Mountain Dead
Page 8
"Because you had murdered your wife," Jack said.
"I loved her so much," Garret said, ignoring him. He exhaled a plume of smoke. "Loved her so much. But it wasn’t enough, see. She wanted me dead, wanted to eat me. My wife! Christ. She wasn’t like those monsters outside, but she’d become a monster all the same.
"She hit me with the ceramic lamp right when I stepped into the bedroom the night after she begged me to steal Uncle Olin’s body. I saw the brightest light I’d seen since we boarded up the windows. An explosion of white, you know, then felt blood pourin’ down my face—"
"So you murdered her."
Garret shook his head. "No. I killed her. And it’ll haunt me for long days to come." He rubbed the deep wound on his forehead.
"Semantics. You also dismembered her body."
He winced at that, but nodded. "I did. So that she wouldn’t return, like Uncle Olin and Anna."
"Anna never returned," Jack said. "Her body was found by her daughter, mutilated, dismembered—by your hands, Mr. Denny." He pulled a photo from the manila envelope and slid it across the table. "Look at it."
"No," he said, "I didn’t do it. I swear to you."
"Where is Olin’s body?"
"I didn’t do it, Detective."
A heavy knock on the door interrupted them. Jack sighed. "What is it?"
The door opened, and Officer Boden peeked his head in. Sheepishly, he said, "Sorry, sir. Sheriff needs to see you."
"In a minute."
"‘Now,’ he said. Sorry. Says it’s important."
"Of course, it is." Jack gathered up his clipboard, pen and lighter. He left the photo of Anna Howland’s mutilated body. "I’ll be right back."
* * *
Sheriff Rory Madison’s office was two doors down from the interrogation room. The door was open, so Jack entered without knocking. The sheriff sat at his massive mahogany desk, dwarfed by it. The desk took up nearly the entire length of the room and was the one piece of furniture in this building that didn’t look like it had been picked up at a Saturday-afternoon yard sale.
Rory stared at the computer screen, shaking his head. "I’ve watched this a hundred times, Olson. I don’t know if I should be amazed or scared shitless."
"Watched what, sir?"
"Come around; take a look."
Jack crossed the room and squeezed himself through the foot-wide gap between the desk and the wall. With the computer mouse, Rory clicked STOP on the video player he had up on the screen, and the player window went black.
"Briggs brought me the call logs pulled from Anna Howland’s cell phone. In a week’s time, she attempted to make over a thousand calls, more than half to 9-1-1. Each call failed."
"Doesn’t prove anything," Jack said.
"Well, that’s debatable," Rory said. "But Briggs also found two videos taken from the cell phone. Together, they’re just thirty-two seconds long, but they…well, like I said, take a look."
Rory clicked PLAY.
The video was taken from a higher vantage point, through a window—a second-story window, Jack presumed—striped with dark streaks of what looked like oil. Though somewhat blurry, in the background Jack immediately recognized the Cromwell Church Cemetery—or what was left of it. The ground appeared as if it was boiling in a mess of mud and grass and headstones. Then, through the plip-plop of the rain, came a muffled but gut-wrenching scream. It was followed by another scream so deep and blood-curdling, even heard through the tinny computer speakers was enough to make Jack’s knees weak and his stomach lurch.
And then he saw it…
"My God," he whispered.
"Watch," Rory said.
The video cut out just as—Christ, Jack thought—a skeleton, an undead thing crossed the road. The second clip, just ten seconds long, showed Garret Denny’s home, surrounded by the reanimated bodies of the dead. They moved herky-jerky, like the monsters in the old Ray Harryhausen movies Jack had watched as a teenager. They scratched and clawed, snarled and moaned. Everything was covered in a brown-black liquid, sopping with it, dripping, it fell from the sky in great blobs…just like Garret Denny had said.
The video finished.
"Are you fucking with me, sir?"
"Wish I was, Jack. Wish I was."
"Play it again."
* * *
The interrogation room felt colder than before.
Garret Denny looked up as Jack closed the door. He fumbled with the pack of Newports. Jack tossed a key ring onto the table, then snatched the cigarettes from Garret’s hands. "A trade."
Jack pulled one out , lit it, and inhaled. The smoke burned his throat and lungs, but it felt good, felt real.
"The gold one," Jack said, pointing to the key ring. "You’re free to go."
"Free to go?"
"Yes, free to go. Just stay local."
"I don’t—"
"I don’t, either. Now go. Get out of here."
Garret Denny unlocked the shackles that secured his ankles to the bolted rings on the floor, and slowly stood. Tears rimmed his eyes. He paused for a moment, as if trying to find the right words, but instead simply nodded and disappeared through the door.
Wrapped in the smoke and the welcomed silence, Jack tried to reconcile himself to the past few hours. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to. And it’ll haunt me for long days to come.
"Sometimes the world needs a little poetry," Garret Denny had also said. "Even in dark times."
In the small interrogation room of the Huntingdon Police station, Detective Jack Olson smiled an ironic smile.
This chapbook is an extension of the anthology Appalachian Undead. If you enjoyed these stories, then you can find 20 more Appalachia-inspired zombie tales in Appalachian Undead. Featuring such writers and zombie fiction legends as John Skipp, Gary A. Braunbeck, Elizabeth Massie, and Jonathan Maberry.
"A fresh and varied approach to the living dead, brought to life by a great crop of writers who were obviously energized by the idea of taking the ultimate survival scenario and staging it in a place where survival has always been a hard won achievement for anyone brave enough to live there."
—Fearnet, Blu Gilland
Available in trade paperback and eBook editions.
ISBN: 978-1-937009-18-2
For more information visit our website at ApexBookCompany.com.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Eugene Johnson has been a storyteller since childhood when he would make up his own comic books and stories. In college he started working in the film industry, working with the Huntington Film Commission and on the films We Are Marshall, Burning Annie, Unbroken (with Tony Todd), as well as a handful of independent films. In 2009, he was executive producer of the short film Leftovers, a zombie movie that screened at Scream Fest in Los Angeles and at Dragon*Con in Atlanta. His story "Bitten" was featured in The Zombie Feed, Volume 1, an anthology edited by the Bram Stoker-nominated editor Jason Sizemore. He was also editor of The Zombie Feed website. Eugene currently lives with his family in West Virginia. For more information, visit www.eugene-johnson.com.
Jason Sizemore is a two-time Hugo Award nominee and one-time Stoker Award nominee for his work as an editor. Born and raised in the hills of southeast Kentucky, he currently lives in Lexington, KY, where he runs and operates Apex Publications. For more information, you can visit his personal site at www.jason-sizemore.com.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Cortney Skinner’s artwork appears in books, magazines, comics, and in films. He has illustrated a wide range of subjects including science fiction, fantasy, horror, history, aviation, and children’s books.
Beginning his career in the traditional art techniques of pencil, pen, and paint, he added pixels to his palette at the beginning of the digital age. Working in a variety of media and styles ranging from realistic oils to pen and ink illustrations, Skinner also sculpts all manner of people, creatures, and esoteric objects. His conceptual designs and artwork have appeared in films, and his landscapes, still lifes
, and portraits are found in private collections.
Nestled comfortably in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Skinner shares a creative life and abode with writer Elizabeth Massie.
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Deep Underground — Sara M. Harvey
Unto the Lord a New Song — Geoffrey Girard
Let Me Come In — Lesley Conner
And It’ll Haunt Me (For Long Days to Come) — K. Allen Wood
ABOUT THE EDITORS
ABOUT THE ARTIST