Nightmare of the Dead: Rise of the Zombies (12 page)

The rolling tongue of a hungry mouth, the fetid breath of decay washing over her face.

"There you are!" Doctor Lynch's voice called out.

Delirium wasn't going to take her, not now. She struggled to stand against the tree, but slid back down into the soft earth. Another cool breeze brushed across the sun-soaked field where she'd slept.

She could die so easily in the shade. She could rest there forever.

"I've missed you dearly, after all this time!" the doctor shouted.

"No," she said. "You're not real."

"Open your eyes," a woman's voice shouted. "I'm real, and I'm here."

She opened her eyes and looked upon a face that stirred a note of familiarity, although she didn't know the woman's name. A ghost, more likely
or t
he image of a specter floating through the recollection of a woman who was supposed to be dead.

A tall black woman with a square jaw, hard eyes, and short hair sat astride her horse. Two revolvers rested in their holsters, while a complement of single-shot revolvers were tucked into a belt that wrapped around her waist beneath a long, brown jacket. A Springfield rifled rested across her lap.

"I know you," Neasa said.

"It has been some time," the woman replied, her words carefully enunciated. She stepped off her horse and knelt near the wounded outlaw. She brushed a lock of hair away from Neasa's face. "You've been bitten by one of the demons. Their bite is poison. You're half-dreaming, but I'm here with you. Ambala is here."

"Ambala," she said, testing the name's familiarity, "this isn't a random meeting
.
"
S
he remembered McPhee mentioning a bank robbery in Houston with a
Negro
woman.

Ambala nodded slowly. "Yes. I've been hunting you."

"My shoulder."

Ambala eyed the wound and shook her head. "You want me to help you, after everything that's happened."

"Yes. I want to live."

"This is the moment where I tell you I cannot. I am surprised you would ask this of me, but I've thought of you for so long…you're my ghost. You left me
to
die, but you never really left me. I forgave you a long time ago, and I looked for you. I heard that you were dead, and now, here, you die for me. This was meant to be, and what will be
,
will be."

Neasa shook her head. "I don't…know who I am. They took my memories…listen to me. I don't know why you would be hunting me. I'm not…who I was."

Ambala's brow furrowed, and her nostrils flared. Her horse snorted behind her and stomped its hoof impatiently in the grass.

"You play another game. This is good a place as any to die. It is peaceful here, though you deserve less. Where you go, the demons go. It is only right that you suffer their curse. You are in a waking dream. It will end when you close your eyes and rest."

Neasa never thought she would become so desperate. "I don't know my crimes. You have to believe me. Help me…I will atone. Don't let me die like this."

The hard woman shook her head slowly. "Your soul is still stained with blood. You would betray me again, because it is your nature. You don't need an identity, or a name."

"I know my name…it's Neasa…Bannan…"

Ambala's face contorted in a mixture of pain and confusion. "You've traded one dead soul for another…"

Fresh pain bloomed in her shoulder, and she sucked in a long breath as more chills tickled her spine. When she opened her eyes again, she could see the two remaining creatures, their eyes fierce with inhuman rage, their exposed teeth gnashing together in lipless mouths.

Neasa's hands trembled, and she wanted to draw her guns, but what if they weren't even there? She had to keep her wits, or else Ambala would shoot her. She closed her eyes and reopened them to find the creatures were gone.

"Two more demons," Neasa gasped. "On my trail… don't know where they are. I was with a white man…"

Ambala put a finger to Neasa's lips. "We don't choose our end. Close your eyes and rest now, dear one. Enjoy this moment of calm. Listen to the wind. This may be the only peace you've known, but you'll never feel it again."

There were two other riders in the clearing, tall black men carrying an array of guns. They slowly led their steeds across the field of tall grass, and Neasa watched the slow, graceful movements of the muscular horses.

Santiago's low, monotonous voice spoke from behind her. "You will drown in the rivers of blood that flow through hell, blood you've personally spilled."

"The boy…" Neasa gasped.

She could see him again, standing just out of reach of the two riders in the field. None of it was real. Even Ambala was nothing more than a shattered piece of something she once was, waiting for her final surrender.

The woman was right, after all. It was best to enjoy the final moments of slow breath. She'd done something horribly wrong to Ambala, to hundreds of others, and she was finally going to pay for her crimes.

With her fingers curling around the grip of a revolver, she sighed and listened to Ambala speak again.

"I don’t know you. I don't know this woman who dies."

May 20th-25th 1863: Memory Burns

Synapses collapse. Universes spin upon the referential supposition of someone else's standard of time. Life is a relative notion best understood by philosophers whose bones have passed into the whirlpool of history's collective interpretation of reality. There is no memory, here. There is no soul.

There is only the dark.

Eyes open momentarily. There are words that might take shape under the influence of language and the hysterics inherent in the demise of the mind's superimposition upon dreams. Form without thought, function without use.

Exist now. Breathe, now.

A woman lying across a saddle can taste warm saliva in her mouth.

She craned her neck upward and looked upon the two dead soldiers in Confederate uniforms swinging from trees. The gateway to an encampment of dark-skinned mercenaries who sat in groups while oiling their guns, their conversations concluding suddenly when they looked upon the white-skinned girl.

She remembered Ambala, and wondered if she was at the mercy of a poison that infected her mind. Who were all of these people? Why was she still alive?

"You changed your mind," Neasa managed to say through a dry mouth.

"No.
You
changed it."

Her eyes closed again, and the corrupt fever distorted her consciousness.

(A little girl lay beneath her blankets, shivering in the dark while she listened to Mother stomp up the staircase to her room. The bedroom of a five-year-old girl was complete with wood dolls sitting upon shelves with their beady eyes glaring down upon their master, the girl who quaked and sweated in anticipation of her punishment.

And so Mother stood in the doorway, her gloved fists planted firmly upon her hips. A riding crop was clenched between the fingers of one fist, a loop of wire that caused the little girl's shivers to intensify. As much as she wanted to doubt what was about to happen, the presence of the riding crop confirmed her fears. She fought the urge to cry out, to beg, to get on her knees and pray to her Mother as if she were God. But Mother didn't believe in God.

The broad-shouldered silhouette of the matron was made possible by a flickering candle held by her sniveling brother, who lingered behind Mother's legs. He was four years older, and since Mother lavished a lot of attention on the girl, he existed in a state of perpetual jealousy. He did whatever he could to make her life unbearable.

"Saul tells me you've broken a rule," Mother's voice was disembodied—they were words that seemed to be spoken from above.

The girl's entire body shook. She squeezed her eyelids shut and clutched the blanket tightly in her hands.

"I will remind you what you have done, because your father wouldn't be pleased if I didn't educate you whenever the opportunity presented itself. You were caught committing an act of mercy. I have tried to teach you what mercy is, dear girl, but you remain ignorant. We live in a world where the merciful die with the weak. Power is in the hands of the strong. We seek superiority and dominion. No two animals are the same. This is the lesson I have tried to teach you."

Mother handed the riding crop to Saul. His eyes lit up, and he stared at the crop as if he didn't know what it was, or what it could do.

"Your brother will punish you, with his own hands, from now on. This may be the only way to teach you both this valuable lesson."

Saul crept into the room with the candle and the riding crop. He glanced over his shoulder to look at Mother, as if he was still unsure what he was supposed to do. He set the candle down and looked upon his little sister, perhaps weighing how much damage the weapon could do to her small body.

The girl realized what she needed to do to please Mother once and for all.

She suddenly discarded her blankets, leapt out of her bed, and rushed toward her brother. Startled, Saul dropped the riding crop and ran straight into Mother's thick legs. The girl picked up the riding crop and brought it down upon Saul's back with a loud
crack
.
Her brother arched his back and cried out.

"That hurt! It burns! Mother, it burns! Don't let her do it again, please!"

The girl looked up into Mother's dark visage and saw only shadow. The powerful fear that had enslaved her only moments ago dissolved with the power to inflict pain held tightly in her own fist. She understood her purpose, and who she needed to be. At last, she would be the daughter Mother could love.

She brought the crop down again upon Saul's back. And again. And again.)

Eyelids rise. A slow fog rolls over a forested encampment. No, not a fog. A cooking fire. She lies in a pile of itchy straw. The blood has been washed from her body, and her clothes have been replaced by tattered rags. She is weaponless.

She struggled to shake the dream from her soul. She remained halfway between the dream and the reality. Smoke from the fire rose into the trees. She could hear laughter and casual banter. Her life has been reduced to existence within an iron box—surrounded on all sides by
bars;
she'd been sequestered to a cage no more than four feet high and eight feet wide. An animal or a slave? Perhaps the plight of both is the same. She couldn't stand nor stretch. Her stomach growled as a warm emptiness within her gut reminded her that food is necessary to survive. They might expect her to beg. Trees swayed gently and the laughter reminded the caged woman of brotherhood and friendship
,
forged through war and pillage, manifest through the smoking guns of vengeful warriors who don't seek to forge a new destiny for their country but for themselves
.
Blood
must flow through the rivers and the swamps beneath a bright sun for the sake of an ideal that is often confused with freedom or equality.

Another low growl, though not from her stomach. Her cage rested at the edge of a dirt pit, and as she peered into the hole beside her, she already knew what she would find there. Dread closed her throat and stopped her breath. Within the large hole were the two bloody creatures that had survived Cedar Rock. Inside the hole with them were piles of bloodless bones lying in heaps of tattered Confederate uniforms. Both creatures stared up at her with their malevolent eyes. Bone poked through the exposed, decaying muscle tissue upon which worms wiggled. The putrid smell of rot, a combination of spoiled eggs and meat, once again caused her to gag.

The pain in her shoulder suddenly found new life. She could feel the teeth sink into her flesh, the sharp, pointed teeth drawing warm, wet blood over her arm and chest.

She shook her head. She was still imagining things. Those creatures were right beside her, where Ambala and her people wanted her to sleep.

"You feel better."

Bannan jumped at the sound of Ambala's voice. The tall woman stood outside of the cage holding a cup in her hands.

"What the hell are you doing?" Neasa growled. "You can't keep me here next to them! You can't!"

"And why not?"

"You're going to use them, aren't you? Going to feed Confederate soldiers to them. You're no better than they are, you know."

"You're right. We want equality. We're the same as them, not better. All men are created equal."

"You're going to let me out," Neasa said while attempting to wipe the grimace of pain away from her own face.

Ambala ignored the comment and spoke with her
methodically chosen
words. "The poison is still in your body. Many men want you dead. My allies see a white woman with guns, a woman who has caused me pain. I have not convinced the others you are different
from
the other whites. They want you in the pit with the demons. Here, I have this for you to drink. As long as you have the fever, the visions will continue. I know what their bite can do, but you say you don't remember what happened to me."