Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology Read online

  She doubted it.

  In fact, they didn’t seem to be aware of her presence at al . They were limping and hobbling straight toward the Reaper.

  Whose shriek now shattered whatever fragile force had al owed Jean to stay outside the cuffed stranger. She tried to keep her distance. Couldn’t. Was sucked back inside the naked, suspended girl. Felt a sudden rush of horror and revulsion… and hope.

  Whatever else they might be, they were the victims of the Reaper.

  Payback time.

  He was stil shrieking, and Jean looked down at him. He was on his hands and knees. The scalped girl, also on her knees and facing him, had his head caught between her hands. She was biting the top of his head. Jean heard a wet ripping sound as the girl tore off a patch of hair and flesh.

  He flopped and skidded backward, dragged by the rock thrower and the one with the slimy skin.

  Each had him by a foot. The scalped girl started to crawl after him, then grunted and stopped and tried to pick up the pliers. Her right hand had no fingers. She pawed at the pliers, whimpering with frustration, then sighed when she succeeded in picking up the tool using the thumb and two remaining fingers of her other hand. Quickly, she crawled along trying to catch up to her prize. She scurried past Jean. One of her buttocks was gone, eaten away to the bone.

  She gained on the screaming Reaper, reached out and clamped the pliers to the ridge of his ear and ripped out a chunk.

  Halfway between Jean and the fire, the girls released his feet.

  Al six went at him.

  He bucked and twisted and writhed, but they turned him onto his back. While some held him down, others tore at his clothes. Others tore at him. The scalped one took the pliers to his right eyelid and tore it off. The burnt one snatched up a hand and opened her lipless black mouth and began to chew his fingers off. While this went on, the armless girl capered like a madcap skeleton, her trapped lung bouncing inside her ribcage.

  Soon the Reaper’s shirt was in shreds. His pants and boxer shorts were bunched around his cowboy boots. The scalped girl had ripped his other eyelid off, and now was stretching his upper lip as he squealed. The rock thrower, kneeling beside him, clawed at his bel y as if trying to get to his guts. Slime-skin bit off one of his nipples, chewed it, and swal owed. The girl who must’ve been skinned alive knelt beside his head, scraping maggots off her bel y and stuffing them by the handful into his mouth. No longer shrieking, he choked and wheezed.

  The dancing skeleton dropped to her bare kneecaps, bent over him, and clamped her teeth on his penis. She pul ed, stretching it, gnawing. He stopped choking and let out a shril scream that felt like ice picks sliding into Jean’s ears.

  The scalped girl tore his lip off. She gave the pliers a snap, and watched the lip fly.

  Jean watched it too. Then felt its soft plop against her thigh. It stuck to her skin like a leech. She gagged. She stomped her foot on the ground, trying to shake it off. It kept clinging.

  It’s just a lip, she thought.

  And then she was throwing up. She leaned forward as far as she could, trying not to vomit on herself. A smal part of her mind was amused. She’d been looking at hideous, mutilated corpses, such horrors as she had never seen before, not even in her nightmares. And she had watched the corpses do unspeakable things to the Reaper. With al that, she hadn’t tossed her cookies.

  A lip sticks to my leg, and I’m barfing my guts out.

  At least she was missing herself. Most of it was hitting the ground in front of her shoes, though a little was splashing up and spraying her shins.

  Final y the heaving subsided. She gasped for air and blinked tears out of her eyes.

  And saw the scalped girl staring at her.

  The others kept working on the Reaper. He wasn’t screaming anymore, just gasping and whimpering.

  The scalped girl stabbed the pliers down. They crashed through the Reaper’s upper teeth. She rammed them deep into his mouth and partway down his throat, left them there, and started to crawl toward Jean.

  “Get him,” she whispered. “He’s the one.”

  Then Jean thought, maybe she wants to help me.

  “Would you get the key? For the handcuffs? It’s in his pants pocket.”

  The girl didn’t seem to hear. She stopped at the puddle of vomit and lowered her face into it.

  Jean heard lapping sounds, and gagged. The girl raised her head, stared up at Jean, licked her dripping lips, then crawled forward.

  “No. Get back.”

  Opened her mouth wide.

  Christ!

  Jean smashed her knee up into the girl’s forehead. The head snapped back. The girl tumbled away.

  A chil spread through Jean. Her skin prickled with goosebumps. Her heart began to slam.

  It won’t stop with him.

  I’m next!

  The scalped girl, whose torso was an empty husk, rol ed over and started to push herself up.

  Jean leaped.

  She caught the tree limb with both hands, kicked toward the trunk but couldn’t come close to reaching it. Her body swept down and backward. As she started forward again, she pumped her legs high.

  She swung.

  She kicked and swung, making herself a pendulum that strained higher with each sweep.

  Her legs hooked over the barkless, dead limb.

  She drew herself up against its underside and hugged it.

  Twisting her head sideways, she saw the scalped girl crawling toward her again.

  Jean had never seen her stand.

  If she can’t stand up, I’m okay.

  But the others could stand.

  They were stil busy with the Reaper. Digging into him. Biting. Ripping off flesh with their teeth.

  He choked around the pliers and made high squeaky noises. As Jean watched, the charred girl crouched over the fire and put both hands into the flames. When she straightened up, she had a blazing stick trapped between the fingerless flaps of her hands. She lumbered back to the group, crouched, and set the Reaper’s pants on fire.

  The pants, pul ed down until they were stopped by his boot tops, wrapped him just below the knees.

  In seconds they were ablaze.

  The Reaper started screaming again. He squirmed and kicked. Jean was surprised he had that much life left in him.

  The key, she thought.

  I’l have to go through the ashes.

  If I live that long.

  Jean began to shinny out along the limb. It scraped her thighs and arms, but she kept moving, kept inching her way along. The limb sagged slightly. It groaned. She scooted farther, farther.

  Heard a faint crackling sound.

  Then was stopped by a bone white branch that blocked her left arm.

  “No!” she gasped.

  She thrust herself forward and rammed her arm against the branch. The impact shook it just a bit. A few twigs near the far end of it clattered and fel .

  The branch looked three inches thick where it joined the main limb. A little higher up, it seemed thin enough for her to break easily—but she couldn’t reach that far, not with her wrists joined by the short chain of the handcuffs. The branch barred her way like the arm and hand of a skeleton pleased to keep her treed until its companions finished with the Reaper and came for her.

  She clamped it between her teeth, bit down hard on the dry wood, gnashed on it. Her teeth barely seemed to dent it.

  She lowered her head. Spat dirt and grit from her mouth. Turned her head.

  The Reaper was no longer moving or making any sounds. Pale smoke drifted up from the black area where his pants had been burning. The charred girl who had set them ablaze now held his severed arm over the campfire. The slimy, breastless girl was pul ing a boot onto one of her feet.

  The skinned girl, kneeling by the Reaper’s head, had removed the pliers from his mouth. At first Jean thought she was pinching herself with them. That wasn’t it, though. One at a time, she was squashing the maggots that squirmed on her bel y. The rock thrower’s head was buried in the Reaper’s open torso. She reared up, coils of intestine drooping from her mouth. The rotted and armless girl lay flat between the black remains of the Reaper’s legs, tearing at the cavity where his genitals used to be.

  Though he was apparently dead, his victims al stil seemed contented.

  For now.

  Straining to look down past her shoulder, Jean saw the scalped girl directly below. On her knees.

  Reaching up, pawing the air with the remains of her hands.

  She can’t get me, Jean told herself.

  But the others.

  Once they’re done with the Reaper, they’l see that bitch down there and then they’l see me.

  If she’d just go away!

  GET OUT OF HERE!

  Jean wanted to shout it, didn’t dare. Could just see the others turning their heads toward the sound of her voice.

  If I could just kil her!

  Good luck on that one.

  Gotta do something!

  Jean clamped the limb hard with her hands. She gritted her teeth.

  Don’t try it, she thought. You won’t even hurt her. You’l be down where she can get at you.

  But maybe a good kick in the head’l discourage her.

  Fat chance.

  Jean released the limb with her legs. She felt a breeze wash over her sweaty skin as she dropped.

  She thrashed her feet like a drowning woman hoping to kick to the surface.

  A heel of her shoe struck something. She hoped it was the bitch’s face.

  Then she was swinging upward and saw her. Turning on her knees and reaching high, grinning.

  Jean kicked hard as she swept down.

  The toe of her shoe caught the bitch in the throat, lifted her off her knees and knocked her
sprawling.

  Got her!

  Jean dangled by her hands, swaying slowly back and forth. She bucked and tried to fling her legs up to catch the limb. Missed. Lost her hold and cried out as the steel edges of the bracelets cut into her wrists. Her feet touched the ground.

  The scalped girl rol ed over and crawled toward her.

  Jean leaped. She grabbed the limb. She pul ed herself up to it and drove her knees high but not fast enough.

  The girl’s arms wrapped her ankles, clutched them. She pul ed at Jean, stretching her, dragging her down, reaching higher, climbing her. Jean twisted and squirmed but couldn’t shake the girl off. Her arms strained. Her grip on the limb started to slip. She squealed as teeth ripped into her thigh.

  With a krrrack! , the limb burst apart midway between Jean and the trunk.

  She dropped straight down.

  Fal ing, she shoved the limb sideways. It hammered her shoulder as she landed, knees first, on the girl. The weight drove Jean forward, smashed her down. Though the girl no longer hugged her legs, she felt the head beneath her thigh shake from side to side. She writhed and bucked under the limb. The teeth kept their savage bite on her.

  Then had their chunk of flesh and lost their grip.

  Clutching the limb, Jean bore it down, her shoulder a fulcrum. She felt the wood rise off her back and rump. Its splintered end pressed into the ground four or five feet in front of her head.

  Bracing herself on the limb, she scurried forward, knees pounding at the girl beneath her. The girl growled. Hands gripped Jean’s calves. But not tightly. Not with the missing fingers. Teeth snapped at her, scraping the skin above her right knee. Jean jerked her leg back and shot it forward. The girl’s teeth crashed shut. Then Jean was off her, rising on the crutch of the broken limb.

  She stood up straight, hugging the upright limb, lifting its broken end off the ground and staggering forward a few steps to get herself out of the girl’s reach.

  And saw the others coming. Al but the rotted skeletal girl who had no arms and stil lay sprawled between the Reaper’s legs.

  “No!” Jean shouted. “Leave me alone!”

  They lurched toward her.

  The charred one held the Reaper’s severed arm like a club. The breastless girl with runny skin wore both his boots. Her arms were raised, already reaching for Jean though she was stil a few yards away. The rock thrower had found a rock. The skinned girl aswarm with maggots picked at herself with the pliers as she shambled closer.

  “NO!” Jean yel ed again.

  She ducked, grabbed the limb low, hugged it to her side and whirled as the branchy top of it swept down in front of her. It dropped from its height slashing sideways, its bony fingers of wood clattering and bursting into twigs as it crashed through the cadavers. Three of them were knocked off their feet. A fourth, the charred one, lurched backward to escape the blow, stepped into the Reaper’s torso, and stumbled. Jean didn’t see whether she went down, because the weight of the limb was hurling her around in a ful circle. A branch struck the face of the scalped girl crawling toward her, popped, and flew off. Then the crawling girl was behind Jean again and the others were stil down. Al except the rock thrower. She’d been missed, first time around.

  Out of range. Now her arm was cocked back, ready to hurl a smal block of stone.

  Jean, spinning, released the limb.

  Its barkless wood scraped her side and bel y.

  It flew from her like a mammoth, tined lance.

  Free of its pul , Jean twirled. The rock flicked her ear. She fel to her knees. Facing the crawler.

  Who scurried toward her moaning as if she already knew she had lost.

  Driving both fists against the ground, Jean pushed herself up. She took two quick steps toward the crawler and kicked her in the face. Then she staggered backward. Whirled around.

  The rock thrower was down, arms batting through the maze of dead branches above her.

  The others were starting to get up.

  Jean ran through them, cuffed hands high, twisting and dodging as they scurried for her, lurched at her, grabbed.

  Then they were behind her. Al but the Reaper and the armless thing sprawled between his legs, chewing on him. Gotta get the handcuff key, she thought.

  Charging toward them, she realized the cuffs didn’t matter. They couldn’t stop her from driving.

  The car key was in the ignition.

  She leaped the Reaper.

  And staggered to a stop on the other side of his body.

  Gasping, she bent over and lifted a rock from the ring around the fire. Though its heat scorched her hands, she raised it overhead. She turned around.

  The corpses were coming, crawling and limping closer.

  But they weren’t that close.

  “HERE’S ONE FOR NUMBER EIGHT!” she shouted, and smashed the rock down onto the remains of the Reaper’s face. It struck with a wet, crunching sound. It didn’t rol off. It stayed on his face as if it had made a nest for itself.

  Jean stomped on it once, pounding it in farther.

  Then she swung around. She leaped the fire and dashed through the clearing toward the waiting car.

  3. It Helps If You Sing By Ramsey Campbell

  They could be on their summer holidays. If they were better able to afford one than he was, Bright wished them luck. Now that it was daylight, he could see into al the lowest rooms of the high rise opposite, but there was no sign of life on the first two floors. Perhaps al the tenants were singing the hymns he could hear somewhere in the suburb. He took his time about making himself presentable, and then he went downstairs.

  The lifts were out of order. Presumably it was a repairman who peered at him through the smeary window of one scrawled metal door on the landing below his. The blurred face startled him so much that he was glad to see people on the third floor. Weren’t they from the building opposite, from one of the apartments that had stayed unlit last night? The woman they had come to visit was losing a smiling contest with them. She stepped back grudgingly, and Bright heard the bolt and chain slide home as he reached the stairs.

  The public library was on the ground floor. First he strol ed to the job center among the locked and armored shops. There was nothing for a printer on the cards, and cards that offered training in a new career were meant for people thirty years younger. They needed the work more than he did, even if they had no families to provide for. He ambled back to the library, whistling a wartime song.

  The young job-hunters had finished with the newspapers. Bright started with the tabloids, saving the serious papers for the afternoon, though even those suggested that the world over the horizon was seething with disease and crime and promiscuity and wars. Good news wasn’t news, he told himself, but the last girl he’d ever courted before he’d grown too set in his ways was out there somewhere, and the world must be better for her. Stil , it was no wonder that most readers came to the library for fiction rather than for the news. He supposed the smiling couple who were fil ing cartons with books would take them to the housebound, although some of the titles he glimpsed seemed unsuitable for the easily offended. He watched the couple stalk away with the cartons, until the smoke of a distant bonfire obscured them.

  The library closed at nine. Usual y Bright would have been home for hours and listening to his radio cassette player, to Elgar or Vera Lynn or the dance bands his father used to play on the wind-up record player, but something about the day had made him reluctant to be alone. He read about evolution until the librarian began to harrumph loudly and smite books on the shelves.

  Perhaps Bright should have gone up sooner. When he hurried round the outside of the building to the lobby, he had never seen the suburb so lifeless. Identical gray terraces multiplied to the horizon under a charred sky; a pair of trampled books lay amid the breathless litter on the anonymous concrete walks. He thought he heard a cry, but it might have been the start of the hymn that immediately was al he could hear, wherever it was.

  The lifts stil weren’t working; both sets of doors that gave onto the scribbled lobby were open, displaying thick cables encrusted with darkness. By the time he reached the second floor he was slowing, grasping any banisters that hadn’t been prised out of the concrete. The few lights that were working had been spray-painted until they resembled dying coals. Gangs of shadows flattened themselves against the wal s, waiting to mug him. As he climbed, a muffled sound of hymns made him feel even more isolated. They must be on television, he could hear them in so many apartments.