by Tim Waggoner
The sun hadn’t gone down all the way yet, but clouds had moved in late afternoon, and the resulting gloom provided more than enough cover. Since he couldn’t bring a gun—the sound of the weapon discharging would give him away—the hammer was the only protection he carried. He didn’t mind, though. He was confident he could defend himself adequately with it should the need arise. Most people fell prey to zombies because they froze in terror as the creatures attacked. But fear was a foreign emotion to Nicholas. Zombie, human, animal—it made no difference to him. If it moved, he could kill it, quickly, efficiently and without a shred of remorse, and with his bare hands if he had to. A weapon just made the job easier.
Nicholas was of two minds—at least—when it came to Blacktide and the changes it had brought to the world. As a person with his…proclivities, he’d at first been intrigued as the mysterious plague swept over the planet. Watching people drop dead around him was almost as much fun as watching the survivors’ reactions. The sheer amount of sorrow, anger and, above all, fear had been overwhelming, making him feel like an overstuffed psychic vampire who’d been gorging himself on an endless feast of negative emotions. But as the days wore on, and more and more people died, he came to a disturbing conclusion.
Up to that point, he’d considered himself a wolf among sheep, an apex predator, top of the food chain, a superior being not bound by the petty rules of so-called civilization. He’d killed four women over the space of two years, and he thought of himself not simply as a servant of death, but as its master. But compared to Blacktide, he was nothing. Four women? Blacktide had killed millions, and then billions. And those it didn’t kill, it changed into ravenous engines of destruction that for all their mindlessness, or perhaps because of it, seemed personifications of Death itself.
Next to all that, Nicholas the Big Bad Serial Killer was a joke, and a rather pathetic one at that.
He hated Blacktide for making him irrelevant. No, what Blacktide had done was worse. It showed him that he had been irrelevant all along. So what if people like him shortened the lives of a dozen victims—or a hundred—during their bloody careers? Death had killed and would kill everything that had ever lived, from the tiniest one-celled organism to that self-proclaimed pinnacle of evolution, humanity.
But along with this hate came a grudging admiration. He’d never believed in God, had always considered the idea childish. God was nothing but a delusion, an imaginary being that the sheep called out to for salvation when the wolf arrived to claim them. But in Blacktide he saw the dark hand of something far greater than a mere disease or unleashed bioweapon at work. He saw the hand of his god. The hand of Death.
So now he lived in a world remade by that god, but it was a world in which he wasn’t sure of his place. He’d been spared Blacktide’s touch. He still lived, and he hadn’t changed into one of the creatures that everyone referred to by the juvenile term zombies. As if calling them by a movie monster name somehow made them easier to accept. And while he still felt the same urges he’d had ever since he could remember, he hadn’t killed anyone since Blacktide had hit. Anyone human, that is. Oh, he’d had fun experimenting with zombies—exploring the limits of what their altered nervous systems could withstand. And while they weren’t the same as human flesh, with some lubricant they felt more or less the same when he took a different kind of pleasure from them.
But he knew he was only marking time, amusing himself with distractions, waiting for some kind of…purpose was the word, he supposed, to reveal itself to him. He was an all-too-human killer in a world where Death reigned supreme. What possible purpose could he hope to fulfill? What, if anything, was the fucking point of his continued existence?
He didn’t know. But like all good hunters, he understood the value of patience. He would wait, he would watch, and when his opportunity came—as he felt it surely must—he would take it. In his own way, he supposed, he’d become a man of faith.
He reached the groundskeeper’s shed without incident. The shed had two wooden doors, their handles wrapped in chain and padlocked. Nicholas had put the lock and chain on the door himself, and he undid them now, opened one of the doors—whose hinges he also kept well oiled—slipped inside and closed the door after him. Another chain and padlock hung loosely from one of the handles, and he wrapped the chain tightly around both handles and engaged the lock.
Even if there hadn’t been any zombies to worry about, he would’ve taken the same precautions. He needed absolute privacy for his work. To further ensure he wasn’t disturbed—by human or zombie—he had painted the windows black, with the result that the inside of the shed was as dark as a subterranean cave. He could work without light if he had to, but he preferred to see. It was more satisfying that way. More fun.
He walked three steps forward, stopped, reached out, found the battery-powered lantern and turned it on. He always kept it set on low. On this setting he could get up to twenty-eight hours of light from eight D batteries. Plus, the lower the light, the less chance that anyone—or anything—would realize he was here. A soft blue-white glow illuminated the shed’s interior, revealing his pets. They did not blink as the light washed over them, nor did they make any noise. They didn’t blink because their kind never did. They didn’t make any sound because the first thing Nicholas did when he captured them was sever their vocal cords. He couldn’t have them attracting the attention of other zombies or his fellow humans. It was a shame, really. He would’ve loved to know what sort of sounds they made as he explored their flesh.
Right now, he had three, all female, ranging in age from midteens to midthirties. Of course, he’d had to estimate the ages of the first two since they hadn’t been carrying any ID when he’d acquired them. They were all naked. Well…two of them were. He supposed in order to be considered naked, one had to possess a body, and since one of his pets was only a head mounted on a wooden base, he figured she didn’t qualify for the designation. She sat on his workbench, as if guarding the neat rows of tools he had laid out there—knives, scissors, needles, pliers, saws, box cutters and—his personal favorite—a handheld blowtorch. From her features, he assumed she’d been Hispanic before Blacktide had transformed her, but it was difficult to tell.
Zombies kept their individual features for the most part, which was how Kate had been able to recognize her brother. But they had a sameness about them too. Leathery, yellowish skin, clouded milk-white eyes, teeth fused to their jaws… He found it amusing that it had taken Blacktide to finally solve the world’s racial problems. There were too few humans left to allow something as small as race to divide them. And all the zombies cared about was satisfying their endless hunger. They were equal opportunity predators too, devouring each other when they couldn’t find any other meat to sink their teeth into.
He gave the head a smile as he reached out to stroke her hair. It felt like dry straw.
“How are you tonight, Grace? Well, I hope.” He spoke in a soft voice only one step above a whisper. No matter what he did here in the shed, no matter how…enthusiastic his actions, his voice never rose above this volume. He made sure of it.
Grace wasn’t the head’s real name, of course. When he was young, his family had owned a German shepherd named Grace, and one summer when he was ten he’d spent a pleasant afternoon dissecting the animal. He’d explored the insides of many smaller creatures before that, but he considered Grace his true First. And since this zombie was the first one he’d brought to the shed, he’d dubbed her Grace in memory of the warm, wet creature who’d given him so much pleasure on that long ago afternoon.
He wondered how Pat Holland would react if he could see what he kept in the shed. He’d led the man to believe that he had a stash of bondage magazines out here, along with some kinky sex toys and a blow-up doll. He’d love to see the expression on Pat’s face as he introduced him to his “friends”. Not that Nicholas would get to see it for long, as he would have to kill Pat before the man could raise any kind of alarm.
Grace’s mi
lky-white eyes cleared as he stroked her hair, and her gaze focused on him. He held his index finger close to her mouth, and she snapped at it, her teeth making a loud clacking sound. He smiled, knowing he was in no danger. Zombies’ remarkable physiology might allow the severed head to remain animate, but she didn’t have enough bone and muscle to lean forward and take a hunk out of his finger. He enjoyed watching her try, though, found the sharp rhythm of her jaw movements oddly soothing. Clack-clack-clack-clack…
Sometimes he would bring her pieces of meat to chew: a bit of rat, squirrel, pigeon, whatever he could catch. She couldn’t swallow them, of course, and even if she could, she had no stomach to digest them, but he had the impression that she was able to draw some nourishment from the blood, absorbing it through the tissues in her mouth and tongue. But he had nothing for her tonight.
“Maybe next time,” he said. He turned away from Grace and walked over to check on Lillian. She hung from the ceiling, impaled on two large metal hooks that dangled on the ends of chains. Nicholas had removed her arms and legs before opening her body cavity, and the result was a clear, unobstructed view of her internal organs. Some still functioned, some didn’t, and Blacktide had reshaped some into structures whose purpose he couldn’t guess at.
Marie would doubtless be fascinated by Lillian—whom he’d named after his younger sister since they both had long black hair—and he sometimes fantasized about bringing her here. Given her fascination with all things zombie, he thought she alone among his fellow survivors might understand his…special needs. And if not—well, it had been a long time since he’d had fun with anyone who still had a pulse.
He reached up and ran the tips of his fingers over Lillian’s organs. They felt cool, dry and rubbery, like the flesh of an octopus that’s been out of water too long. This, as far as he knew, was normal for her kind. Her intestines were held in place, more or less, by several strips of thin plastic that he’d stretched horizontally across her abdomen and anchored to her sides and back with a series of staples. A crude, but effective solution.
On the floor beneath her was a large rectangular plastic storage container. Since Lillian could still digest food, she eliminated waste, and the container served as her toilet. He’d originally given her a smaller bucket to use, but zombie shit was a foul-smelling liquid that gushed out of their asses like explosive diarrhea. The bigger the container, the better. Even though Nicholas hadn’t fed her for several weeks, there was a small puddle of clear liquid at the bottom of the bucket. He kept a container of bleach on the floor next to the bucket, and he knelt, removed the cap and poured a bit into the bucket to cut the stink.
He didn’t mind the smell himself—found it rather pleasant, actually—but the stink drew zombies like nobody’s business. Their shit was such an effective lure that Rangers used it to distract zombies during scavenging runs. Pour a good amount into a building a few blocks from where you wanted to hunt for supplies, get the hell out of there, wait a half hour or so, and all the zombies in the vicinity would crowd inside the building, leaving the area zombie-free so you could go about your business. The technique wasn’t as much fun as killing zombies outright, but Nicholas had to admit it was effective.
He replaced the cap on the bleach, set it back down on the floor, and walked over to the worktable to check on his latest acquisition.
Bringing zombies to the shed required equal amounts of luck and planning. First, Nicholas had to find a suitable candidate: female, black hair (preferably long) and between the ages of fifteen and forty (although he was willing to go as high as fifty, if necessary). These days, the pickings were on the slim side, and when he did find one that fit his parameters, he couldn’t simply capture her, hog-tie her and bring her to the shed. He always had a partner with him—Kate, usually—and he doubted she would understand his desire to procure a zombie playmate.
He had to get away from Kate for a few minutes, subdue his target, bind her feet and hands with wire, and—if he had enough time—find a place to hide her so he could come back later to retrieve her. If he couldn’t manage to conceal her, he’d remember the place where he was forced to leave her and hope she didn’t crawl too far before he could return. And if Kate caught him in the process, he just killed the zombie, leaving his partner none the wiser.
And assuming all that went according to plan, he had to sneak out at night, return to where he’d left his zombie—avoiding others of her kind in the process—and hope that the one he’d captured hadn’t managed to escape on her own, or hadn’t been found and eaten by her fellow zombies. And if she was still there, then he had to strap his homemade muzzle on her, wrap her in a dark blanket and carry her back to the shed, while again avoiding her ravenous brothers and sisters. And he had to do it all in the dark.
In the seven months and change since Blacktide hit, he’d only managed to acquire three playmates, and he considered himself fortunate to get those. His third was not only his most recent—he’d acquired her only a few days ago—he thought her his best. She lay naked on the tabletop, spread-eagled, wrists and ankles held down by strips of barbed wire nailed to the wood. Three strips per limb, spaced several inches apart. The wire had cut into her flesh on the first day, thanks to her struggles to free herself, and her flesh had healed over it. Now the wire emerged from her skin as if it had been surgically implanted. If she’d had the strength and leverage, Nicholas had no doubt she would’ve torn off her hands and feet to get free. Fortunately for him, she had neither, and thus had stayed put quite nicely.
Although her body, like every zombie’s, displayed the changes wrought by Blacktide—the yellowed skin and milky eyes most prominent—her flesh was remarkably untouched by injury or deformation. While zombies healed, they often did so imperfectly, and given the horrendous wounds they sometimes suffered, most ended up as ravaged grotesqueries. But not this one. While he could tell that she’d been bitten in numerous places in the past, her skin had healed exceptionally well, leaving only faint scars. As a result, her skin was far smoother than that of a typical zombie; so much so, it almost felt like the real thing. Add to this a trim figure, good-sized breasts and the all-important long black hair, which only felt a little like dry straw, and he had himself a real winner.
He trailed his fingers over her taut belly—impressive for a woman who he judged had been in her thirties when she’d been changed—before moving his hand toward her right breast. He took hold of it and squeezed, gently at first, but with increasing force. She showed no sign of pain or discomfort. She just looked at him, eyes clear and hungry, jaws snapping, almost as if to say, You think you’re such hot shit? Why don’t you try moving that titty grabber of yours a little closer to my mouth?
He gave her breast one last hard squeeze before letting go. He couldn’t wait to begin making his mark on that skin. He felt like a painter gazing upon a beautiful blank canvas, contemplating the endless possibilities of shape and color.
But there was something about this one in addition to her skin that made her special. He knew who she was. Or rather, who she had been before Blacktide had worked its dark magic upon her.
He bent down close to her face—but not too close.
“Hi, Sarah,” he said softly. “How are you tonight? Lonely, I imagine. Sure, you have friends to keep you company, but it’s not as if the three of you can indulge in girl talk while I’m gone.”
Her eyes bored into him, and her mouth snapped with mechanical rhythm, teeth clack-clack-clacking.
“But don’t worry. I know what you need.”
He straightened, undid his belt and slipped off his jeans. As he climbed onto the table, erection bobbing in the air, he wondered what Kate would think if she knew her Ranger partner was about to fuck—and then cut into—the creature that had once been her sister-in-law.
Chapter Six
Malcolm Stockley stood in the middle of the living room, surveying long rows of cards which stretched across the stained carpet from the edge of the foyer all the way over to th
e built-in bookcase. It wasn’t full dawn yet, but the large picture window faced east, and he’d opened the curtains to let in the faint early-morning illumination. He wasn’t worried about any zombies seeing him through the glass. This neighborhood—while not one of the ritzier ones in Lockwood—bordered the eastern edge of the Pinewood Country Club’s golf course, and zombies tended to avoid large open spaces. He didn’t know why. Maybe because they sensed that if there was no place to hide, they wouldn’t find any tasty humans to snack on. Whatever the reason, the neighborhood benefited from their agoraphobia. Few zombies ever came around, which was fine with Malcolm.
Besides, what would it matter if one of the bastards did finally manage to make a meal of him? He was in his late sixties, his every joint screamed with arthritis, and he had a swollen, cancer-riddled prostate. He’d been scheduled for surgery, but before he could go under the knife, Blacktide hit, and the whole damn world slammed to a halt. No more surgeons. No more arthritis medicine. No more kids, or grandkids, either. Most of his family had died outright from the disease, if it was a disease. He figured it more likely that Blacktide was the result of some kind of fucked-up government bioweapon gone disastrously wrong. But his oldest daughter, Carolyn, and one of her children—little Phillip, who’d been just shy of his second birthday—had turned. Her two other children, Cassie and Donnie (ages six and eight), were immune to Blacktide, just like their grandpa.
They’d attempted to flee from the monsters their mother and brother became, but they hadn’t even made it to the door. At least, that’s what Malcolm figured had happened. His other three children lived out of state, but Carolyn only lived a few blocks from him. By the time he’d gotten to her house, he found the front door was wide open, and Carolyn and Phillip were gone. This was before live food became scarce and zombies began feeding on dead bodies, so the scene was perfectly preserved when he got there. He wasn’t a cop, just a guy who ran a small business supply store, but he didn’t need a degree in criminology to deduce what had occurred.