The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology (53 page)
Read The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology Online
Authors: Christopher Golden
Tom knew the man’s name. He was the only one who knew. He had to know. He had the wallet, didn’t he?
Jack watched Tom do a cannonball from the side of the quarry, splashing them all. He rose back up and looked toward Jack as he treaded water.
Looking at him made Jack feel strange in the pit of his stomach, the same way the idea of cutting into the dead man made him feel. There was something wrong with Tom. Or maybe there was something wrong with him. He didn’t know for sure which it was.
Later that same day, after he’d cleaned up and everyone had gone their own ways, the phone call came in for Jack’s family. Steve had caught shrapnel in his leg. He would be all right, but there was a chance he’d be coming home sooner than expected.
And Jack got that feeling in his stomach again. He’d been praying for Steve to come home early, and now maybe he would be, but if he had to get hurt to come home, was that really a good answer to his prayers?
The question was too big for him to wrap his head around easily.
The next day he got down to the storm cellar later than he’d planned. He had to take care of some chores around the house, and then his mom wanted him to drop off the casserole she’d baked over to his grandpa’s place. It wasn’t like he had to go out of his way, but the man was in a talkative mood, and it was almost an hour before he could get out of the house and head for the storm cellar. He loved his grandfather, but he wasn’t always exciting to talk to.
The smell was the first thing that caught him. The zombie hadn’t been pleasant to smell anyway, but now the odor was enough to stagger him. He descended the steps and listened to the sounds of the guys laughing.
When he reached the bottom of the steps, he stopped and stared, barely believing what he saw.
The zombie was opened up like a grisly flower, his abdomen cut wide and the skin spread open like petals. Loops of ropy intestines fell in piles, and the ribs had been cut open. His legs had been stripped of everything but gristle and bone, and his arms had been freed but lacked enough remaining muscle to make them a threat.
It wasn’t just Tom this time. All of the guys were there, and all of them had plastic bags wrapped over their clothes and shoes alike.
‘What the hell?’ He could barely recognize his own voice.
Tom grinned. His smile held an edge, and his eyes were a blatant challenge. Tom had called him on not joining in the day before, and now he’d drawn a line in the sand. Either Jack crossed the line and joined them, or maybe he proved he was chickenshit.
Tom spoke softly, confidently. ‘We got tired of waiting.’ He pointed to the zombie. ‘But we saved you the head.’
Jack’s face felt like it would catch fire. His stomach had congealed like a frozen lump, and there was a strange ringing in his ears. What they’d done . . . well, it wasn’t right.
The dead man wriggled, and its chest moved up and down as it strained to make a noise.
Jack stared hard at Tom. ‘What was his name?’
‘What?’ Tom had no idea what Jack meant.
Jack’s hand shook just a little as he pointed at the struggling heap of ruined meat and hacked pieces. ‘I saw you pick up his wallet. It fell from his pocket when we were carrying him here, and you grabbed it. What was his name?’
Tom shook his head. His broad face worked as he tried to find the right expression for answering the unexpected question and accusation. ‘Who cares?’
‘I do!’ Jack moved closer to him, his body shaking. His blood seemed too thick, pushed too hard to move through his body. ‘I do. Maybe he has a family that wants to know he’s dead. Maybe he has a little brother or a big sister and they miss him, Tom. Maybe he has a wife or a mom who doesn’t know why he disappeared.’
It was Steve, of course, that he was thinking about. He’d heard about people getting so ruined that no one could identify the bodies. What if Steve had been that badly hurt instead of just getting his leg messed up? What if they’d never known what happened to him?
‘Well, you’re the only one.’ It was Tom’s turn to cross his arms over his chest.
‘Am I?’ Jack looked at each of them, his ears still ringing. ‘Don’t any of you care about what he was before we found him?’
Skunk looked at him with a puzzled frown on his round face. ‘He’s dead, Jack. What does it matter?’
‘He was alive once!’ Jack’s eyes stung as he took a step toward Charlie, and the boy flinched like he’d swatted at him.
‘Well, he’s dead now!’ That from Billy, who stepped closer himself, looking ready to take a swing - Billy, who had always been ready to defend someone if something got out of hand. Only now he was standing in front of Charlie as if he needed defending from Jack. ‘He’s dead, and no one cares who he was.’
Tom put down his knife and reached for the sharpened stick he’d used from the first. ‘Is it the knife, Jack? Are you afraid to cut yourself?’ With casual skill he spun the length of wood between his fingers like a baton. When he stopped, the unsharpened edge was held toward Jack. ‘Come on. This is safer. You can’t cut yourself. You can maybe get a splinter.’
Jack looked at him and shook his head. They didn’t get it. They didn’t want to or they couldn’t - he didn’t know which. He wasn’t afraid of the dead man. He was afraid of what they were doing. How could they be the good guys if they hurt things just because they could? He shook his head again, because even that didn’t seem to quite cover it. What if there was still a person stuck inside that wasted, rotted thing?
Caution is made for grown-ups. Kids tend to leave caution in the dust. Despite his recent epiphanies, Jack was still just twelve. He reached for the stick, fully meaning to push it aside, and his left foot caught the viscera that had spilled around the dead thing. He couldn’t have pulled a better slapstick moment if he’d had a banana peel. Jack’s heel went up and he went down, his ass slapping against the wet ground and his head bouncing lightly. He could feel the filth and decay soaking his jeans and the hair on the back of his head. The dead man next to him on the ground struggled to reach him, but its limbs no longer worked and it could only wiggle closer. Jack had time enough to push away, his adrenaline kicking in at the thought of how close he was to the vile thing.
All of the boys laughed, except for Jack. There was nothing funny about the situation - well, okay, the fall was worthy of a chuckle, maybe - and his confusion and frustration were as deep as ever. Instead, Jack braced his hands and pushed himself into a sitting position then onto his knees before he tried to stand up. And he slipped a second time, falling across the dead man, his hand slapping the corpse’s face as he struggled to save himself.
Jack felt a sudden pain spike deep into his left palm and across the little finger.
‘Ow! Fuck!’ he looked toward the pain as he pulled his hand back and froze. The zombie had bitten down good and hard. He looked at the blood welling from his hand and skittered back, his eyes flying wide. There was a tooth sticking out of the ridge of his hand. He’d pulled it from the corpse’s mouth when he yanked his hand away.
The zombie lunged as best it could and snapped at him again. Without even thinking, Jack kicked at the face and knocked the jaw aside with ease. The muscles had atrophied to the point where even its ability to stay together was more luck than nature.
‘Jack. You’re bit.’ Billy’s voice was distant; it sounded like a whisper.
‘I gotta get to Grampy’s house. He can fix it,’ Jack said through lips that felt numb. The ringing was back in his ears, only now there was a different source to it.
Skunk spoke up next, shaking his head. ‘It’s been in the news, Jack. Ain’t no cure. You get bit, you become one of those things. It’s all over.’
‘That’s shit!’ Jack blinked his eyes and shook his head, denying what he had heard himself. ‘That’s shit! No way!’
He looked at the dead thing again. It was barely even capable of moving. His desire to give it comfort was dead, torn away like the flesh on his bleeding hand. He lashed out again and again, kicking at the broken face, until his tears completely obscured his vision and he had to stop and wipe them away.
All around him his friends stared at him in sickened fascination.
Billy shook his head. ‘It ain’t shit, and you know it. You been watching the news, too. Those things, they’re spreading. You can’t even go home, Jack. You might try to hurt your own family.’
‘It isn’t that fast.’ He shook his head again. ‘It takes time.’
Tom shook his head, too, but his face was unreadable. ‘Not much time. Maybe a couple of hours.’
‘Well, I have to try and get it fixed.’
‘Too late.’ Tom stepped to the side and took two more steps. It took Jack only a second to realize he was blocking the way past the dead thing.
‘You need to get the hell out of my way. I’m sick of you, Tom.’
Charlie was wheezing; his breaths sounded wrong. José leaned over and shook his head, whispering something in the other boy’s ear.
Tom didn’t answer. Instead he jabbed out with the stick in his hand and drove the point into Jack’s left shoulder.
‘Ow! What the hell, dude?’ Jack covered the spot quickly, not even thinking as he used his wounded hand. The good news was that the bite barely even hurt now. The spot where he was poked felt worse. It flared with a little extra pain as the blood from his hand fell across the small area where the stick had broken skin. Jack pulled his hand back quickly. He could make the infection worse that way, couldn’t he? He wasn’t really sure.
He was about to say something else to Tom, when the boy poked him a second time, on his other arm. This time the point put a hole in his shirt and the blood was more obvious.
‘Tom! Stop it!’ He stared hard as Tom’s smile spread.
‘Skunk, cover the door.’
Jack knew that tone in Tom’s voice. It was the cool and level voice of the expedition leader. The same tone used to gather the troops and offer instructions when they were hunting for crawfish or trying to sneak up on someone they were about to pull a stunt on.
‘Billy, get your rope.’
Jack looked around quickly as both Skunk and José headed for the narrow staircase, and Billy reached down, his eyes never leaving Jack, and grabbed his lasso.
‘What are you doing, guys? Come on, this isn’t funny.’ He could barely breathe.
The look in their eyes said otherwise. The look they cast his way said the fun was only about to begin.
José reached up and closed the storm doors firmly, leaving them lost in the near darkness. To his left, the rope in Billy’s hands snapped in the air twice and then grew silent.
SHOOTING POOL
BY JOE R . LANSDALE
My daddy told me it wasn’t a place I ought to be, because the owner, who had once been a good friend of his, and the owner’s friends were troublesome, which was his way of saying they were no-accounts or hoods. My mother didn’t want me there, either, but after high school, about twice a week, sometimes three times a week, me and my friends Donald and Lee would go over to the pool hall to shoot a few runs of Solids and Stripes, which was the only pool game we knew.
I think what we liked about going there was that pool was thought of as a tough guy’s game, a game played in bars with lots of cigarette and cigar smoke and some rough-looking characters hanging around. And that’s just the way Rugger’s Pool Hall was. I saw Jack Rugger and his friends at my father’s garage from time to time, where my daddy kept their cars running. My daddy was no shrinking violet, either, but his strength and anger were generally of a positive sort and not directed at my person. Rugger and his pals were a mystery to me, because they talked about drinking and whoring and fighting and about how bad they were, and the thing was, I knew they weren’t just bragging.
I figured I was pretty bad myself, and so did Donald and Lee. They were my fan club. In school, with my six-three, two-hundred-pound frame, and the bulk of it weight-lifting muscles, I was respected. I had even, on occasion, gotten into fights outside of school with older, bigger college boys and whipped them. I had a few moves. I was always waiting for a chance to prove it.
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