Zombies: The Recent Dead (76 page)

We reach the village at sunset. A small group of cottages lining one side of the road, with a post office and a corner shop flanked by concrete posts. It is barely large enough to be called a village at all, and there are no signs of life. The shop has already been looted, while the post office is a blackened heap of bricks and charred timbers. Whoever did this is long gone, and probably dead by now. I cannot recall the last time we saw a living person. There must be so few of us left.

Again I wonder what will happen when there are none, and if in fact Coral and I might be the last living people in the country, or perhaps in the world. The thought, rather than terrifying, is strangely comforting. When at last we are gone, I imagine the whole planet becoming that mythical Fourth World I considered earlier—filled with rotting corpses with nothing to eat. Unable to help themselves, their bodies falling apart and filling the earth with dust. Valleys of dust. Rivers of dust. Dust that will remain undisturbed for all eternity.

“It’s the same as everywhere else. Nothing. No food. No people. Just . . . fucking . . . nothing . . . ” Coral falls to her knees, dropping her bag, and pummels the ground with her fists, drawing blood. I watch in silence, unable to help her and unwilling to even try. She sprawls on her belly and wails, a verbalization of her inadequacy, her inability to help herself and anyone else. But can’t she see that there is no one left to help?

I walk over to the little grocery shop and step through the shattered doorway. The shelves are empty, the counter smashed beyond repair. Refrigerators are overturned. A microwave lies disemboweled on the floor next to a pile of empty snack wrappers. The shop has been thoroughly cleaned-out of all supplies but for a single dented can of garden peas, which sits on a shelf like a bad joke. I imagine someone laughing as they placed it there, impressed by their own vicious humor.

I reach out and pick up the can. It is better than nothing, but only just. I stuff the can into my pack and leave the shop, wishing that I could remember how to cry. I am thinking of the baby—the stillborn whose eyes turned upon me and whose mouth opened to snap with toothless gums at my shaking fingers—and even then I am unable to connect with my emotions. Coral, however, is still on the ground, still weeping, her hands still bloodied and ragged. “I’ll get some plasters,” I say, reaching into my pack.

“Bastard!” she snarls, and I can only agree with her assessment.

Later that night, after a meal of cold peas and bitter memories, I awake in the darkness and the mattress beside me is cold and empty. I close my eyes and try to get back to sleep, but something whispers for my attention—a gentle breeze, perhaps through an open window, or a door that has not been shut when someone went outside.

I lift myself from the bed and put on my clothes—no rush, no hurry. Whatever has happened has happened. Whatever will be will be. There is no room now for sentimental thoughts and actions, for love and tenderness. These are the times of the closed hand, the hard fist, and each decision is tougher than the last. This is the Fourth World.

I pick up the gun and drift through the room like a ghost, slipping through the doorway to the upstairs landing of the small house at the end of the row—beyond the burned-out post office and the shop with its empty shelves and scattered furnishings. Standing at the top of the stairs, I can see that the front door is open. Pale moonlight spills across the welcome mat. That slight breezes trickles in through the gap.

I step gently down the stairs, through the doorway, and out into the night. The air is fresh and smells so very clean, like a promise of salvation. But I know not to trust such positive thoughts, and cast them gladly from my mind.

I walk along the narrow street—the houses and cottages to my left—my bare feet soundless on the cold, dense tarmac, the rifle held at port arms. There is sweat on my back, stones in my heart, and death is perched like a big black bird upon my shoulder.

She is there, in the darkness and moonlight, kneeling down in the middle of the road. Coral, my wife—a woman I can no longer allow myself to know and to love. Beyond the road, where she is kneeling, is a dark grove of trees. She is staring at the trees, at the blackness between their broad trunks, her arms held out as if in supplication, or welcome.

I move slowly, afraid to confront the moment, but realizing deep down that I cannot turn away. All I have is forward motion, momentum. When this ceases to be enough, I will slip the rifle barrel into my mouth and taste the darkness for one final time.

A dark bird plummets from the sky and perches on a nearby rock—it is a crow, possibly even the same one we saw yesterday, at the farm. Yesterday now seems so far away. For ten years we have kept up the charade, this pretence of life, and now it is all coming apart. The center is unable to hold. Ten years of shambling forward, never looking back, becoming even more dead than the dead things we are trying to outrun.

I continue walking towards the spot where my wife is on her knees, committing some self-created act of atonement. Darkness blooms around her, like a black mist, and I walk into it—a willing witness to whatever scene she has chosen to perform.

I can now see that Coral’s body is shaking, as if she is having some kind of fit. But still her hands are raised, lifted to the heavens. As I get closer I see the figures—two of them, with more standing behind. Thin and wiry, shrouded in the darkness of the grove of trees. The one at the front is leaning down in front of my wife, his withered white hands buried in her stomach up to the wasted wrists to access the charity she is willingly giving. He pulls the moist red offerings from the cavity of her gut, lifting them to his lips and rubbing them across his chin as he begins to feast.

I raise the rifle and move in a tight curve, coming towards the scene from the side. It is this positioning that enables me to see that Coral is still alive and that she is weeping . . . and beneath the tears is a calm, beatific smile.

The worst thing, in Coral’s case, was the fact that she had to turn against her true nature and become utterly selfish. But she could not do that—she was unable to put herself first. Always one for compassion, at the very last she is still giving of herself. My charitable wife . . . my little bleeding heart—the very organ which, even now, is being removed from her chest by dead hands and brought up to a grinning dead mouth.

Perhaps the baby was the final straw? Maybe my own failure to be there for her, putting my own survival first instead, was the final blow to her already weakened defenses?

And even now, right at the end, I continue to fail her. I fail her yet again.

Quickly I lift the rifle and take aim, then fire a single bullet into the back of her head. There will be no solidarity here, no politic with the dead. The back of her skull comes apart and her blood anoints those she wished to help, bathing them in her desire to share. For even at the moment of her death, Coral just can’t stop giving.

I remain in the house for days afterwards, becoming gradually weaker with hunger. A sense of sorrow trickles slowly into me like water spilled on porous stone. At last there is a semblance of emotion. I miss Coral—her constant presence at my side—even though at the end she hated me.

I stay beneath the bedclothes after the second day, not even going downstairs to use the toilet. The bed begins to smell and the sheets are soaking wet, but I am long past caring. The sun rises and sets, the window lightens and darkens, my mind wanders. I remember green fields and children playing, couples walking hand-in-hand and the promise of a future that was not dead . . .

I lose count of the days, slipping between sleeping and wakefulness as easily as closing my eyes. The room is a mirage and the walls seem to shimmer. When I hear the noise downstairs—a crashing splintering sound—I suspect that it is the dead breaking in to finish me off. At last they have found me. I hope they choke on my gristle and that my bones shatter and stab them in the brain.

Footsteps on the stairs—slow, uneven, stumbling. The door opens . . . the room goes dark.

When I open my eyes again I am no longer alone. There is a man standing by the bed. He is not dead. His hair is brown and clean, and the overalls he wears are freshly washed. I can tell by the overpowering smell of soap that he has been well looked after. I stare at him, waiting for something to happen.

“How do you feel?”

I can barely answer. “Bad.”

“I’m sorry that we couldn’t come sooner. We’ve been watching you for days, weighing up the situation and waiting for the area to clear. To be safe.” His face barely moves as he speaks. There is a name-tag on his chest pocket, but I am too tired to read what it says.

“Who are you?” I whisper.

“I’m part of a collective. We have been hiding out for years, stockpiling supplies. Everything we have is shared equally between the members of the group.” His eyes blink.

“What do you want?”

“We can offer you food and shelter . . . a life, of sorts. All you need to do is work with us, become
one of us
.” His hands clench at his sides. “Help us to re-build something good.”

“How long have you been watching us?”

“A few days. We had to be sure . . . be safe.”

“Did you see what happened to my wife?”

He pauses before answering. “I’m sorry. I wish we could’ve come earlier, but it wasn’t safe. I’m sorry.”

Sorry
. I have never met anyone so sorry in my whole life.

“Not. Safe.” I stare at him, knowing that this has all come much too late to mean anything. “And you have food and shelter?”

“Yes. We have those things, and much more.” He lifts his left hand, which clasps a small sack that I had not noticed before. Cans and bottles rattle and sing as he shakes it at arm’s length, almost teasing me.

My response surprises me almost as much as him.

“I don’t want your . . . fucking . . . 
charity
.” I pull down the bedclothes and use the rifle hidden beneath the stained sheets to shoot him in the head. I smile as the blood sprays and his knees buckle, toppling him to the floor. The sack rolls from his lifeless fingers, spilling its precious contents across the floorboards.

After a long time I finally get out of bed and cross the room. There is food and water and, even better, medicine. It is no longer charity—now that he is unable to offer these things freely, it is simply so much found goods. Now they are mine.

Days later, after the food and the water and the drugs, I am feeling much better. My mind is clear and my body has regained some strength. I still cannot think of a good enough reason to swallow a bullet, so instead I will go looking for the man’s comrades. And when I find them, I will show them what it means to be sorry.

Only then can I rest—when the world truly belongs to the dead.

About the Author

Gary McMahon
’s fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.K. and U.S and has been reprinted in both
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror
and
Year’s Best Horror and Fantasy.
He is the British-Fantasy-Award-nominated author of
Rough Cut, All Your Gods Are Dead, Dirty Prayers, How to Make Monsters, Rain Dogs, Different Skins, Pieces of Midnight, Hungry Hearts,
and has edited anthology
We Fade to Grey.
Forthcoming are several reprints in “Best of” anthologies, a story in the mass market anthology
The End of the Line,
novels
Pretty Little Dead Things
and
Dead Bad Things
from Angry Robot, and The Concrete Grove trilogy from Solaris. His Web site: www.garymcmahon.com.

Story Notes

McMahon’s story brings up the question of just who the monsters are.

Douglas E. Winters once said: “A deft morality play for television, Rod Serling’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” warned of the dangers of seeking the monstrous in skin other than our own. Just as Jane Austen’s
Northanger Abbey
(1818) signaled the certain sunset of the gothic by critiquing its preoccupation with the external, Serling’s simple scenario, in which everyday people hasten with McCarthyite fervor to condemn each other as monsters, underscored the fragile reign of the creature . . . Now that we have seen the monsters—now that they have arrived on Maple Street—we have learned that certain truth: They are us.”