by Strand, Jeff
The man drew his breath in slowly and deeply through his nose and felt the cold tingle, while the boy was practically panting in frustration and rage. He thought to himself how the boy would, in just a few more years, have spent more time in the world of the undead than he had in the previous one. It would be his “normal,” his “regular,” in a way that it could never be for his father or any of the older people. As sad as it seemed––to grow up and live in such a world––the man was almost happy for that, because he thought it might make it easier for the boy.
“I don’t know, son. It just started happening one day. No one knows why. But they’re still just dead people.”
The boy drew himself up and back, and calmed a little. His eyes narrowed. “Mr. Grosvenor says it’s because God is angry with us. He says the people out there are damned, and we will be too if we don’t believe in God and do what He says.”
Now it was the man’s turn to spit out words. “What God says, or what Grosvenor says?” Yes, the boy was just like his mother, all right. He knew just how to push his buttons. Get your Dad to admit he doesn’t know the answer to something, then tell him that someone else does. Oh, and the someone else who does know the answer––he’s someone you know your Dad doesn’t like. Hates, is more like it. The kid was a real button pusher. “Grosvenor is a sanctimonious asshole,” the man growled as he shook his head.
Now it was the boy’s turn to sneer. “A sanctified… a what kind of asshole?”
There was a certain amount of reconciliation and satisfaction that could now be gained by father and son laughing together, and the man was glad for that. “It means he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and he judges other people too much.”
“So, does that mean that God isn’t angry?”
The man kept looking at him. “No, I guess I’d say that He is. What do you think?”
They started walking back towards the edge of the roof, away from the enclosure they had been in––a kind of blind made out of cubicle partitions that had been built on the roof of one of the perimeter buildings of their compound. The area had been an industrial park, so the buildings were sturdy and defensible––many without windows––and surrounded by a cyclone fence. The man had been told how, before they had gotten there, the battles with the dead had been fierce. But now they lived a fairly stable existence, with the outer fence secure and covered over with paper or fabric, so that the dead couldn’t see them moving around within the compound. The roofs of some of the buildings had these little blinds, so they could observe the dead outside the fence and monitor their numbers and activity.
“Yeah,” his son agreed, “I think He probably is.” He looked sideways at his father and smiled a little more. “But I still think you’re right about Mr. Grosvenor.”
The man grinned and playfully punched the boy’s shoulder. They climbed down the aluminum ladder to the ground. “You looking forward to going outside?” When things froze hard in a few weeks, the boy would go outside the compound with him for the first time.
“Not really. I don’t know. I guess. I want some more books.”
More questions needed more books, that raised more questions, that needed more books; it seemed as though it would never end. On the whole, however, he deemed it a worthier goal than booze, candles, and matches, which were what he’d be looking for.
* * *
Spiking Day arrived early that year. It was the only holiday on their rather circumscribed and grim yearly cycle, and it had no set date. It was simply declared after a week had passed in which no new zombies showed up at the fence that surrounded their little compound. Then the people of this little outpost could go outside and kill all the dead who were pressed up against the fence. The celebration of the holiday was exactly as its name implied: they would walk up to the more or less helpless dead, who could still flail about clumsily but defenselessly, and drive a spike through each of their heads. They couldn’t afford to waste bullets. Any dead who were still slightly more active could be spiked at a safer distance using spears, as were any who blocked the gates. They would then drag the bodies some distance away, dump them in a pit––which was now the same one, used over and over at the beginning of each winter––and set them ablaze. Any who looked like they might have more fat would go on top, so the grease would drip down and help the fire: again, no waste was possible, and fuel was as important as ammunition. Not since the days of human sacrifice on Incan step-pyramids and Celtic moors, thousands of years past, had there been among humans a more horrible and dichotomous celebration, as the people celebrated the beginning of the season in which they would be relatively safe from attack and would be able to gather food and eat with much greater abundance than they could during the lean months of summer and autumn. It was the equivalent, in their world, of what Easter or Passover or any springtime celebration had once been in saner times. But their celebratory acts were not hiding eggs or dancing around a maypole. Instead, they built the unholy, obscene edifice of an enormous pile of burning human bodies, a hideous inferno that went on for hours, accompanied by the sickening sizzle of fat, the pop of eyeballs and various vesicles, and the oppressive stench of the smoke that roiled over them, hanging low like a shroud to hide their shame and joy from a God who could neither understand or lessen their pain.
Even in their world, however, there was some sense of decency, and the smallest children were shielded from the details or the full and personal experience of Spiking Day. This winter, that would change for his son. The man didn’t really think that it’d be that big of a deal: the boy had seen the fire from a distance and had smelled the awful smoke. There were certain details, however, that he still dreaded explaining to the boy, all because he knew his rapacious intellect and the unanswerable and never-ending barrage of questions that would ensue. But as they prepared to go outside, he looked at his son in profile, and the boy’s resolute features––looking today in the bright autumn sun much more like his dead mother’s than they usually did––together with his calm, piercing, hazel eyes, somewhat reassured the man that it would be all right.
Some of the men speared enough of the dead to allow the gates to be opened and everyone tumbled out to begin the horrible work of their joyous celebration. The first round of spiking was done with care and speed, without a sound on either side––neither a shout of triumph from the living, nor the usual moan from the dead, as though the dead were as willing and content to die as the living were eager and resigned to kill. As the bodies piled up and the writhing and tottering dead were driven further back, some people began dragging the bodies to the pit. The man and his son began this work, and he watched the boy carefully, as he knew this was actually the more horrible and unnerving part, because this was usually when one made the more graphic and nauseating observations of ravaged human anatomy. It was bad enough to drive a rusty spike into the head of what looked like a little girl. It was far worse to go to pick her up, as gently and respectfully as one could now, and have her arm tear off in your hands and her head roll away on the ground. That was guaranteed to have a two-fold effect, one bodily, one spiritual. First one would usually vomit uncontrollably––for this reason, Spiking Day was also the only fast day on their calendar, in a year with little enough eating. And then one slowly, fully, and forever after realized the full weight of how much one had violated and victimized a monster that somehow remained partially and painfully human.
One also noticed little details that were normally overlooked when fighting and killing them––the fine features still recognizable on a woman or girl, the remnants of pretty jewelry or clothes, bespeaking happier times. Finally motionless and without the horrible spasming of their minds and muscles that drove them on to fight and struggle like rabid animals possessed by every demon from hell, even their flesh seemed to look more natural, less decayed, and even, perhaps, as though it might once have been beautiful. But, of course, the irony was that when they stopped moving and they looked the most human and vulnerable a
nd potentially beautiful, then it was time to throw them on to the fire like pieces of rotten trash. The man stifled a grim smile at this thought, out of some residual respect for the dead and not just concern for the boy, who couldn’t see most of his face under the kerchief he was wearing over his nose and mouth, like everyone else that day.
It was not quite time for their immolation, however. There was one last rite to be performed, one last indignity to be committed. The dead were to be searched and anything of value still on them was thrown in a cart, to be sorted and distributed later. Four years of wandering around outdoors had left the dead at this point with very little that could be of use to the living, but even now there were enough useful surprises that the tradition stood. There was still the occasional tool, knife, pair of eyeglasses, or even handgun to be found, so that they couldn’t risk throwing it all to the fire. There was little room for sentimentality or reverence in their lives in general, and Spiking Day could be no different. He watched his son go through a dead man’s pockets, producing a small screwdriver and pocket-knife and tossing them into the cart.
“Good boy,” the man said. Then he and the boy grabbed the corpse’s wrists and ankles, dragged it over to the pit, and tossed it into the flames below.
As they walked back to do the same to another, they went past the cart full of found objects. “That’s why they call it Canada, huh?” the boy asked matter-of-factly.
“What?” At first, the man could make no connection with what the boy was saying. The boy was standing next to the cart, and he looked back and forth between the objects and the flames a few yards away. The man followed his gaze and understood what the boy had realized. Before he was allowed to come out on Spiking Day, the boy would’ve done his part inside the compound, sorting the things that came there in the carts, and putting the objects into the storage area they called “Canada.” Some wag had named it that, and the man was more grateful for the kerchief, as it concealed his crimson blush at his son’s discovery of this cruel and insensitive joke. But what could they do? Black humor was the only kind they had.
“You were reading a history book?” he said, very quietly.
“Yes,” the boy hissed, barely audible over the roar of the fire, as his gaze turned defiant. The man had noticed this was his more frequent reaction to such horrors; he suspected it was better, in the long run, than sorrow or confusion. The boy must have read that “Canada” was the nickname of the area in Auschwitz where they gathered all the goods confiscated from the millions of people murdered there. “Mr. Grosvenor says the Jews deserved to die, that’s why the Germans did it.” Mr. Grosvenor taught the kids history and social studies, since he had been a schoolteacher before the dead rose. The man tightened his fists when he thought how they had now perpetuated Grosvenor’s evil foolishness far beyond the death of the old world. He hoped that their punishment for such lack of wisdom and foresight did not go beyond inconvenient conversations like the one he was now forced to have.
The boy was baiting him, daring him to come up with a better, saner explanation. The man’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, they did? So, did these people deserve to die and be thrown in a fire, too?”
“Mr. Grosvenor says so. He says the zombies are Satan’s army and they killed all the Jews and Muslims and atheists first, and if they ever break in here, it’ll be to kill all the bad Christians we have in here, and anyone who tries to protect them.” The boy had a disconcerting ability not to blink at times.
“Satan’s army” was vintage, Grosvenor foolishness, as if this poor band of rotting imbeciles qualified as such a thing. The rest of the analysis also sounded like the kind of idiotic, insane thing he would come up with. Of all the people not to get killed and eaten, he’d never understand why Grosvenor should be one of them. But that wasn’t his choice, and even to contemplate the justice or injustice of Grosvenor’s life and these people’s undeath was a recipe for frustrated, impotent madness. The man also knew he couldn’t just put Grosvenor down, or demand that the boy disregard his inanities. The boy had to choose. With his great intellect came great power––but far more importantly, great responsibility.
“Is that what you say?”
The boy stared past the man’s left shoulder at the flames. His eyes narrowed to the point where it seemed they were shut. His jaw relaxed slightly as he said clearly, “No.”
The man relaxed a little as well. He tilted his head slightly as he eyed the boy and thought how terrible it must be to have such an over-reaching intellect, one capable of grasping and being confounded at every irony and paradox––how terrible, and at the same time, how wonderful. It would be boy’s burden and his gift, all his life. The man drew himself up, equally from pride as from a feeling of being humbled. “Let’s finish, son,” he said quietly.
They performed the rest of their duties in silence that day, and the man thought it was good that Spiking Day had come early that year.
* * *
Less than a week after Spiking Day, people started going out again for supplies and game. The nights were consistently below freezing, and there would only be a few hours in the middle of the day when any of the dead might thaw enough to pose a threat. The man and his son prepared early one morning to go to a town that had not been investigated before. The town was right at the edge of how far they could travel to and back from in one day, so they left while the eastern horizon was just glowing, peddling their bikes down the road between old wrecked cars, their breath trailing off behind them in the damp, freezing air. The man let the boy pull ahead of him and smiled at how they looked. He had always thought whenever pairs left the compound on bikes that they looked like Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, slowly peddling out into the cruel and uncaring world, eager and optimistic even though hopelessly outnumbered by the unbelievers. Or, as things stood now, by those who literally believed nothing at all, because they could no longer think, or feel, or believe anything ever again. And there would be no conversions on any of their trips now, just a few miserable calories gathered for the living, or a few more spikes in the heads of the unthinking dead. Still, it always struck him as funny looking.
They peddled for hours, silently and steadily. They were both panting and exhausted from their first hard exertion in months when they stopped for water and food late in the morning. They stood next to their bikes on a long stretch of road with pine forest on either side, about fifty feet back from the road surface. The grass nearer the road was less than knee high, still frosted in some places, though most had thawed in the warm sun this morning. The man ate one of the hard boiled eggs they had brought; the chickens that had been brought to the compound were one of the greatest, most life-giving of their finds. He pulled out a handful of acorns and hickory nuts from his pocket and started breaking them with a pair of pliers and handing the insides to his son. At this point in the season, most had a little white larva in them, and he wasn’t quite hungry enough today to eat those––though he had done so often enough in the last four years––so he threw those on the ground. This time of year one could afford such extravagances, as they’d be gathering tons of nuts before the snow fell and got too deep.
They both heard the rustling at the same time, for it was distinct and nearby. They crouched and looked toward where it had come from, as the man shoved the pliers and nuts back in his pocket. There was a stand of cattails and other reeds and tall grasses right at the edge of the forest. A very light breeze was blowing over the road and toward the little marsh, so it must have smelled them. Now they could hear the moan, as the grasses swayed from side to side, more and more violently. The man pulled the aluminum baseball bat from its holder next to the bicycle’s front wheel. “Stay here,” he said to his son as he started to walk toward the moving grass.
The boy grabbed his sleeve. “Let me come,” he said, not exactly fearfully, as he would’ve just the previous year. “I want to see.”
The man took a step back, still eyeing the grass. “You want to see? What? You’ve seen th
em killed before. And you don’t know what’s in the grass between here and there. Could be one lying down. You know that’s happened to people before.”
“The grass isn’t that tall. We’ll both just keep an eye out. I’ve got boots on. I’ll be careful.”
The man hesitated again. After Spiking Day, the boy had seen pretty much every indignity that could be inflicted on the human body, so he didn’t see what harm there could be in him witnessing another brutal slaying. It bothered him that the boy actually wanted to see it, but there was no telling with him what exactly was going through his head. “Okay, but stay close, and keep watching the ground and checking behind us.”
As they made their way towards the marsh, they could see the arms flailing about in the grasses, and then the zombie had torn enough stalks out of the way that they could see it. The sun had warmed it enough that it could move its torso and arms, and it could moan, but its feet were stuck in the frozen mud of the marsh. It stared at them, slack-jawed, and stopped tearing at the grass so that it could reach out towards them. It had been male, but it was now impossibly emaciated from decay, with only a few shreds of clothing hanging off its pitiful frame. It looked more like a scarecrow than anything else. But, unfortunately for it and them, it was still deadly. And human. Its eyes were locked on them, and its moans grew to a crescendo as it tried to tear itself loose from its earthly shackles. The man and boy stopped and watched as it leaned to the right and every one of its stringy muscles strained to lift its left foot, but it didn’t budge. The zombie went slack and mysteriously stopped moaning, as it tilted its head back and looked at the sun. Then, while still focused on the sun, it renewed its pulling on its left foot, though it didn’t moan or make a sound this time, but just strained with all its strength.