Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (2 page)

He unloads: “TELL ME YOU WON’T PUBLISH ANOTHER STUPID ZOMBIE BOOK!
TELL ME!”

I should be saying:
No problem, Mr. Lovecraft. You want me to scrap the book idea? Consider it done. Anything else you need? A backrub? The keys to my car? A thousand dollars? A night with my girlfriend… no questions asked––? Whatever you need, H. P., just name it and it’s yours! Oh boy!

Instead, what comes out of my mouth is, “Ahhhhh… I have to release the zombie book!”

Lovecraft is pissed. He changes the dial from ‘mulch’ to ‘mince.’ Then from ‘mince’ to ‘liquefy.’

I didn’t even know my blender
had
‘liquefy.’

I scream more.

But he screams louder: “NO MORE ZOMBIES! DON’T YOU HEAR WHAT I’M TELLING YOU! ZOMBIES ARE PLAYED OUT! TEDIOUS! OVERDONE! ZOMBIES ARE BORING!!!”

I’m crying now.
Crying
. Full on. Tears streaming. My hand is gone. My wrist is gone. In another fifteen seconds my elbow will be turned into bone stew. Liquefied. My eyes are burning as snot runs from my nose. Panicking. Terrified. I’m not sure where I find the strength to argue, but I do. “Everybody
loves
zombies!”

He kicks me in the shin.

It’s almost funny, really. The kick. It doesn’t do much. I don’t even feel it, truth be told. Not while my arm is getting shredded. But I see him do it and I understand––he wants to hurt me more, somehow. But he’s grasping at straws now. Obviously. It’s hard to elevate a situation when you’ve started negotiations by destroying a hand. He’s left himself no room to maneuver, so he says, “
Nobody
loves zombies.”

Oh, but he’s
wrong
. And I
know
he’s wrong.

I say, “Yes they do!”

“The market is
saturated!
Do something good… something
original
!”

“My book will be good!”

‘DO. SOMETHING. ORIGINAL!”

An unexpected change of heart comes like an adjustment in the wind. He turns the blender off and releases me. Thank heaven. It’s quiet now. The silence is a gift but my ears are ringing and my stump is throbbing. I pull my arm out to appraise the damage.

Wait. Let me try that again: I pull
what’s left of my arm
out to appraise the damage. What I see looks like a cross between Cthulhu’s tentacle-beard and a ketchup sundae.

Lovecraft spits on the floor. “I played gentle this time, fucker,” he says with a smirk. “If I have to come back here, don’t count on getting off so easy. Next time I won’t have a blender. I’ll have a chainsaw. I’ll saw your empty head off.”

* * *

Ahem
.

Let me clear my throat.

Dear literate zombie fans; my name is James Roy Daley. What you’re looking at is a little idea of mine, brought to life by the power of hard work. If you’re a zombie purist this compilation will probably piss you off a bunch ‘cause I’ve put together stories that are not afraid to break traditional rules. Question: if you chop a zombie in half and both sections attack, are you fighting two zombies now? What if you chop the sucker into a hundred pieces? What if you’re attacked by hair and skin? Are zombies allowed to run? Do they think? Can they talk? Can they use tools? Do they experience emotions? Can they team up? Drive a car? Have sex?

Ah, the questions are endless. And with each comes a plethora of unverified answers. The debate never ends.

Like I said, some of these stories will piss off the traditionalists, no doubt. But if you’re a collector of zombie goodness this book will add some brilliant tales to your collection, tales you do not have.

I went
digging
.

And found stories inside anthologies you can’t buy, and compilations you’ve never heard of. I’ve got stories from websites that no longer exist and magazines that haven’t put out an issue in ages. I went
digging
, brothers and sisters.
Digging
. And yeah, some of the tales are easy to get.
Some
. Not many.

This book contains funny tales and nightmares, artsy pieces and screamers, big stories and small. I tried to hit different emotions. Straight up, I pulled together the best work I could get my hands on––
I don’t want the horror gods to kick my ass, don’t you know
. My goal, a simple one: to put together the best zombie tales ever written. Don’t care what year the story was written. Don’t care who wrote it. Don’t care if the story follows Romero’s un-written rules of what a zombie is supposed to do. Don’t care if it’s offensive, or filled with naughty language. All I care about is High Quality Fiction. Simple.

Zombie Love

RAY GARTON

-ONE-

1.

A cold, gusty December wind blew the falling rain through the night. Just outside the small northern California town of Anderson, atop what the local children called Witch’s Hill, and near the dead-end of narrow seldom-used Hilltop Road, Mrs. Kobylka’s little house stood blanketed with ivy. The house was so covered by the white-speckled green leaves it seemed to have grown up out of the earth with the vines. Wisps of smoke were swept away by the wind as they rose out of the small chimney on the right side of the house. Four cracked concrete steps led up through an ivy-coated arch onto a small enclosed porch. The porch was flanked by windows––the one on the left was dark, while a soft glow shone through the drapes on the other. An enormous weeping willow, its branches swaying in the wind, stood in the small yard, which was overrun by weeds. The pickets of a once-white fence surrounding the yard were dark and broken, like old neglected teeth. An old blue pickup truck that had seen better days a long time ago was parked in front of the house.

Three young people sat in a silver Ford Focus Sedan SE parked across the pot-holed road from the house. The rain was loud inside the car as they stared silently at the house––Randy Satifoy at the wheel, his girlfriend Liz Poole in the passenger seat, and Kirk Mundy behind her. Kirk was stretched over the backseat, his nose to the glass on the other side. They were each 17 years old. They had grown up there in Anderson, and since they were small children, they had heard stories about creepy old Mrs. Kobylka, that she was a witch who had lived in that run-down house for over a hundred years.

When they were kids, it had been customary to see who was brave enough to egg Mrs. Kobylka’s house each Halloween and risk falling under her evil spell. The old woman had been there when Kirk’s dad was a boy, and kids had told the same stories about her back then. One story in particular had stood out, a story about a dead dog. It was passed down from generation to generation of children who rode their bikes up the hill to see the run-down old house, who dared each other to go up and knock on the door. Sometimes they spotted her coming out to get her mail from the rusted old box on the crooked post in front of her house. They watched from hidden vantage points as she shuffled through the weeds that grew up between the cracks in the concrete walk that led to the gate––a plump, slightly hunched old woman with a wild tangle of white hair, always in a simple housedress with a shawl across her shoulders. Sometimes she drove into town in her old pickup truck and was seen at the post office or drugstore, and the whispering children kept a healthy distance from her as she went about her business.

Kirk’s dad had told him more than once to stay away from Mrs. Kobylka’s place. He’d said she was a crazy old woman and she shouldn’t be bothered. It had done no good, of course.

In the Focus, Randy spoke just loud enough to be heard above the sound of the rain: “Are you sure you want to do this, Kirk?”

“Yes.” There was no hesitation in his response.

Liz said, “You guys do what you want, but I’m staying here.” She ran a brush through her short strawberry-blonde hair. She was a pretty girl with a small round face, tense now as she looked at Randy. She’d been crying earlier, after the news about Natalie, and her blue eyes were puffy. “There’s no fuckin’ way I’m going in there.”

“I’m glad
you’re
so sure,” she said.

Randy closed the door as Kirk came around the rear of the car and started across the road, hands in the pockets of his down jacket, head down and shoulders hunched against the rain. Randy hurried to catch up.

Kirk was handsome in a sad way––everything about him was sad lately––tall and slender and subtly muscled, an avid swimmer, with short dark brown hair. But he seemed to have shrunk somehow since the accident. He was pale and drawn from lack of sleep. He limped slightly––his only injury from the accident had been a badly bruised knee. Randy was a little shorter, stockier, with a mop of blond hair, a round face, and wire-framed glasses. They were quickly soaked by the rain as they crossed the road.

“Do you know what you’re gonna say to her?” Randy asked as they hurried through the gate, which stood open crookedly, one hinge broken.

Kirk went up the steps and into the small cave formed by the ivy-covered arch, out of the rain, and Randy followed. On the other side of a rickety old screen door, the front door had a square window in the top with white curtains, the glass smudged. He knocked on the frame of the screen and it rattled noisily. A dog barked loudly inside, and Kirk could hear a television playing. The dog sounded big and vicious. The television’s volume was high and sounded like the news. There was movement, then footsteps came toward the door.

“She’s coming,” Randy whispered. “Our last chance to haul ass outta here.”

One of the white curtains in the window was tugged aside and a wide, rheumy, deep-set eye peered out at them.

“Who are you?” she asked in a dry, cracked voice. “What you want?” Even though she’d lived there for what seemed like forever, she still spoke with a heavy eastern-European accent:
Vot you vant?

She dropped the curtain and fumbled with locks, muttering to herself. The door opened and she stood before them, a squat, backlit silhouette. She flipped a switch on the wall and the naked yellow bulb in a socket above the door blinked on. “You come to egg my house?” she said. “Halloween’s over. It’s
Christmas
time.” A couple of her upper front teeth were the only teeth remaining in her head and her wrinkled cheeks and lower lip sunk loosely into her mouth. Her face resembled a decaying old Jack-o-lantern.

Kirk said, “I’ve come to ask for your help.”

“My
help
? What is this, some kinda charity drive?”
Vot ith dith, thome kynt uff choddity drife?

“No, ma’am,” Kirk said. “It’s a… a personal favor.”

Her eyes darted back and forth between them several times, then she stared at Kirk for a long moment. She wore a pale green housedress, slippers, and a dark shawl on her shoulders. Somewhere behind her the dog continued to bark. “Mundy. You come for Mrs. Kobylka’s help, eh?” she said, looking Kirk up and down. “What you want that I should help you with?”

Kirk watched her as she thought it over. She was stout, short, and hunched, and her face was impossibly lined and creased. Her bleary right eye was wide, her left a narrow slit. Her white hair was long and tangled and went in every direction, like Medusa’s snakes. Standing before him in the yellow glow of the porch light, she looked more pathetic than frightening, and it seemed impossible that she was the woman feared by children all over town.