Zombies: The Recent Dead (78 page)

“You have to tell the others. You have to let them know. Know that I’m the last. That if you just pluck me off the face of the earth, there will be nothing left, only eternal hunger. Is that something you can understand? Is that something you can communicate to the others? If so, that way they’ll let me live. They’ll let the human race live.”

What the man said was meaningless, as Walter was for the most part beyond words. He knew the word hunger, though, plucking it from the forest of words that were being dropped on him. But that was about it. He could not perceive the man’s message, could not possibly pass it on to others, for as far as his consciousness allowed, even if it were capable of containing such a message, there
were
no others. There was only Walter, Walter below and his food above—and the food was not getting any closer.

The man pulled his legs up from the hole, and for a moment it looked to Walter as if he was leaving, but instead, there was another thud. Then the man poked his head over the lip, even closer this time, for instead of sitting on the lip, the man was peering down while lying on his stomach. Then the man brought his hands around to show another dangling finger to Walter. Walter leapt unsuccessfully as he waited for the flesh to be dropped.

“I can see that this is the only thing you will understand. Do you see now? If you eat me, then it will all be over. Eternal hunger, with nothing more ever waiting at the other end to quench it. But if we can make a deal, I can help you feed for a long while. I can give you blood, and even some flesh from time to time.”

The man dropped his finger, and this time, Walter caught it directly in his mouth. His teeth began crunching on it immediately, but unlike before, he did not take his eyes off his captor. Walter looked up at the blood soaking through the handkerchief in the man’s other hand. The man noticed Walter’s gaze, and loosened the cloth. He dangled his damaged hand down into the pit, and shook it. The handkerchief unwrapped slowly and dropped softly down. Walter caught it and tossed it into his mouth. He sucked on the blooming stain, the corners of the handkerchief hanging out of his mouth and down his chin.

“Do we have a deal?” asked the man. His eyes were wide, and he was so caught up in his hope that he did not immediately pull back his extended hand. Filled with lust at the sight of the wet wounds inflicted there, Walter ran to the wall and leapt up toward them, wedging his feet in the damp mud of the pit wall before the man could yank himself back. Walter’s remaining fingers locked around the man’s remaining finger, and with his dead weight, Walter started pulling the man, sliding him forward so that more of his body hung over the edge.

“No!” shouted the man. “I’m the last man on Earth! You can’t do this! Without me, you’ll have nothing! Don’t you understand?”

But Walter did not understand, not really, and his screaming and scrambling did little to slow his descent into the hole. Walter pulled him down mercilessly—for he had no mercy, only hunger—and at last, after far too long, the hunger was allowed to run free. Walter began with the man’s lips, silencing the urgent pleas, and then he gnawed his way deep into the man’s chest, cracking his ribs and burrowing into his heart. Walter’s face grew slick with blood as he gorged himself. It had been far too long since he had fed this well, and even though he remained trapped at the bottom of a pit, he had no space for tomorrow, no thought of saving anything aside for a future day. He savored the flesh and sucked the bones, and then . . . then it was all gone much too soon.

Momentarily sated, Walter looked up at clouds, sniffing out the universe. He listened for the pulse of the planet, and discovered in that instant that his jailor had been correct, though as Walter had not understood the meaning of what the man had been babbling to him, he did not in fact realize that was what he was doing. But indeed, there was no other movement of blood in the world. No others were left.

All that existed for Walter now was a few square feet of ground, his dirt wall, and the sky above. Time passed. Walter could not say whether it passed quickly or slowly, as he had no true conception of time, just the fact that the opening above regularly darkened and lightened again. During the days, his view was occasionally altered by a bird flitting by, and at night there was the occasional flash of a falling star. Hunger returned and was his constant companion, but there was no longer any point in raging.

Mud and leaves and the detritus of time slowly filled the spot on where he stood. As he paced from side to side, he rose a little each day, so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. He did not realize what was happening until enough time had passed that he was finally high enough to peer over each the lip. He pulled himself up to the surface and stood seeing the whole world again for the first time in ages, rather than just a tunnel-vision picture of the sky . . . and the difference didn’t really matter to him. For whether he was trapped in a hole or free on land again, nothing had changed. His only companion for now and forever more was his hunger, and since he could no longer smell anything out there with which to quench it, since the world was now a dead beast inhabited only by others of his kind, it mattered little where he spent the rest of eternity.

Strangely, the sky seemed filled with falling stars. And yet, they did not behave the way such things were meant to behave. Instead of vanishing out quickly as had the living human race, the bright spots cross-crossed the sky like embers that refused to die. During the day, the stars still shone, another anomaly he no longer had the brain power to consider. Walter moved on without a destination.

He wandered the world aimlessly, but only until he noticed that the stars themselves were no longer moving aimlessly. The stars were on the move in a purposeful manner, and as he gazed into the sky, he knew where they were heading. With the memory of the last man on Earth forever branded on his lips, he followed the path they made, moving back east across a country that was continuing to crumble, that was transforming from civilization into debris.

The bridge into the city, when he saw it again after what had been hundreds of years, had collapsed into the river. He had to pick his way over floating rubble, still bound together by cables, to move from shore to shore. He walked the city streets once more, continuing to watch the sky. When so many stars filled the sky that it seemed impossible to fit any more, their trajectories shifted. When night fell this time, Walter could make out more clearly that they were carving concentric circles in the sky. He walked beneath the heart of them, his hunger positioning him there. Others of his kind joined him.

As he watched, a single star began to drop, pulling itself away from the carefully choreographed dance in the sky, becoming more than just a speck, gaining dimension as it fell. By the time it reached the buckled pavement on which Walter stood, it had grown into a globe several stories high. The fact that it floated there, sprouting legs on which it came to rest, had no affect on Walter. He sensed only dead machinery, and felt nothing, not even curiosity. When the outlines of a door appeared and then opened, that all changed. As a walkway eased its way out from the opening to touch the ground, Walter could feel again that old familiar tingling which had been missing for so long.

A tall, attenuated creature walked down the ramp, followed by a hovering cylindrical machine half again as tall. The visitor, its two arms and two legs garbed in a soft silver, stepped off the ramp into what for it was a new world, and then walked toward Walter and his brethren. Walter, agitated by a humanoid form stinking of the raw stuff of life, rushed forward, only to thud against an invisible wall that surrounded the giant globe. Flesh was close, so close, and Walter was enraged. He could not comprehend why this thing was not already being torn apart by his remaining teeth.

Walter roared, and his deafening anger was soon joined by the keening of the other zombies who ringed the ship. The being removed a helmet, revealing a face which, though off in its proportions, contained all the right elements—eyes, nose, mouth and so on—that signified humanity. This only served to fill Walter with a further fury. The alien surveyed the crowd, looking at the crescent of the undead with all-too-human eyes. He then held a slender hand out toward Walter, who suddenly found himself able to surge forward ahead of the others. Arms outstretched, he raced toward the flesh—his flesh—but stopped short in front of his meal, frozen as if encased in metal bands. Walter struggled to close that final gap, but could not.

Suddenly, Walter was floating a few feet off the rubble. He tilted back, both alien and globe vanishing from his field of vision to be replaced by the sky. He could see the moving stars pause in their flight. The alien stepped closer, and Walter was overcome by the need to open his mouth, to gnaw, to rend, but his body no longer followed the command of those needs. The metal cylinder, which had trailed closely behind the visitor, tilted on its side and floated to Walter’s feet. It slid over Walter, engulfing him, encasing him from head to what remained of his toes. He was trapped once more. This time, whether or not his actions would have been as futile as before, he was unable to even bang against the sides of his prison.

The patch of metal before Walter’s face cleared to transparency.

“Hello,” the alien said, in a voice unused to forming the sounds of human speech. It leaned in close to Walter. “We have traveled a long way in search of our ancient cousins.”

It waved its thin hands over the exterior of the cylinder, and sequential lights flashed, a rainbow coursing over Walter’s mottled skin. He struggled to escape their glow, but regardless of his rage, he moved in his mind only. When the colors ceased, his rage continued on.

“How sad,” said the alien. “Our cousins are still here, and yet . . . they are gone. They are all gone.”

The words were meaningless to Walter, barely even heard over the angry voices in his head which called him to feed. Then the cylinder pulled away, and Walter found himself upright again, his muscles once more his own. He started to leap forward, but as he was in midair, the strange creature waved its arms, and Walter was back with the others. His momentum there still carried him to complete his trajectory, and he slammed against the invisible shield.

The visitor walked back up the ramp, the cylinder floating by its side, their metal path retracting back into the ship. The creature paused in the doorway and turned. It was still looking toward Walter as the door closed and the force field died. Walter rushed the craft, but it rose effortlessly back into the sky before he could beat himself against its glittering sides.

The bright stars which had up until then formed circles in the sky vanished, but Walter barely noticed the emptiness above. So great was his lust for flesh that he was driven to return immediately to his hungry wandering, where he found nothing but that his hunger increased. His hunt through the rubble of humanity would prove fruitless, for his senses never again tingled to tease his immortal desire.

The sun and the moon continued to trade places, but no stars ever returned to move through the sky, and Walter’s hunger, which left no room for any other emotions, never faded—

—at least not until, eons later, Earth’s close and constant star expanded to fill his world with fire and erase his hunger forever.

About the Author

Scott Edelman
has published more than seventy-five short stories in anthologies such as
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, MetaHorror, Moon Shots, Mars Probes,
and
Forbidden Planets,
and in magazines such as
Postscripts, The Twilight Zone, Absolute Magnitude, Science Fiction Review,
and
Fantasy Book.
His first short story collection,
These Words Are Haunted,
appeared in 2001.
What Will Come After,
a complete collection of his zombie fiction, was released May 2010 by PS Publishing. He has been a Stoker Award finalist five times, in the categories of both Short Story and Long Fiction. Additionally, Edelman currently works for the Syfy Channel as the Editor of
Blastr
(formerly known as
SCI FI Wire
). He was the founding editor of
Science Fiction Age,
which he edited during its entire eight-year run. He has been a four-time Hugo Award finalist for Best Editor.

Story Notes

As you can probably guess from the existence of a collection of them, Edelman has written quite a few zombie stories. This one particularly appealed because it comes close to being a parable of sorts—or several. To quote an ecclesiastical source:

The word
parable
(Hebrew
mashal
; Syrian
mathla
, Greek
parabole
) signifies in general a comparison, or a parallel, by which one thing is used to illustrate another. It is a likeness taken from the sphere of real, or sensible, or earthly incidents, in order to convey an ideal, or spiritual, or heavenly meaning. As uttering one thing and signifying something else, it is in the nature of a riddle (Hebrew
khidah
, Gr.
ainigma
or
problema
) and has therefore a light and a dark side (“dark sayings,” Wisdom 8:8; Sirach 39:3), it is intended to stir curiosity and calls for intelligence in the listener . . . [Barry, William. “Parables.”
The Catholic Encyclopedia.
Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911.]