Best New Zombie [3] - Best New Zombie Tales, Vol. 3 Page 17

  Dan placed his hand on Davin's shoulder. "C'mon, man. Let's get out of here." I backed away, ready to flee, afraid of being trapped inside. Surely the noise would bring the dead. My ears still rang with the recent display of firepower, but my eyes jerked to a noise---a snarling, moaning wail from outside the window. I glanced outside and saw a small group of meat bags shambling towards us. Five of them---fifty yards away.

  "Guys..."

  Davin shrugged away from Dan and rushed to the window. "It's about time," he muttered. He knocked out the remnants of the window with the butt of his gun and sprang outside. "Bring it, you bastards," he hollered, charging down the slope. The dead responded, lurching toward him, moths to a fire. He hadn't reloaded his shotgun, but hurried toward the ghouls with it raised like a club.

  Dan pushed me aside and started out of the window. As I followed, my pounding heart choked the breath from my chest.

  Shadows danced in front of us. Davin howled---not pain, but pleasure. He screamed like a berserker, a mad warrior in his final fight. The stock of his gun smashed through a few skulls; one head came completely off. Dan raised his gun, trying for a clear shot, but cursed under his breath. It was over before we were close enough to help.

  Davin knelt, panting, in the midst of five ruined bodies. He managed to bludgeon each into submission, a pile of grey flesh like rotten logs. His clothing, arms, and face were caked with zombie sludge, blood, mud---all except two streaks trailing from his eyes down either cheek.

  "That... was... fun," he breathed. His eyes met mine, sparkling in the moonlight. He held up his left arm, leaning on the shotgun like a crutch with his right. A red gash cut across the forearm where one of the things bit into his skin. "That last little bastard got me..." I looked at Dan. His face flushed white. "No..."

  "You gotta do it, fellas. I'm toast." Davin shook his head. "What a way to go, huh?" He grinned, white teeth flashing from a mask of blood and offal.

  "No." Dan dropped his gun. "I can't."

  Davin looked at me. My hands trembled around the gun. I pushed the stock into my shoulder. The trigger was cold against my finger.

  "Do it." Davin's body toppled backward with the thunder.

  I looked away as I pulled the trigger, ashamed to fear the blood and worried more rot-bags smelled the fresh kill, or heard the shot and would swarm the place.

  Dan didn't move for a few minutes; he just hunched on grass and stared at Davin's body. The moonlight filtered through a few drifting clouds, casting a somber pall of blue over the scene while the wind whispered across the jagged tops of nearby trees. After a minute I heard this sob, starting low like a moan. I clutched my shotgun with white knuckles and turned to Dan. He was crying.

  "Stupid bastard. Stupid, fucking bastard." He drew one foot back as if to kick Davin's body but stopped, rubbing a sleeve across his face. "We gotta get him outta here," he said, almost choking on the words.

  I looked back at the corpse. His face was ruined, but in my mind's eye I saw Davin as he was alive. I saw his cockeyed smile and confident flicker in his eye. I knew what would happen if we carried him back to the compound.

  "We can't take him back."

  "What?"

  I thought of Mom; the last time I saw her they doused her with fuel, dropped their torches, and her skin cracked and blackened, sending an angry plume of black snaking into the sky. Maybe the booze did it, worked on my stomach and my brain, but I knew we couldn't bury him out here---the zombies would make a meal of his remains before the day was out. We couldn't take him back with us either. "I'm not letting those paranoid bastards make a little bonfire of his body. He didn't want that."

  "Are you nuts?" Dan slumped into a pew. "Those rot-bags will chew him up if we don't." Silence filled the little church before he spoke again. "What the hell do you want to do, stuff him in one of those damn grease barrels?"

  I reached for Davin's gun. The stock was battered now, blotted with dried blood and mud, but I could make out the groove Davin had carved with his knife. I counted thirteen older marks from his father and grandfather. Five more tallies for the dead at our feet would make nineteen. That gun had been his grandfather's, passed down for generations.

  "No, we send him out right."

  ~

  Dan helped me drag a few pews into a pile, and then I turned over a little table at the center of our kindling. Dan was stronger than me, so he hoisted Davin's body over his shoulders, lugged him to the front of the church, and laid him out on the table. I pried open our remaining jar of booze and doused his body with it. It tasted like shit, so I knew it was strong enough to burn well. Poking my hand in my jeans, I fished around for the lighter, Dad's old thing with the initials engraved on the side.

  I snapped the lighter open against my leg. With a quick flick of my thumb a small flame lurched toward the dark ceiling of the church, and I touched the fire to the edge of the table, watching it explode as a magnificent pyre fit for our friend. We stood outside the building for a while, chased back by the heat. I wanted to wait until every beam in the church blackened, devoured by the orange fire, and collapsed on itself. Dan and I were silent. The world was silent. As the fire melted into an ash pile we turned and stumbled down the hill. On our way back to the wall I glanced off into the sunrise. We spotted a zombie, a lanky thing stumbling away from us down a quiet street---he hadn't come with the others, and how many more shambled about in the darkness I would never know. It faced the other way and didn't see us. Dan raised his gun but hesitated. "Aw hell," he muttered as he dropped the gun.

  Behind the zombie, the eastern sky started to balloon with pinks and oranges, and I took it in, trying to memorize the look of the morning sun cresting a hill. You couldn't see a sunrise like that in the compound. I realized that the rest of my life would be spent behind the wall, and understood why Davin had charged headlong into the arms of the dead. At that moment, I feared the stifling closeness inside more than the few pathetic, undead bastards that littered fly-over country.

  The Beach

  TIM LEBBON

  "Sunday," Ray said.

  I nodded. "Sunday. Day of rest." From behind us, the regular crack of rifles.

  He sighed. "I'm dead beat. Stiff as a bugger. Do you think there's any hope?"

  Without looking at him, I uttered something between a giggle and a sob. I'd been feeling pretty weird lately. "There's always hope. So long as we have bullets, there's always hope." I drew a shape in the dew-speckled grass, but did not know what it was meant to be.

  "Cliché King strikes again."

  We faced the house because it implied normality, a façade from the past. It stood alone on the plain, a supposed retreat from all that was happening. We had come here because we thought it would be safe. We thought nobody else would know about it. Our complacency had marked us out.

  Behind us, another cascade of rifle shots. Ammunition was running low. The snipers were using their rounds sparingly, trying to line up two or more to make the most of the shot. Each miss was another two steps closer to the end; each hit was merely one.

  "I never thought it would end like this," Ray said. "When we came here, I mean. I thought it would be safe. We can see for miles around. I thought it'd be safe." He often used the word safe, as if repetition could imbue it with power over unrelenting reality.

  I glanced at my watch, but did not know the time. The smashed face recorded forever the instant of my fleeing the city, where I had abandoned Gemma to her fate. She had been dead already, but I could have done so much more for her. I hated myself for that. I hoped she did not hate me too.

  Sometimes I thought I saw her on the distant hillside, shuffling towards the house with interminable, relentless steps. I prayed every night that it would not be my shift when she arrived.

  "Our shift," I said. Ray and I stood, turned from the house----the mental placebo for our sickness----and faced the real world.

  I took a rifle from Dawn. I smiled encouragingly, but she had been at the barricade for two
hours, and her face was molded grim.

  The gun was still hot. The rack of magazines was sadly depleted. I'd have to make every shot count.

  There must have been a million of them. They seemed to be coming here from all over the world. Dead but walking, all their stagnant attention was focused on our house. We were the centre of the world, and it was hopeless. I wished they would all turn around and walk back the way they had come, but eventually, I knew, they would simply travel around the globe and reach us from the opposite direction.

  I took aim and fired. A head exploded into dry brains and shattered skull.

  We were an island in a sea of moving dead. They walked over the pathetic corpses of those we had already shot. They came slowly, like a glacier of doom, guaranteed to sweep us away eventually but content in the knowledge that they need not rush things.

  I took aim and fired. One went down with half a head, the bullet ricocheting and punching through the spine of another. A bullet well spent.

  In the distance, flaming red hair. A smile borne of decomposition, not love. Gemma.

  It would be another hour or so before she was near enough to be worth shooting. It was an hour I spent reliving our time together, like an extended flashback experienced by a drowning man. And I was drowning. Choking on the inevitability of things. Putting off the end, as mankind had for decades, the difference being that I had no faith in redemption. I was not waiting for God to intervene; I simply wanted a few more hours of life.

  At the end of the hour, when she was close enough for me to see the empty sockets where once resided the eyes I loved, I took aim and pulled the trigger. But there were no more bullets left.

  Fast Eddie's Big Night Out

  JOHN L. FRENCH

  Safe, that's what he felt like when he finally became aware of himself. Safe and warm. He hadn't felt like this since, since----he didn't know. It didn't matter. Wherever he was, he was at peace.

  ~

  He called himself "Fast Eddie." It wasn't his real name. That was Wallace----Wallace Cromwell. He'd hated that name. Hated being called Wallace. Hated "Wally" more. Hated being asked how the Beaver was. Then one night he saw a movie on late night TV about some guys shooting pool, Paul Newman and a fat guy. Newman's name was Fast Eddie. He liked that and started using it as his own.

  By then he was typically alone. He still lived in his mother's house, but his bedroom was in the basement. He came and went as he pleased. Mostly he went home to eat, sleep and get clean laundry. Some days he didn't go home at all. There was too much happening on the street----people to see, stuff to do.

  Some of the stuff involved drinking----beer, wine, whatever he could get. And some of it involved girls----those who gave it away, those who traded it. And some of it involved drugs----reefer, crack, whatever made him feel good and forget the boredom that was at the bottom of his life. And all of it involved money. Money he usually didn't have and always needed. Money his mother had stopped giving him. Money he had to get from somewhere no matter what.

  He tried street jobs, but that was low percentage. The guy you robbed might not have any more than you. Or he might be armed, and your payoff would be a knife in the side or a nine in the head. It was better to B&E. Less chance of getting caught, and VCRs, DVDs and computers always brought him enough to get by.

  He went home less and less. One night he went back and didn't have his key. Hadn't had it for a long time. How long, he didn't know. He pounded on the front door. No answer. He went around and pounded on the back. Still nothing. He broke the pane of the basement door, reached it and unlocked it.

  Things were changed. None of his stuff was there. He didn't know the man standing in the basement. He did know the man had a gun. And he knew that the sirens in the distance were coming for him.

  Nobody believed that he thought it was still his house. His mother hadn't lived there for months. What had happened to her he never found out. Without money for bail he sat in the Baltimore Detention Center for six months, awaiting trial. In that time his prints came back on six other burglaries. He got three on top of the half he'd served. Overcrowding forced him back on the street inside the year.

  When Eddie came out he went back to the B&E, back to yoking tourists who went down the wrong street, back to jacking cars from the fools who came down from PA looking to buy drugs. He had to. Inside he had picked up the habit, and now it needed to be fed every day.

  He went inside the second time because he got stung. The guy in the Honda looking to buy turned out to be a cop. When Eddie pulled his piece the cop pulled a bigger one. Without turning around, Eddie knew that there were two more big guns pointing at the back of his head.

  Two years this time. Eddie's cellmate was a no-parole lifer who had found Jesus. Or was it Allah? Whoever It was, the lifer always talked to Eddie about a better way. With nothing else to do, Eddie listened.

  It didn't make sense until three months after Eddie was out. Out in the cold and rain, huddling in a doorway, the better way that the con had talked about seemed very good to Eddie. He'd change, Eddie told himself. He'd find a program and get clean, give up this half a life and start living again.

  Getting clean was harder than scoring without cash. All the programs were full. The drug treatment centers had waiting lists. Despite his wanting it, no one was offering any help. Desperate, and willing to do anything to escape the Limbo he was in, Eddie did the one thing he never expected to do. He called a cop.

  ~

  "Yeah, I'm interested... Thought there might be, how much?... Oh! That might take some doing... No, didn't say it couldn't be done, have to pull in a few that's all... Give me your cell... Thought everybody did... Pager then... Well then, call be back in two days... Yeah, this number. I'll work something out, get you clean." Detective Dante Amberson hung up the phone.

  "Who was that?" Andy Russell asked his partner.

  "Some stoner called Fast Eddie," Amberson replied, turning to his computer. He logged on to the Citynet and searched "drug treatment centers----open beds." There weren't that many.

  "I remember Eddie, we almost shot him, what, two years back?"

  "That's why he called us, because we didn't shoot him when we could have. Thinks he can trust us." Amberson started copying names, numbers and email addresses into a document, highlighting the ones he'd try first.

  "What's he want?"

  "To give us Santos."

  Russell's eyes widened. Antoine Santos wasn't a major drug dealer, but he was big enough that once arrested, he could be squeezed until he gave up a few people who were. "How's Eddie know Santos?"

  "Used to work for him, still does some running." Amberson hit print. Two lists came out of the printer.

  "And for Santos he gets----?

  "Placement in a drug treatment center. He wants out of the life."

  "That's it, no money?" Russell was amazed; everybody wanted money.

  "He wouldn't turn it down, but without treatment, no Santos."

  "We better make some calls."

  Amberson handed Russell one of the lists. "Tell me about it. Start calling, partner."

  Two days later Eddie called back.

  "All arranged, my man," Amberson told him. "Got a room at the McCulloh Treatment Facility with your name on it... That's right, where Church Home Hospital used to be... You're getting the works----detoxification, blood cleaning, counseling, job placement, everything. You be there tomorrow morning, eleven sharp. We'll get you settled, then you give us what we need on Santos... What's that?"

  But Eddie hadn't been talking to Amberson. The detective heard him say something to somebody, his voice low as if turned away from the phone. There was a muffled reply, then three loud pops.

  "Oh shit! Eddie! Eddie!" Amberson yelled into the receiver. To his partner, "Andy, call 2284. Get this line traced. Get an ambo started. Eddie!" he yelled again. No answer.

  "Got it," Russell said calmly. "Units and medics are rolling. Anything on your end?" Amberson shook his head. "Damn. Wel
l, let's get out there." Amberson looked at the admissions folder they'd gotten from McCulloh. "Damn," he said again, "and after all our hard work."

  When the two detectives rolled up on the scene they saw the ambulance pulling away.

  "Follow that," Amberson told his partner. "Let the district guys and the Lab worry about witnesses and spent casings. If Eddie's still alive we'll get his statement."

  Russell followed the ambulance down Wolfe Street. He groaned when it turned right, bypassing Johns Hopkins.

  "Taking him right to Shock Trauma," he said. "Must be bad."

  Madison to Central. Central to Fayette. From Fayette straight to Shock Trauma and the best emergency care available. Russell knew the way----every detective did----and he stayed close to the wagon. He wanted to be there when Eddie was pulled out, to hear him say who shot him, hoping the name was "Santos."

  Lights flashing and siren screaming, the ambulance raced down Central. But when it turned on Fayette, it went silent and dark as its emergency system shut down. It slowed, now keeping pace with traffic rather than weaving in and out.

  There could only be one reason for the sudden lack of urgency. "Damn," Amberson's fist hit the dash. "They lost him."

  Still, Russell followed. From Fayette Street the wagon turned on to Penn Street and from there, down the ramp that led to the Medical Examiner's Office.

  Russell parked along side the ambulance. The detectives caught up to the paramedics just as they were wheeling Eddie into the receiving area.