Read The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology Online
Authors: Christopher Golden
The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology (8 page)
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The next day when the phone rang, I was sure it was my doom calling. It was, but doom rarely takes the shape we most fear.
‘Mr Molson,’ said a voice on the other end in tones of practised official blandness. ‘This is Detective Mike Gutierrez. I need you to come speak to us, today if you can.’
My heart pounded so hard I feared it would burst, but my brain was racing. If they wanted to arrest me, they would not call. Maybe I was safe.
‘Regarding what?’ I asked.
‘Well, it’s an unusual matter. I suppose you saw on the TV about the raid on the reanimate mutilators last night?’
‘I saw something about that, yes,’ I said.
‘Well, in addition to the arrests, we confiscated the, um, remains of one of their, well, victims, I suppose. Thing was all hacked to bits, but the torso and head were still there. And the thing is, the head is still talking. You see, the damn thing is still alive - or animated or whatever - and it’s mentioning a name. Mr Molson, it’s mentioning your name, and you are the only person with that name in this city.’
I tried to sound casual. ‘How odd. What is it saying?’
‘I think it’s best to discuss that in person. Can you come in today at, say, noon?’
I nodded, but then realizing that he could not hear me, I told him it would be fine. I then hung up the phone and sat very, very still.
This was it, then. They had me. They didn’t know it yet, or they would be coming for me instead of asking me to come to them, but it was only a matter of time. Maisie’s dismembered body would very likely never testify in a court of law, but the cops would come after me if they could, and at the very least, Tori would leave me and I would be ruined with lawyers’ fees. I would become an object of scandal and horror. That was the best-case scenario. The worst - jail, where everyone inside would know what I had done. I would be one of those perverts who would be found murdered after a few months of unimaginable torment.
I could not face any of that. I was ruined, but I did not have to live with the ruin. And why should I? We all knew the soul left the body at death. I’d seen a hundred movies of departing souls. Unlike some cynical people, I didn’t think the soul departed only to fade into nothingness. This life was just one part of the journey, and it was time for me to get a move on.
I am not a brave man. I did not own a gun and could not have used it if I had. I did not have the courage or the strength to cut my wrists. Instead, I went back to that bottle of bourbon, and I collected some very strong pain pills Tori had gotten but not really used after she’d broken her wrist last year. I drank all the whiskey and swallowed all the pills. I looked for more pills. I found some muscle relaxers, Ambien, Xanax, and a few other things to throw into the mix. Some probably did nothing, but it seemed to me that the whole cocktail ought to be pretty lethal.
It was. I was probably dead within an hour, though time is hard to measure now. Only when I was twinkling out did it occur to me how horribly I’d screwed up. I’d forgotten how I’d raised the money to pay for Maisie in the first place. The offices of General Reanimates had given me almost ten thousand dollars to sign the contract, and that seemed like a good short-term solution. I would buy it back eventually. I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t. I had plenty of time. It didn’t weigh on me at all, and at the moment when I should have been thinking of nothing else, I was thinking only of escape. Somehow I’d simply forgotten.
I suppose a pill overdose must be a good deal for General Reanimates. No cosmetic work to be done. Not that it much matters. I wear the uniform, and I don’t see many living people at all these days. I’m out in the desert, working on an alternative-energy project, setting out solar panels. At least I am making myself useful.
I cannot speak. I cannot will myself even to move, only to follow orders. My mind is mostly still there, though I do not feel entirely like myself. Maybe it is because my soul is gone, and maybe it is because I am dead. I don’t know. I don’t remember dying, don’t remember my soul leaving. I only remember falling asleep and then waking up in the General Reanimates lab. I cannot even wiggle a finger of my own free will. I’ve given up trying. I cannot imagine how Maisie did it.
There is nothing for me to do but endure my lot and think. It is hot here, and I feel it. We are not insensible. Our uniforms don’t breathe, and we cannot sweat. I am miserable and I itch, and every movement is painful. My bones feel like they are scraping together, rubbing, chipping, grinding down. I work twenty-four hours a day. There is no rest and no end. I can do nothing but what I am told, and I have no escape but my memories. I have told my story to myself I don’t know how many hundreds of times. I pretend there is an audience, but there is none, and there never will be. Someday, I hope, I will wear out, but for all I know, this torment, with regular servicing, will last a hundred years. A thousand.
Somehow Maisie could break through, if only a little. Maybe it was anger or the sense of being wronged. Maybe if my end were not so fitting, I could find the will, but I doubt it. I have tried. I don’t think anyone could try more than I have, but then I suppose we all try. The man right next to me must be trying, too, but he cannot tell me about it. I think it was just that Maisie was exceptional. Maybe in life, certainly in death. She was, and the rest of us are not, and that is what I must endure over the long, unending horizon.
COPPER
BY STEPHEN R . BISSETTE
‘I’m home, always home.’
Copper stands rock-solid, squints at the noise from across the street.
As usual, the cops didn’t show until long after the action was over.
Copper squints and spits over the railing.
‘If you need a statement, you know where to find me.’
‘We won’t be needing a statement, sir.’
Copper’s eyes shift downward, to the young policeman’s face. It’s the first time he’s made eye contact with the kid.
The policeman
is
a kid - hell, even I can tell he’s barely out of the academy. I can see that from where I’m looking out, three houses away.
is
a kid - hell, even I can tell he’s barely out of the academy. I can see that from where I’m looking out, three houses away.
‘No questions, nothin’ at all?’
Copper spits again, looks from the man in uniform doing nothing, to the men in uniform across the street, also doing nothing.
‘This is the sixth house they’ve gutted in this neighborhood. ’
‘Yes, sir, we appreciate your calling it in.’
‘I seen it all and I called it in - twenty-six hours ago.’
Copper lets that one stand. He tilts his head, cocking his neck, staring the policeman down.
‘I’ve called in every goddamned one of ’em.’
I can see the white of the cop’s scalp when he looks away from the old man’s glare.
The kid clears his throat and looks down, as if there were something of importance in his hand. He already closed his notebook. What can there be to look at? He doesn’t even have calluses to gander at.
‘City just doesn’t care, does it?’
The kid’s crew cut is too close, like a fresh military cut. His scalp gleams like a baby’s knee. This kid is green, the type that needs a weekly trim and says so, as if that were part and parcel of being a cop, to make up for doing nothing.
‘But come tax reassessment time, the city is right at my door.’
Of course they send him to talk to Copper.
‘I’ve got one question, officer.’
‘What’s that, Mr Cyrus?’
‘What’re you going to do when they come after my house?’
If there is a reply, he doesn’t stay long enough to hear it.
The screen door slaps closed without a whisper from the hinges. Copper keeps everything shipshape; no squeaking door on his watch.
It doesn’t matter. The cop is on his heel and away, too. His polished shoes are too smart on the tarmac; the crease of his pantlegs are sharp as a paper cut.
He shakes his head and mutters something I can’t make out, and his cop cronies make some wisecrack back at him, and they all have a hearty laugh at Copper’s expense.
Anything to clear the air of the old man’s comment, ignore the truth of it, pretend it wasn’t said or heard or didn’t matter.
I lay low and watch the old man’s porch.
I dream of Mount McKinley.
I dream of fucking, and climbing, and cold, and pain and cold.
I dream of my dick splitting in half.
I wake up on the bare cement floor in the basement of the Baker house.
No pain.
No cold.
I hear Fetus moving around upstairs.
I stand up. Go to the window.
Still have to tell myself I’m home.
Home.
My hometown didn’t used to look like this.
It’s looking more like the east side of Baghdad every day. Damn near every house looted, gutted, no electricity, no running water.
I look past the row of shells.
Every house on this street is abandoned but one.
It’s the same for blocks.
A neighborhood of shells.
Windows boarded up, sheets of plywood over doorways, broken panes, sagging clapboards, chipping paint, ragged shingles.
All but one.
I see Copper across the way and up the street, sitting on his porch.
Copper sits on his rocker on his porch.
I remember I have something to do.
‘So what you want from me?’
Copper sits on his rocker on his porch, still as a stump. One spot- flecked hand over his other wrist.
It’s an odd position, and he changes hands to cup the opposite wrist, if you are with him long enough to notice.
Copper later tells me that’s how the cold hits him: it stabs his wrists.
His wrists get cold, a deep cold that starts slow before it bites to the marrow and lingers. ‘Started when I was in my mid fifties,’ he later says, ‘and the damned thing is, it’s same as when I was in Korea. Same cold, as if I’d never left it. Like it followed me here.’
But that is later.
Today, he sits with one hand over t’other, over the wrist, and gazes at me with those milky blue eyes of his.
‘You’re here all the time,’ I say. ‘I see you keeping watch.’
He turns his head and spits without taking his hand off that wrist. Over the rail it goes, a shimmering clam arcing into the perfectly trimmed grass.
‘Yep, I’m home, always home. What of it?’
‘So, we’re looking to start a neighborhood watch.’
His eyes don’t so much as quiver.
His lips are tight, white, top and bottom.
‘Keep an eye on one another’s houses, watch out for one another,’ I offer.
‘I’m home.’
Another lunger over the rail, into the perfect green grass, somehow without breaking gaze with me.
‘Always home.’
‘Yes, sir.’
We let that hang in the air.
We let it hang a while, let it slide to quiet and seep in, like his spit on the blade of grass below is hanging then seeping, though I can’t say for sure it is or does, as I’m watching Copper.
Copper doesn’t move a notch, and he won’t.
Up to me, since I’m the one intruding, to break the silence.
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