Best New Zombie [3] - Best New Zombie Tales, Vol. 3 Page 19

  The detectives were quick to seize the situation.

  "Doesn't look good, Antoine. Dead man in your house, your bullets in him," Amberson told Santos.

  "Why'd you steal him from the morgue? Going to dig the bullets out?" continued Russell.

  "No, no," Santos protested. "He was dead when he came in and..."

  "And nobody's going to believe that, Antoine." Amberson interrupted. "Except maybe me and my partner." The sound of sirens in the distant, getting closer. "You gonna deal, deal now, else you get you a manslaughter charge."

  Men in blue uniforms rushing the house from front and back, Amberson and Russell, weapons holstered, holding up their hands and badges to stem the charge. "I'm yours," Santos shouting over the initial confusion of men and voices. District detectives then homicide men arriving. Amberson and Russell holding tight to their charge.

  By the time morning came Santos had given up his entire network, from suppliers down to runners. In exchange, he was charged as an accessory after the fact in the death of Wallace Cromwell, a.k.a. "Fast Eddie," with minimum sentencing guaranteed.

  As for how the theft of Eddie's body was explained, Amberson and Cromwell referred anyone who asked to Dominic Jones. Jones, in turn, told the questioner to ask Santos. Santos, whose reputation was only enhanced by the belief that he had committed such an audacious crime, always denied it, but in such a way as to assure his listener that he had beyond doubt done the deed. The Medical Examiner's Office did get a new state-of-the art security system to keep whatever had happened from happening again.

  With no one to claim it, Fast Eddie's body was turned over to the Anatomy Board. Unusually well preserved for an unembalmed corpse, it was used for three weeks before it was cremated and the ashes disposed of.

  ~

  Safe and warm, Eddie again felt the warm embrace of loving arms. He floated, bathing in the warmth of the golden light. It was not for him, not this time. He'd been judged and he acknowledged that the judgment was fair and just. He felt a tug, somewhere a new life was being created. Consciousness faded as the soul that had once been Fast Eddie Cromwell sped off towards another chance at doing things right.

  Night of the Living Dead Bingo Women

  SIMON MCCAFFERY

  Even on her bad days, Edna Mae Brewer was invincible.

  She'd won five straight games since arriving at noon, excitedly calling out "Bingo!" after marking the last winning square on her playing sheets. The third time she fairly shrieked it in excitement, though her fellow contestants in the hall paid her not the slightest heed. The woman sitting directly across from Edna stared vacantly ahead like a wax figure, streaks of colored ink smeared across her face like a Maori mask. On Edna's left, an elderly black man in a soiled, ripped turtleneck gazed up at the high ceiling while his outstretched hands groped blindly about on the wide table. He swept his ink dauber and stack of playing cards onto the floor and made no effort to retrieve them.

  In a remote way, this total disinterest in her good fortune rankled Edna, who was competitive by nature. In the old days, when a player's numbers came in, folks had not just sat there like stones. Most cheered as the caller checked off the winning numbers. Others groaned and everyone applauded like disinterested businessmen at a luncheon. Some even glared at the winner with genuine hatred, muttering under their breath as they discarded their losing sheets. This was no way for a Christian to behave, Edna knew, but she could commiserate; she herself had sat near a big winner on occasion and felt resentment glow in the pit of her stomach like a hot lump of coal.

  Tonight, however, Edna felt just fine, thank you. This was largely due to the fact that she had won every game of the session so far, from the Early Bird up through the Bonus Blackout round. Some of the wins had taken longer than others, but she'd kept at it; hunched over her game sheets, concentrating fiercely while marking off numbers.

  A tiny voice inside Edna's head pointed out that though she was undeniably a skilled and seasoned bingo player, the fact that all of her opponents were dead might have something to do with her long string of successes. This nasty little voice, which sounded not unlike her nagging (and thankfully deceased) husband Frank, irritated Edna. Winning was winning and fair was fair. Was it her fault zombies weren't cut out for the fast-paced competitiveness of high-stakes bingo?

  The next game got underway. The caller, once a handsome young Creek Indian named Joe, began plucking numbered Ping-Pong balls from the big, Plexiglas hopper on the green-carpeted dais. Joe still wore the tattered remains of his cheap tuxedo outfit, though it was badly discolored and seemed to disappear in and out of his flesh in places. Joe's gray face was beginning to look unsightly, Edna noted----like an ice-cream novelty left unattended in the sun----and he was having difficulty calling the numbers in an intelligible fashion. Some sounded as if he was speaking through a veil of rotted seaweed. To make matters worse, he also ate some of the Ping-Pong balls.

  Edna had prepared for this, however, positioning herself at a table close to the calling booth. Numbers garbled beyond recognition could usually be eyeballed before the little white spheres disappeared back into the hopper or Joe's mouth.

  In an orderly row before her were the tools of the trade: ink daubers and paper playing sheets. Not long after the Reawakening, Edna had helped herself to several new ink daubers behind the now-deserted concession stand. The daubers were larger, gaily colored, and more expensive than those she had once played with. Her old dauber was squat and plain, and she had refilled it with tap water dyed with food coloring because Frank had strictly limited her playing money. The new daubers, used to mark pink, red, and purple circles on the throwaway paper sheets, were scented to smell like strawberries, cherries, and grapes. Edna didn't mind when, hunched over the table, the sickly-sweet smell of the colored ink filled her nostrils; it almost blocked out the odor of her nearby opponents, who sat in dazed rows and shambled blindly along the aisles.

  Edna continued marking her sheets in a businesslike fashion, never missing a single number----the secret of winning (besides playing against zombies, the Frank-voice reminded). Towards four o'clock, her stomach began rumbling. How she wished she could hail a uniformed runner and order a burrito with the works and a large Pepsi! In the old days, during a typical eight-hour session, Edna might consume three burritos with hot sauce and sour cream, a cheeseburger, several bags of chips, a small dish of soft ice cream (chocolate and vanilla swirled together), and a legion of soft drinks.

  Now, with the food in the snack bar trampled and spoiled, she was forced to bring her own munchies: vacuum packs of beef jerky, vacuum-sealed cans of cheese curls, and scores of candy bars that wouldn't go over----thanks to BTA and TBHQ, whatever they were----until October 2014. There was a sprawling Food King supermarket three blocks from the bingo hall, and until its shattered roof finished falling in, it served as Edna's super-snack bar. Digging through her canvas tote bag, she extracted a Slim Jim and tore into it with her teeth. The taste was salty and greasy and wonderful, though not as satisfying as a deep-fried jumbo burrito with everything crammed inside.

  During the next pattern game, in which the winner was required to form a kite pattern, a zombie caromed off the back of Edna's chair causing her marker to smear across the sheet.

  There! That had ruined it! And she had been only three numbers away from completing the tail of the kite and winning five thousand dollars. The big tradeoff with zombies, she fumed, was that though they were a cinch to beat at bingo (or any game, for that matter), they possessed the manners of... wild pigs. They might slump in quiet, swaying rows for hours, uttering hardly a moan, or they might knock about like mummies, overturning tables and making a general racket without so much as an apology if they disrupted a game! It was enough to heat the collar of the most patient, God-fearing soul, especially a dyed-in-the-wool bingo fanatic like Edna.

  After winning two more games----the "Round Robin" and "Crazy T"----in quick succession, Edna noticed twilight was stealing its way inside the
huge hall. She immediately set down her dauber and reached below her chair.

  This time the tote bag produced a large silver flashlight. The light had been scavenged from the blackened hulk of the bingo security guard's station wagon, a Ford Taurus, which now rested upside down in the hall parking lot. The long-necked light held six fat, D-size batteries in its gut, and was heavy enough to use as a club if the need arose. Its beam was strong and steady, like a prison searchlight.

  With shadows forming like fathomless pools inside the hall, Edna clicked it on and positioned it so she could read her cards and keep an eye on Joe. With nightfall the interior of the hall would quickly sink into an absolute blackness. Edna would need the light to continue playing and, at midnight, to make her way to an exit. Without its shepherding beam, she knew from experience, one might bump around for an eternity searching for the door.

  In the first weeks after the dead had decided to walk again (and feast on live people and play bingo), Edna had found the hall too unsettling to remain in after sundown. Just the zoo-like sounds of zombies shuffling about like blind men had sent icy splinters of terror through her heart. But the light made a considerable difference and didn't attract them.

  Nothing seemed to particularly gain their attention, not even Edna, who might be considered, through the dead orbs of a zombie, to be the biggest deluxe burrito around. Like everyone else Edna had kept her distance from them (and, more importantly, their teeth) after they had clawed their way out of the cold ground, but none had ever attacked her. This was, she was now certain, due to years of chemical cancer treatment she had suffered at the hands of young doctors who thought themselves little Gods. The zombies smelled her, yes, but the meat was... no good.

  Edna found this situation immensely agreeable. The best part was that zombies wiping out civilization didn't mean she had to quit the only activity that had ever brought her joy. In a way (and He definitely worked in mysterious ones----one look at the hundreds of zombies roaming the interior of the Riverside Avenue Bingo Hall confirmed that!), it was an enormous blessing, a miracle. Edna now enjoyed bingo each and every day, and never paid so much as a penny to play. The coins and bills choking the legion of abandoned cash registers in the city meant nothing. There were none of the worries, setbacks, and anxieties of her previous life. There was no Frank (she definitely had them to thank for that) to complain about bills and starchy meals. The troubles of that dead life had sloughed off as quick and easy as Joe's face. Not even her ponderous weight mattered anymore. None of it mattered. There was only her love of the game.

  And now, like never before, Edna was an undeniable winner, the unbeaten empress of all-day, all-night bingo.

  Clasping an ink dauber in her plump right hand and hefting the flashlight in her left, she aimed the beam at the silhouetted figure on the dais. Joe, issuing gobbling sounds that might have been numbers, started a new game.

  Worm-sacks and Dirt-backs

  LEE CLARK ZUMPE

  The sanitary world around Dr. Kenneth Sprague had rotted away revealing its rancid underbelly.

  "Who are we kidding? Reconstituted disinterred entities? The formerly expired? The prematurely lamented?" Sprague had used his last euphemism. Frustration and fatigue finally stripped him of his last ounce of professional prudence as he bickered with the chief of staff at Arnesville Regional Hospital. Surrounding the two men, the dead huddled in a once spotless hallway, many clustered in familial groups, whimpering and trembling. They had spilled into the corridors from an overcrowded and understaffed emergency room. Outside, they shambled through the parking lot, gazed despondently at their reflections in car windows, and picked at their own putrescent flesh. "They're walking corpses. How am I supposed to treat walking corpses?"

  "Just do your job, Dr. Sprague." Dr. Zephram Ames responded to Sprague's outburst with a cold stare and an unsympathetic tone. The 50-something physician ran the hospital with an iron fist in the best of times. The current crisis had transformed him into a fascist despot devoid of compassion for his colleagues. "I expect you to treat each one like any other patient: examine their symptoms, manage their pain and monitor their progress. It's all we can do until a treatment or a cure is developed."

  "There won't be a treatment or a cure," Sprague said, his tone growing more insubordinate as his discontent and resentment mounted. Those who required and deserved legitimate health care were being turned away from the hospital because of the extraordinary circumstances. Sprague had not worked his way through medical school to spend the rest of his life dealing with an endless parade of moldering patients. "This isn't a disease. It's an aberration of nature."

  "We have our orders." Ames referred to strict government directives outlined in a hastily drafted Presidential Executive Order shortly after the onset of the epidemic. "Our hands are tied. The law dictates our actions. I won't risk my career over this."

  "And I won't waste mine medicating things that by all rights should be destroyed."

  Sprague turned his back and walked down the grim corridor, navigating the ghastly tangle of fetid flesh and moaning cadavers. He longed for fresh air, untainted by the lurid stench of the dead. At the end of the hallway he hesitated in front of a service entrance, wishing he could leave it all behind him, wishing he could ignore his conscience, go home, and wait it out.

  He could not help but feel beguiled by the bliss of seclusion, the promise of total tranquility as could only be achieved in complete isolation. At the same time, he feared what might become of the city----of the world----in his absence. What today manifested itself as a plague of the dead could tomorrow become a scourge of the living. He had an obligation to stay alert, to stay focused, to watch for signs of mutation.

  After a moment's deliberation he turned toward the stairwell and headed for the roof. Though he had no weather reports to notify him, he could tell a cold front was pushing through the mountains. He hoped the arctic winds would offer a temporary reprieve from the stomach-turning aroma saturating the hospital's lower levels.

  Down there, everything smelled like the grave.

  He had examined dozens of reconstituted disinterred entities over the last few weeks, poked and prodded them, even gathered specimens to be forwarded to the USAMRIID task force facility located on the outskirts of the city. He continually questioned the military's unprecedented utilization of civilian medical personnel to act as first responders in the outbreak, criticizing army scientists for distancing themselves from the hot zone.

  Nothing about the epidemic made sense. The government's initial reaction had been to quarantine the city----a feat made feasible thanks to the area's rugged topography. Set in the Appalachian Mountains in far western North Carolina, Arnesville could be cut off from the rest of the region relatively easily with the closure of four state highways and a 20-mile stretch of the Interstate system. State police simply rerouted traffic through nearby Canton and Waynesville.

  A media blackout quickly followed. All television, radio, and newspaper services were terminated with swift and shocking efficiency. The military apparently deployed some form of equipment that jammed external radio signals and made satellite dishes ineffective. All phones, both land-line and cellular, ceased to function. Postal deliveries were halted.

  Not a single journalist entered the city after the implementation of the quarantine.

  Then, instead of inserting troops to round up the infected corpses, the military positioned itself along the quarantine perimeter and set about patrolling the back country in Black Hawk choppers. No epidemiologists arrived to relieve the overtaxed medical community. No FEMA workers appeared to assess the conditions and provide logistical support. No government representatives visited to address the concerns of local residents, to offer reassurances or provide explanations and chart strategies.

  Finally, word came down that the president had extended limited Constitutional rights to those affected----and that the "killing" of any such entity constituted a federal offense punishable by, ironically,
death.

  Unlike those in Washington D.C., Sprague had no misconceptions about the state of the "corporeal undead," the term employed to describe the entities in the official document. The dead rarely spoke, exhibited no emotion other than chronic depression and appeared to have only limited fine motor skills. He saw no spark of intelligence in their eyes, no flicker of remembrance and no internal motivation to survive. Left to their own devices, they might well waste away into nothingness. They ate nothing, drank nothing, and, aside from wandering aimlessly and groaning unremittingly, they did nothing.

  Admittedly, some of Ames' closest associates had achieved some success with experimental therapy. His team worked in secrecy in the upper levels of the hospital, selecting trial candidates through a careful screening process. From the notes he had shared with other staff members, the things could be nourished intravenously, taught to perform simple skills, prompted into speech.

  That Ames sanctioned such trials repulsed Sprague. Those responsible for the research argued that their work was a logical extension of their scientific background. They considered themselves medical revolutionaries exploring cutting-edge rehabilitation techniques.

  Sprague likened them to grave-robbers bent on harvesting the dead for their own selfish professional purposes.

  "Fed up with the working conditions down there, Dr. Sprague?" Arriving on the roof, the physician found a congregation of expatriated interns smoking and sharing a bottle of Jack Daniels beneath the ruddy evening skies. "Or have you come to collect us and usher us back down to our stations?" Randy Donne had apparently been elected as the group's provisional spokesperson. The other greenhorns lacked the courage to voice their antipathy and aversion to dealing with the dead. "If that's the case, I'm afraid that we'll have to decline the invitation."