World Memorial

by Robert R. Best

Sharon leaned over Beulah's face and grinned. "But I had a vision that wasn't vague at all. That woman, in there," she nodded at the walls of the zoo, "covered in your blood."

  Beulah grabbed Sharon by the shoulders and wrenched her downward. Their foreheads met with a crack and Sharon stumbled back, a bloody split spreading down her forehead. Beulah climbed to her feet and hopped off the car. She stomped toward Sharon, feeling the wounds in her back heal. "That's not possible," she said. "And you know it!"

  Sharon grinned, the wound in her head healing and her blood seeping back into her skin. "I saw it, Beulah. Clear as day."

  She grinned wider, like an animal showing its teeth. "She kills you, sister."

  Nineteen

  West jerked awake. It was early morning. He'd fallen asleep in his rocking chair, and as comfortable as it was, it still hurt to sleep in.

  He leaned forward, gripping his cramping back. "Damn it all to fuck town," he said. He was in his attic, where he'd sit in his old rocker and watch out the window. From up here he could see anything coming long before it got to his house, or to the walls he'd built, or the traps he'd laid around his property.

  His muscles loosened and he eased back into his chair. The chair was coated with dust stuck to a layer of grime that had built up over decades. West didn't care. It was his dust and his grime. He sighed at the relief in his back.

  He wondered what had woken him. There was nothing out of the ordinary. His poor dog Peacock was barking and snarling downstairs, but she always did that. Always had ever since the day she'd gone crazy. She'd nearly killed West, but he'd managed to get her tied up. He'd made a post for her and a strap to keep her from hurting anything. He fed her every day, always from a distance. She'd eat it, all the while staring at him with pure hate. He wished he could pet her again. That was one of his few pleasures.

  No, it wasn't Peacock's noises. That was as common as air anymore. But something was wrong. Something was bothering him.

  Frowning, he reached over his shoulder. A pair of battered binoculars hung from a worn strap slung across the back of the chair. He grabbed the strap and pulled it free. He ran the strap through his hand until he reached the binoculars. This whole time, he never took his eyes off the window. He was growing more and more certain that whatever was bothering him was out there.

  He focused the grimy binoculars and peered through them. He scanned the area inside his walls first. All his stuff was fine. No animals or dead things had slipped through. Nothing staggering around or ripping things to tatters.

  He moved the lenses to the sky. It was cloudy, but not too much. Nothing that would indicate a storm was coming. And besides, he'd slept through many storms. Why would a growing one wake him now?

  Grumbling to himself, he settled on the far horizon. He saw it. A line of corpses, far away. Stumbling over the hill on the far edge of his property. The line was long. They almost looked organized. They stumbled over the hill and kept coming. Another line followed behind them. Then another. Then another.

  Peacock was barking furiously from the first floor. Snarling like she was feral, worse than usual.

  "Damn it, Peacock, shut up!" he yelled down the stairs at her. She didn't respond, or if she did it was only with more barking and snarling. He hated yelling at her, even in her current state.

  He looked back through the binoculars. A huge mob of corpses headed toward his house. They kept coming over the hill in wave after wave. They were too many to estimate. There may have been thousands of them.

  He lowered his binoculars and blinked twice. "Whore shit."

  He stood from his chair so fast it rocked violently afterwards. He rushed around his attic, nimbly avoiding the stacks of rusty junk and moldy books. He whipped dusty tarps off a series of large levers built into the floor. He tossed the tarps aside, ignoring the clattering junk he knocked over to do it.

  He'd never tested these on this scale before. He hoped they'd work. They were even better than the ones he'd installed at Angela's place. And those were works of art. These were his masterpieces. He hoped.

  He rushed to the dingy window and squinted outside. The corpses at the front were in range. Maybe fifty feet from his walls.

  "Shit on my grandma," he said, rushing to the first lever. He pulled it. Chains and gears rattled and groaned under his feet.

  He ran back to the window and looked out.

  Across his yard, in a rough semicircle that matched where the front of the mob had reached, a series of trap doors opened in the snow, directly under the corpses. The corpses groaned and fell inside what West knew to be deep holes. He'd dug them himself. One wave of corpses fell through. The ones behind them kept coming, falling in after them. This worked for several moments, until the holes began to fill up. Corpses groaned and reached out of the holes. The mob behind them walked over their heads and shoulders and kept coming.

  West cursed and watched. The mob of corpses moved further in, drawing closer to the wall. He ran some quick calculations in his head and figured they were close enough. He rushed over to a second lever and wrenched it back. Chains rattled and gears turned. They rumbled around him as he ran back to the window. He peered outside, cursing and rubbing the grime away with his sleeve.

  A few seconds passed. West wondered if his contraption had failed. The chains and gears shifted all throughout the frame of the house. "Dammit shit fuck," he said.

  Then it worked. A wooden frame sprang up from the snow, iron spikes embedded in one side. The corpses in front were speared and held in place. Some were struck through the head. The rest were held fast, groaning and pulling themselves to pieces in attempts to escape.

  Several other frames flew up across the snow, coming from all directions at once. The springs West had installed were strong. He was glad for that. The corpses were speared from the front, back and sides. Some shuddered and were still. Some tried to keep going, ripping their insides open and spilling organs across the snow. Part of him enjoyed the show. Part of him knew it wouldn't be enough.

  A group of corpses passed over an area where he knew a large rack was hidden. He could see the outline of it, straining under the snow. The corpses on it staggered around, tangling into each other. They weighed the rack down.

  "Dammit to shit stain," West grumbled. He ran back to the lever, wrenching it back and forth. He could feel something in the chains straining. He ran to a wall, where a large rusty crank was set. He turned it as fast as his old joints could manage. He felt the chains growing tighter and tighter. He ran back to the lever and pulled again, then felt something give.

  "Better get a fuck on," he said, rushing back to the window. A few of the corpses moved off of the rack. It sprang up with tremendous force, the spikes breaking many of the corpses to gory pieces. One spike speared a corpse through the neck. The corpse's head came off and the rest of the plank slammed into it. The head whipped up and into the air. West predicted its trajectory.

  "Shit pieces!" he yelled, backing away from the window. The dead head smashed through it, sending shards of dirty glass across his floor. The head bounced and rolled across the wood. It was a fat man's head, with wiry hair protruding from his rotting scalp. It gnashed at nothing, attempting to groan with no voice box.

  "Yeah, don't think so, son," said West. He picked up the dead head by the hair and carried it to the window. It blinked its pus-filled eyes and chewed at nothing. West flung it through the broken window, watching as it fell and bounced across the snow. The mob came closer still. His racks were spent and the copses kept coming.

  There was one defense left. He raced to one last set of levers. He pulled one forward and shoved the other one back. The motion sent chunks of rust to the floor. He cursed himself for not taking better care of them. They moved, though, and he felt each one snap into place. Gears turned underfoot.

  He rushed back to the window and looked out. It was working. Two large wooden posts were on each side of his property, about fifteen feet from his walls. Smaller posts and metal tubes r
an from each one, angled down into the ground. Razor wires ran down each of these and spread between the two posts. The wires were slack, hidden under the snow. As the gears turned underfoot, the wire grew taught. A tight grouping of razor wire snapped up from the snow, right in the path of the corpses.

  The corpses reached the wires. They tried to stumble through them. The wires sliced into them as they pushed blindly forward. They fell apart in grey wet chunks on the other side, dark slimy organs spilling across the snow. The corpses kept coming, shoving themselves dumbly through the wire. Chunks of them spilled out the other side as they fell apart.

  "Damn right!" West said, slapping the dusty window sill in glee. "Keep coming, you dumb fucks!"

  And they did. Many fell to pieces as they passed through the wire. But there were many more. Many, many more. They crushed together on each other as they tried to press through the wire. Soon there were so many the spaces between the wires were clogged with gore and meat. The corpses behind kept crushing forward. The gore falling out the other side slowed.

  "Fuck."

  The wires bowed outward as the corpses kept pushing. They clogged more and more space between the wires. The sheer amount of them, the weight of all of them, was overtaking the rate they could be sliced.

  The wires became so clogged the gore stopped altogether. The corpses behind the wires kept stumbling forward, slipping in the mounds of rotten meat underneath them. The wires bowed further and further outward, then finally snapped. The ends of each wire whipped backward, drawing thin lines in the snow as they flew aside. The corpses pushed toward the wall, now unimpeded.

  His defenses were spent and they kept coming. Still too many to count. Too many to understand. Where the holy hell were they coming from? He had an old rifle set next to the window frame. He snatched it up along with a box of ammo he'd kept in the attic so long he wasn't sure there was anything in it. There was.

  The rifle loaded, he pointed it out the hole in the window. The cold air blasted his face. He ignored it and fired. A corpse dropped. He cocked and fired again. A second corpse dropped. He kept cocking and firing. Corpses kept falling. He got several. Many. It wasn't enough. There were far too many. He ignored the creeping, looming truth of it as long as he could. He kept firing and cocking, pausing only to reload. He got corpse after corpse, but there were still so many. So many he couldn't see the ground beneath them. So many he couldn't see the ground all the way back to the hill they'd come over. They filled the entire view.

  They reached the walls, pounded and clawed at them. The sheer number of them made the walls shake. He fired once more, got one more corpse, then ran out of bullets.

  Then something different came over the hill. A blonde woman, walking among the corpses, her black dress flowing behind her. A group of people followed her. West could tell from their movements that they were alive, but they looked worse than corpses. They looked crazed, manic, smeared in blood and what looked like shit. Some of them cut themselves with long knives, and were licking the shit and blood from the wounds.

  The blonde woman smiled up at him. At him. It was impossible from this distance, but West had no doubt she saw him. She was smiling at him. Something about it scared West more than the corpses. More than wild animals howling in the night. More than just about anything he'd seen in his whole life.

  He rushed out of the attic and down the stairs, navigating the things stacked on them easily in the dim light.

  He could hear his walls starting to give outside. Could hear metal bending and crates smashing. He knew he didn't have long. He had to get to the trap door he'd installed in the dining room. It led to tunnels he'd dug under his property. He wondered if the corpses he'd dropped down the trap doors could dig their way into his tunnels. He resolved it was best not to think about that.

  He reached the kitchen just as a door behind him smashed in. A hissing corpse was already inside the walls. Inside the house.

  He spun around, knowing his gun was empty. The corpse was a woman with a bent and crooked spine. Her dried withered skin cracked as she tried to pull herself through the hole in the door. A shard of wood caught her stomach. She strained past it, driving the shard into her torso and ripping a large gouge. Her belly split open and black organs spilled to the dingy tile.

  "Shit on a rotten skunk!" West yelled, stumbling back. He cocked the rifle and fired it at the woman. It clicked, empty. He knew that. This wasn't like him. Had the smile from the blonde woman shaken him that hard?

  He cocked the rifle again. The woman pulled in further, black blood running down the wood. The wood splintered around her and she was inside, staggering toward him through her own slimy organs.

  West fished around his pockets, hoping against all sense he'd find a bullet "Shit," he muttered. "Shit twice on Tuesday!" he fished around as she staggered closer. He tried to calculate how long it would take him to unlock and open the trap door with her closing in on him. There wasn't enough time. He struggled to think. All he could bring up were images of that woman. Her smile. Her eyes. She was too far away, how the fuck could he have seen her eyes?

  His hand closed on a bullet. For a moment he paused, not believing his luck. "Fuck me backwards and make me breakfast," he said, slamming the bullet into the rifle. The woman was close, groaning and gasping. She slipped in the gore. He cocked the rifle as she reached for him. She leaned in to bite. He swung the rifle towards her, ending with the barrel in her mouth. She groaned and bit at the metal, spit and black blood dribbling from her mouth.

  He fired. Her head exploded backward, sending dark glop and rotten bone across the far wall and what was left of his door. She slumped on the gun, pulling it from his grasp. He let it fall and rushed from the room.

  He hurried into the dining room. He was almost shaking. Fuck that, he told himself, he was shaking. He'd never been as scared as he was in that moment. The image of the smiling woman was burnt into his mind. Outside, he heard his walls give way and crash to the snow. He heard the corpses that had already reached the house. They pounded on the windows and walls. They groaned and scraped. More were coming. More were clawing at his walls.

  He heard Peacock snarl from the room behind him. He heard her strain against the bonds that held her in place. She barked and grunted, trying to pull herself free. The groans outside grew louder as more corpses reached his window. He did his best to ignore it all, focusing on moving the junk he'd stacked on the trap door. He couldn't remember why he'd put it there. All he could see was the woman, smiling up at him.

  One of his windows smashed inward. Dead arms reached inside, grabbing at the wallpaper and curtains. Shards of glass dug into dead skin, tearing it off in long grey strips. The arms kept coming. More windows broke open. The door was shaking so hard West knew it would give at any second. He kept digging through the junk piled over the trap door.

  He finally found the handle, a rusty metal ring that he hadn't used in ages. He pulled. The trap door didn't budge. He pulled again, to no avail. There was still too much on the trap door.

  His front door gave, crashing open and sending shards of wood across his living room carpet. Corpses poured in, too many to count. Corpses pulled themselves through broken windows. They groaned and reached. Peacock snarled and pulled at her chain. It rattled and creaked as she pulled.

  West struggled to clear more things from the trap door. Boxes, pieces of metal, old books. So much stuff. Too much stuff. The corpses staggered across the carpet, nearly to the dining room. The ones coming through the windows inched nearer, dragging their rotting bodies across the glass. West shoved items aside. The woman smiled at him from the depths of his brain. The corpses groaned and Peacock strained at her bonds.

  West pushed one more item aside. He reached for the handle, his hands sweaty and shaking. The corpses groaned. The woman in his mind smiled up at him, her smile scraping at his insides. The trap door shifted, almost opening. Just a few more seconds.

  With a loud snap and clatter, Peacock broke free of he
r bonds. West didn't look behind him, focusing on the trap door. He pulled. The door was almost open. The corpses drew near. They groaned and reached for him, their dead, rotting fingers grasping. He heard Peacock race up behind him, snarling and barking.

  He almost had the door open when Peacock hit him from behind. She knocked him over, rolling him onto his back. The trap door slammed down, shut.

  "Peacock, no!" he yelled, both scolding and pleading. She snarled and buried her face in his stomach. She tore into him, sending jolts of pain across his whole body.

  "Oh shit girl no!" She dug further into him, snarling and biting. He felt his blood, hot and wet, run across his torso and onto the floor. It soaked the carpet, running under his back. She growled and bit, pulling out chunks of meat and pulp. He screamed as she tugged, each pull sending waves of pain through him. He tried to push her away. His hands closed on her fur, wet and sticky with his blood. He was too weak. He'd already lost too much. His hands slipped off her, useless.

  He laid his head back, crying. Open and honest tears he hadn't cried in years. "Fuck, girl," he said, twitching and growing cold. "Just fuck." He gurgled out the last words more than spoke them.

  The corpses drew close around him, moaning and reaching their dead hands. He faded to nothing as the first one laid hold.

  Twenty

  Maylee ran through the woods, dodging around trees and mounds of frozen brush. She hoped she remembered the way back to town. She thought she recognized the terrain, but kept finding herself confused, distracted. The image of the woman clawed at her brain. She tried to push the memory away. She couldn't. It was like the image was trying to get deeper inside her. To eat her from the inside. She tried to ignore it and focus on her way through the woods. She almost succeeded.

  The sun had started coming up a while ago. She should have been back to town by now. Long before now. She couldn't focus.

  She could hear moans echoing around her. She could see shadows moving through the trees around her. Flashes of dead, stumbling shapes. They were headed elsewhere. Following whatever call had pulled the others. There had been so many massed together before, when Maylee had first fled. How many where there now?