomen, then into his chest. Tiny pops of pressure beat under his skin. They moved toward the wounds already torn in his flesh.

  He reached to the marker and ran his finger through the indention of her epitaph.

  Mother.

  “You will be,” he whispered. The beating where his heart used to thump now demanded again to be heard. “You are.”

  Flashlights crisscrossed the sky, followed by the wail of dogs. Men’s voices shouted ever closer.

  He saw the posse that chased him, some dozen or so armed men, crawl over the cemetery’s fence. Their words evaporated into the din coming from within the walls of his ribs, a buzz that hummed so loud the world droned away.

  Fred slid his fingers and his gnarled hand into the gash near his sternum and pulled.

  The flesh came away easier than he expected. His chest tore open and their children wasted no time being born.

  He watched the swarm of flies burst from the hole, the children he raised finally strong enough to live free of his shelter. Their tiny bodies darted into the flashlights’ beams. Their fluttering cloud became fallen stars, the sky a kaleidoscope of sparkling wings that quickly thinned. Fred smiled, happy they didn’t stay.

  His organs collapsed out the self-inflicted wound and slid against his hips, propelled by the movement of more of his brood, the worms and beetles, feasting off what little he had left to offer. The blackened mass spread over Carol’s grave. He watched their tails dig into the earth, their armored shells scuttle into the crevices around her gravestone, eager to meet their mother.