Zombie Kong - Anthology (28 page)

Forty feet from the front doors of the hotel, he heard the distant squawk of an AM radio sending reggae out into the empty street. A drifting hint of pipe tobacco. A wisp of smoke floated out of the front windows of the Fort de Trois.

Jonas kept his distance, looking into the hotel without standing directly in front of it. The glass was broken out, or maybe had never been there, so the raw light of day poured into the lobby. The lobby was small: a front desk, a collection of coffee tables and chairs, and a single elevator in the far dark corner. What had been a lush carpet was water damaged, and peeled at random squares. A shadow of a man sat near the front, smoking a pipe and staring at the street.

Jonas stepped closer to the man, but stayed outside of the hotel itself. The man at the table was shirtless. He had a series of red rings painted up the lengths of both arms. Three small stripes sat on each cheek. Jonas noticed that his sockets had been filled in and darkened with black paint, making his features resemble a living skull, rather than a human face. Still, the man looked very much like Arnold.

“Arnold?” Jonas asked.

The man stared at Jonas over the top of his glowing bowl. He rolled the pipe stem against his teeth, keeping his eyes locked on Jonas. The man was impossibly lean, as if his thin muscles were stuck right to the bone, with a shortage of skin pulled tight over it. He hardly resembled the photo taken before his solo expedition.

“Arnold? Is that you?” Jonas asked again.

The man set his pipe down, but left his mouth slightly open––open enough that his cracked lips showed yellow and jagged teeth. The teeth moved up and down as his jaw quivered, like he was trying to speak but had forgotten how. A scent of rot drifted off of the man.

“There are so few of us left,” the man said.

“Where did everybody go? What happened?” Jonas asked. The man didn’t seem to hear any of the questions.

“I wasn’t expecting you. It’s a shame there is only one of you. Not what we need. Not that I am ungrateful, the course was set sometime ago, and what must be, must be. I’ll give you the choice of who goes first, though. It’s all I can do,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Jonas asked. Something awful had happened on the island—he wondered how much Arnold knew about it. Jonas wasn’t afraid of the skinny man, but what if there were more dangers in the shadows of the alleys outside? What if the Tortuga Caniba were real?

“When the time comes, I can go first, if you want,” he said. “Or, you can go first; I would understand completely.” The man picked up his pipe again and drew in a massive cloud of smoke. He exhaled and watched the whirls of smoke twist in the sunlight. A strong breeze destroyed the cloud and brought a stronger scent of decay into the room.

“I don’t understand what you are asking,” Jonas said. He knew this was almost a lie as he said it. He had a growing fear that there was a fatal result of going first, something at the hands of the Tortuga Caniba. Maybe murder-suicide. Whatever it was, Arnold was assuming that Jonas would be more than willing to cooperate. He was wrong: in a few minutes, Jonas planned to steal an abandoned boat if he had to, and get back to Haiti.

“We could flip a coin, I guess,” Arnold said. He reached into his pocket and fiddled with loose change. Two separate rumbles moved through the floor, making the tables and chairs vibrate. The sound could have been some massive machine moving down the street toward them. The sound could’ve been a low-grade earthquake. Arnold set his pipe down and glared at Jonas.

“Or, there’s no rule that says we couldn’t go at the same time. Not like we’d be too much for him, right?” Arnold cracked a slightly off-kilter smile. “He’s got two hands.”

More rumbles, strong and deep. Jonas wanted the noise to be the tremors from an approaching quake. An exploding gas line could be possible, too. There were so many things the noise could be made by. A stronger wind blew into the room; it carried an overpowering stench of mold, spoil, and compost. Whatever was going to happen, Arnold was content to die. Jonas didn’t want to believe that a giant dead gorilla was working its way towards them. Whatever it was, it was coming, and he had seconds to flee into the maze of one and two story buildings that sat between him and the shore. He had to get what he came for first.

“Arnold, why did you come back here—why did everyone else stay away?” he asked. Arnold stood up, wiped a streak of sweat off of his face, and looked at somewhere far beyond Jonas’ shoulder. Four impacts, very close; the walls of the hotel shook.

“Once you’ve seen the god, you can’t go back to the regular old world,” he said. “This is the only miracle I’ve ever seen. Besides, the Haitians stopped picking people up from this island a long time ago. They think it’s cursed.”

“Alex and the others went back to normal,” Jonas said.

“Really?” Arnold asked. “She got you out here, didn’t she?” Arnold shrugged hopelessly and walked slowly out of the hotel and onto the uneven asphalt. The ground shook as something heavy shifted its weight. The thick reek of decay was almost too much to take; Jonas covered his face with the lower part of his shirt. Some part of him wanted to go out into the street and see the thing, to prove to himself that it was real. He knew he should be running away, dashing through the streets to get to the wharf and a boat. Despite the smell, he stood and watched Arnold.

A shadow fell over half of the entire block and covered Arnold in thin darkness. Arnold closed his eyes and stood still in the street, head facing the ground. Jonas wanted to grab him and pull him back to safety, maybe for kindness, maybe so someone could verify his story. The thing pounded the ground again, just outside of the hotel, and the tables and chairs bounced on the floor beneath.

Jonas gagged on the odor, turning away from Arnold and the street. He ran to the back of the hotel. As the kitchen door swung shut behind him, he heard the grotesque sounds of bones snapping and skin bursting, then a muffled scream, which trailed off into silence as its source flew higher into the air.

He pushed open the back door. The smell of weeks-old kitchen trash drove away the other stink. He ran past the trash and followed a dirt path that served as an alley. A tall man stepped into his path, blocking his way. The man was thin like Arnold, but had long black hair, tan skin, and the eyes of a native South American––not Haitian at all. His skin was covered with scores of the red circles and there were more than twenty red marks on his cheeks and face. His eye sockets were painted a deep black.

Jonas’ breath left him as he searched for something to say to the shaman. He raised his hands, from instinct, and waved them in the place of words. The shaman drew a triple blade from behind his naked torso and held it between the two of them. Jonas raised his arms to block a strike, but the blade flashed past them, and sliced into his throat with a deep, stinging cut. His blood splashed out and warmed the front of his shirt. He clutched his throat and fell to his knees.

The shaman bent down to meet his eyes. He put a hand on his shoulder; the feeling was faint and fading. Darkness reached out from the edge of his vision, added to the spots dancing in his sight. White eyes and a face that was coated in red paint consumed his line of vision.

“Either he was going to come to you,” the shaman said, “or you were going to come to him.”

The face was swallowed in darkness, the warm ground hit him, but it felt distant, like it hadn’t really happened. There was a feeling of safety as Tortuga Island and its gorilla moved further away. He forgot where he was, what he was doing, why he was there.

Then, everything ended.

* * *

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

DR. STEVEN RUTGERS is a physician executive with significant accomplishments in developing management care strategies, integrating delivery systems, improving quality and utilization management programs, and coaching medical staff on healthcare business and practice issues. He rarely writes fiction. Plus, he’s fictional.

JAMES ROY DALEY is a writer, editor, and musician. He studied film at the Toronto Film School, music at Humber College, and English at the University of Toronto. He is the author of
Terror Town, Into Hell, 13 Drops of Blood
, and
The Dead Parade
. In 2009 he founded
Books of the Dead Press
, where he enjoyed immediate success working with many of the biggest names in horror. Anthologies he has edited include
Best New Zombie Tales, Best New Vampire Tales
, and
Classic Vampire Tales
.

SHELLEY ONTIS is a full-time freelance writer who also writes fiction and poetry. Sometimes people publish it. She is also a caped superhero. Okay, not that last part.

DAVID NIALL WILSON has been writing and publishing horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction since the mid-eighties. An ordained minister, once President of the Horror Writer’s Association and recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for poetry and short fiction, as well as being nominated for long fiction and non-fiction, his novels include
Maelstrom, The Mote in Andrea’s Eye, Deep Blue, the Grails Covenant Trilogy, Star Trek Voyager: Chrysalis, Except You Go Through Shadow, This is My Blood, Ancient Eyes
and the upcoming supernatural mystery novel
Vintage Soul: Volume I of the DeChance Chronicles
. The Stargate Atlantis novel
Brimstone
, written with Patricia Lee Macomber was published in 2010. He has over 150 short stories published in anthologies, magazines, and five collections, the most recent of which were
Defining Moments
, published in 2007 by WFC Award winning Sarob Press, and the currently available
Ennui & Other States of Madness
, from Dark Regions Press. His work has appeared in various anthologies and magazines. David lives and loves with Patricia Lee Macomber in the historic William R. White House in Hertford, NC with their children, Billy, Stephanie, and Katie, David’s mother Jean, and occasionally his boys Zach and Zane.

SIMON McCAFFERY is a former magazine editor who sold his soul to high-tech corporate America. He lives in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area with his wife Angela and his three amazing children. Writing and selling fiction since 1990, he owes his love of zombies, science fiction, and things that go bump in the day (and night) to his father, James McCaffery, who taught Simon to read at an early age and gave him a box of paperback books when he was eleven.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
was among them.

STEVE RUTHENBECK works in communications and has twice won the Minnesota Society for Interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story Award. His favorite writers include Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Seigbert W. Becker and discovering new or previously unheard of authors in anthologies. He lives in the country, close to the family farm. His World War II action/horror novel, DogSS of War, is currently available on Kindle.

ADRIAN LUDENS is a radio announcer living in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association. His fiction has appeared in
Morpheus Tales, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
and others. Recent anthology appearances include
The Mothman Files
(edited by Michael Knost, Woodland Press),
D.O.A.
(edited by David C. Hayes and Jack Burton, Blood Bound Books), and
Blood Lite 3: Aftertaste
(edited by Kevin J. Anderson, Gallery/Pocket). Adrian is currently polishing a short story collection. Visit him at curioditiesadrianludens.blogspot.com

AMANDA C. DAVIS is a combustion engineer who loves horror fiction in all its forms. Her work runs the gamut of speculative fiction and has appeared in
Shock Totem, Redstone Science Fiction, Goblin Fruit,
and others. You can follow her on Twitter at @davisac1 or read more of her stories at amandacdavis.com.

MARK ONSPAUGH sat too close to the TV as a child, and now needs glasses. His young brain was irradiated with monster movies, sci-fi and Looney Tunes. DC Comics took care of the rest. Today, he is the writer of the film
Kill Katie Malone,
a co-writer of the cult fave
Flight of the Living Dead,
and has several scripts in development. He has sold numerous short stories and essays. He tells people he was raised by wolves, but his parents were nice people who onlyeviscerated the occasional wayward traveler. You can visit him at www.markonspaugh.com and on his Facebook pages, including
Out of My Mind – Fiction and Film from Mark Onspaugh
.

GUSTAVO BONDONI is an Argentine writer with over eighty stories published in ten countries and four languages. A winner in the National Space Society’s
Return to Luna
Contest, and the
Marooned Award for Flash Fiction
, his fiction has appeared in three
Hadley Rille Books Anthologies, The Rose & Thorn, Albedo One, The Best of Every Day Fiction
, and others. More recently he has published his first reprint collection,
Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places
and his short novel
The Curse of El Bastardo
. Visit him at: www.gustavobondoni.com.ar.

REBECCA SNOW is a Virginia writer whose short fiction has been published in a number of anthologies.  She can be found online at cemeteryflower.blog.com and on Twitter @cemeteryflower.

MEGAN R. ENGELHARDT wanted to be a writer since she was old enough to make marks on paper. Over the years she dabbled in politics, law, and librarianship, but kept finding her way back to made-up worlds and crazy, fantastic ideas. She loves the Internet and thinks Internet people are some of the most creative folks around. iTunes tells her that
Steam Powered Giraffe
and
House of Heroes
are her favorite bands, and that
The Lord of the Rings: The Musical
is her favorite musical. Her bookshelves indicate that she loves
Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
, teen fiction and books about fairy tales. She lives in northeastern Ohio with her husband Lucas, an economist and the straight line to her squiggle.