Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction Read online

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  DEAD NORTH

  The Exile Book of Anthology Series, Number Eight

  CANADIAN ZOMBIE FICTION

  Edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Dead north : Canadian zombie fiction / edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

  The Exile Book Of Anthology Series, Number Eight

  Contributors: Tyler Keevil, E. Catherine Tobler, Gemma Files, Ada Hoffmann, Melissa Yuan-Ines, Simon Strantzas, Jamie Mason, Jacques L. Condor, Richard Van Camp, Claude Lalumière, Beth Wodzinski, Chantal Boudreau, Michael Matheson, Rhea Rose, Carrie-Lea Côté, Ursula Pflug, Kevin Cockle, Brian Dolton, Tessa J. Brown, Linda DeMeulemeester.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55096-355-7 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-55096-382-3 (epub).

  --ISBN 978-1-55096-383-0 (mobi).--ISBN 978-1-55096-381-6 (pdf)

  1. Zombies-Fiction. 2. Horror tales, Canadian (English). 3. Short stories, Canadian (English). 1. Moreno-Garcia, Silvia, editor of compilation.

  PS8323.H67D43 2013 C813'.087380806 C2013-903998-8

  Cover Art by Szymon Siwaks

  Published by Exile Editions Ltd ~ www.ExileEditions.com

  144483 Southgate Road 14 – GD, Holstein, Ontario, N0G 2A0

  PDF, ePUB and MOBI versions by Melissa Campos Mendivil

  Publication Copyright © Exile Editions, 2013. All rights reserved

  We gratefully acknowledge, for their support toward our publishing activities, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

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  To Antonio, who is lovely and not a zombie.

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  The Herd

  by Tyler Keevil

  The Sea Half-Held by Night

  by E. Catherine Tobler

  Kissing Carrion

  by Gemma Files

  And All the Fathomless Crowds

  by Ada Hoffmann

  Waiting for Jenny Rex

  by Melissa Yuan-Ines

  Stemming the Tide

  by Simon Strantzas

  Kezzie of Babylon

  by Jamie Mason

  Those Beneath the Bog

  by Jacques L. Condor ~ Maka Tai Meh

  On the Wings of this Prayer

  by Richard Van Camp

  Ground Zero: Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue

  by Claude Lalumière

  The Food Truck of the Zombie Apocalypse

  by Beth Wodzinski

  Dead Drift

  by Chantal Boudreau

  Hungry Ghosts

  by Michael Matheson

  The Adventures of Dorea Tress

  by Rhea Rose

  The Last Katajjaq

  by Carrie-Lea Côté

  Mother Down the Well

  by Ursula Pflug

  Rat Patrol

  by Kevin Cockle

  The Dead of Winter

  by Brian Dolton

  Escape

  by Tessa J. Brown

  Half Ghost

  by Linda DeMeulemeester

  AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

  INTRODUCTION

  There have been a plethora of explanations for the popularity of the zombie sub-genre. Some people believe it is based on the economic downturn, that bad financial times engender survivalist fantasies. Others see zombies as the antithesis to the beautiful, gentler vampires of paranormal romance.

  The popularity of zombie stories has given way to certain “zombie rules,” some inspired by George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, and others that morphed and mutated after the release of this film, but were not actually in the black-and-white flick. For example, in Romero’s original movie, a zombie bite is not the only way to turn into a zombie, though it becomes de rigueur in other movies and stories.

  For this anthology, I sought stories that went beyond the Romero-inspired survivalist scenario. After all, two of my favourite zombies stories, “Lazarus” by Leonid Andreyev and “Pigeons from Hell” by Robert E. Howard, are far from Mad-Max-Meets-the-Undead. Of course, there are some zombie fans that might counter that those are not “real” zombies, but zombies have no rules. Just like vampires, we have crafted, forged and re-forged horrors that reflect the fears of our time.

  Thus, Dead North goes beyond the usual brain-chomping undead you might expect. Yes, there are zombie apocalypse tales, like in “Escape,” where a survivor is trapped in the Montreal Biodome. But there are also stories where Aboriginal myths and legends give rise to the undead, like in “Those Beneath the Bog,” inspired by the Abenaki and Algonkin legends the author heard in his childhood. Sometimes it’s not just humans who are zombies, as  Claude Lalumière proves when cows attack in “Ground Zero: Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue.” And, because this is Dead North, all stories take place in Canada. From marijuana-happy British Columbia to the freezing Yukon.

  Canadians like to say that our country is like a mosaic, with a mix of ethnic groups, languages and cultures that coexist within society. Fittingly, Dead North also works as a mosaic, a contrasting picture of dread. For it is dread that I believe ultimately draws us back to the zombie genre. The undead are the blank slate upon which we project our anxieties. Whether these are fears of technology (medical experiments turning people into monsters), an economic collapse (the zombie apocalypse scenario), a runaway consumerist society (zombie consumption generates more consumption) or simply our fear of death and the corruption of our bodies, the zombie serves as a vessel for our collective dread.

  In conclusion: dig in and discover the darkness at the heart of the Great White North.

  Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  April 2013

  THE HERD

  Tyler Keevil

  I can see them in the distance, moving over the tundra with that familiar, dopy stride. Aping the shapes of men and women, and still moving as if they have some purpose. I know better. Their only purpose – like mine, like anybody’s in this wasteland – is to find food. It is a full-time occupation, something that consumes you. Living to eat, and eating to live.

  I’m hunched in a snowbank, my skis and sled beside me, watching through my field glasses. I count maybe two dozen of them, all relatively healthy. They are grouped in a loose cluster. Not even walking in file, which would make it easier, in the snow. And not using snowshoes, either. Every so often one of them sinks in up to his thighs, and thrashes around in confusion and frustration. Once when this happens, another goes to help, and they both end up struggling together, until they start punching and biting. It’s funny, really. The intelligence of deadheads can vary, depending on the strain they’ve been infected with. I’ve seen one trying to operate a snowmobile. Unsuccessfully (the battery was dead), but still. These ones look to be about as smart as dogs.

  To the south, I catch a fl
icker of movement. I sweep my binoculars that way. It’s a wolf. Just the one. A rogue. So lean his ribs are showing through his skin. He is following the herd of deadheads, in a low crouch, padding noiselessly over the snow. It is like watching a ceremonial performance, an enactment of one of our old legends. The wolf trying so hard to play his part, to stalk quietly. He doesn’t need to bother. He could be snarling and howling at them. If he did, the deadheads would probably howl back. I snicker, thinking about that: all of them howling like animals, which is what they are, now. As it stands, they just keep plodding along, the wolf picking his way after them, paddy-pawing the snow.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  The deadheads are heading north. The wolf follows them, and I follow the wolf: stepping into my skis, draping the sled harness around my torso. I adopt an easy rhythm, sliding my skis back and forth, back and forth. The snow has a glittering crust, easy to traverse. I trail the herd at an angle, moving in parallel rather than directly behind them. They haven’t noticed me. The wolf may have, but if so has decided – for the time being – to focus on easier prey. The prey walk and walk and walk. They have great endurance, mostly because they don’t know any better. They are fully capable of hiking all day, but every few hours they take a break. There is never any discourse about this (some of the deadheads are capable of basic communication – grunts and guttural sounds) but they all seem to know instinctively when to stop. It’s that pack mentality they have. They form a circle and crouch, squat, or kneel in the snow, backs turned to the wind. They’re smart enough for that, at least. They rest for fifteen minutes, like automatons recharging their batteries.

  Then they get up and keep moving.

  It’s hard to say what this group were at one time. They are all pale-faced whites – except for those too stupid to cover their faces, which are now blackened by frostbite. They are outfitted well, in parkas, toques, mitts, boots. Some are in worse shape than others: their clothing torn or falling off, bits of goose down puffing from the seams like fungus. They might have been the inhabitants of some town, or outpost. Could be they ate their way through it, and have now moved on. The towns got infected first. The tribes, and my people, later. When it first started to happen, I would meet others on the tundra, in passing. The last of our kind. I’d explain to them about the sickness, the hunger, but they wouldn’t believe me. They had stopped trusting me long ago. Even the ones not of my tribe had heard about me, and feared me. But of course they all learned soon enough that I was telling the truth.

  Not that it did them any good.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  The wolf is desperate. It will not wait long to attack – it cannot afford to get any weaker – and by mid-afternoon the opportunity presents itself. One of the deadheads is flagging, faltering, trailing behind the others. There is something wrong with his left leg. It looks to be lame – from frostbite, or gangrene, maybe – and he is limping. He is quite small, too. Not a toddler, but a child. Seeing its chance, the wolf slinks up, shoulders hunched, gaze affixed on its prey. It is so intent on its purpose that it doesn’t notice me coasting closer, soft and silent on my skis, or understand that it is not hunter, but hunted.

  When I am within twenty yards I stop and unsling the bow from my shoulder. I reach up and ease an arrow from my quiver, notch it to the bow, draw the shaft to my cheek. Then I whistle, soft and high – a sound only the wolf will pick out over the wind. It looks back, confused, and my arrow catches it clean: burrowing into its chest, punching out through its back. It drops, whimpering and snarling. The deadheads haven’t heard; they continue trudging, oblivious. I wait until the wolf stops twitching before I approach, then jab it once with my spear to make sure it’s dead. Only then do I put down my weapons, get out my tools: an ivory knife, a stone-bladed ulu, and an umiuk made out of bone.

  I lay the wolf on its back, and with the knife slit it from its throat to its groin, being careful not to slice the stomach and intestines. There isn’t much muscle on the wolf – it’s all skin and bone – but there’s enough for a decent meal. I’ve never been fond of wolf meat. It is tough, and sinewy, particularly in an old beast like this. But it’s food, at least.

  And now the competition is out of the way.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  By the time I finish with the wolf, I can no longer see the herd of deadheads on the horizon, but their tracks are easy enough to follow. I start after them. My stomach is making strange burbles and groans, spasming and cramping. After weeks of nothing but stale pemmican, it’s having trouble digesting wolf meat. I can feel it sitting in there, a hard ball. My stomach used to regurgitate food after long periods of fasting, but I’ve learned to take it slow, and control that reflex. I got tired of eating my own vomit.

  I skate with my head down, pushing hard with my poles, falling into a smooth and steady rhythm. The landscape is overwhelming. The horizon flat in every direction. The sky a veil of grey. Behind it, the sun gleams like a tarnished coin, so dull you can look right at it without hurting your eyes. Those who haven’t been here, and seen it, simply cannot imagine the endless expanse of white. It is stark and harsh as a blank page, or a map with no borders, no boundaries. No sense of right or wrong. In this blighted snowscape, anything is possible. Here you are free to cross over, to transgress. It is a map of madness that I negotiate alone.

  The flats of my skis, waxed with fat, make satisfying hissing noises as they glide back and forth beneath me. I lose myself in that motion, feeling the terrain sliding away behind me, as if it is moving, not me. My sled is light enough right now that it isn’t much of a burden. No stores of food to weigh it down, aside from a few cuts of wolf meat. At other times, when hunting is good, it gets so heavy that I feel like I’m dragging a tree behind me.

  Years ago I kept a dog to pull it for me. A beautiful creature. Part husky, part wolf. Fierce, loyal, protective. And warm, too. His fur soft as ermine. We made a good team, traversing the Arctic together. He had a brilliant sense of direction, a great nose for tracking food. And he was much better at pulling this sled than me. But times grew lean, food scarce. We both shrunk, our skin tightening over us, hugging bone. Skeletal creatures. One night I woke to catch him regarding me in the darkness. He had enough wolf in him for that. The next morning, as I put him in his traces, I slit his throat with my knife. A nice, clean cut. Quick and relatively painless. For him, at least.

  Now I am the one pulling the sled, but I like to think he is with me, in spirit. I wear his hide on my back, as a parka. His teeth dangle from the leather necklace around my throat. We still stalk this tundra together, seeking food.

  He tasted different than wolf. There was something more wholesome about the flavour, as if the muscle was seasoned by all that love and loyalty, the bond between us. I think he would have appreciated my eating him. I took him inside myself, made him part of me.

  Alliances up here are fleeting, friendships temporary.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Evening is coming on when black dots appear on the horizon. As I get closer, the dots grow into the stumbling shapes of deadheads, their figures shimmering as if in a haze of heat, or a mirage. When they stop for the night, I do too. After pitching my tent, I watch them for a time. In the fading light, I can see them getting into their huddle formation. Every so often they change positions – the ones on the outside going to the centre, the others shifting out. It’s like observing a flock of penguins, each taking turns to act as the windbreak. It’s interesting behaviour, and effective in fighting the cold. At times I think they might be developing, evolving. Getting smarter. I hope not. It would make life that much more difficult.

  That night I sleep soundly, the flapping of the tent gentle and soothing as a lullaby. Perhaps because I have been thinking of him, my dog comes to me in my sleep. My brother, too. For a time, the three of us are traversing the landscape together. It is spring, the thaw. Food is plentiful: there are tubers lying on the ground, berries hanging from bushes, deer leaping onto our spears. My brother is laughing. It is
good to have companions again, even if only in a dream.

  For most of the following day, and the next, I keep pace with the herd. I am cautious, waiting. I am in no rush, and the last scraps of the wolf meat keep me going. A shift in the weather is coming. It is something you grow to feel, after years on the tundra. It is nothing tangible, just a sensation. A heaviness in the air, a change in temperature, the wind, the look of the clouds. I know it is going to snow, and it comes in the early morning, just after the herd has set out. It arrives, first, as a brief sprinkle – the flakes light and peppery. Then a lull, the air charged with a static crackle. Next, the first real flurries. Some of the deadheads stop, confused, and look up at this white confetti raining down. Soon they are overwhelmed by the snowstorm, swirling in the air like a swarm of frozen locusts.

  Visibility is reduced to ten feet. I lose sight of the herd, but can hear them calling to each other, mooing and moaning in confusion. I ski forward, closing the gap, moving softly, softly. A few shadowed shapes begin to emerge again, some faint, others more substantial. I focus on one shadow, separated from the others, and move towards it. It is stumbling along, looking left and right, calling for its kin. As I glide in, I transfer both my poles to my left hand. I reach for the axe at my belt, heft it and swing it smoothly down atop the deadhead’s skull. It makes a dull crumpling sound, like a watermelon being split, and he falls to the ground. I stop, kneel in the snow in a telemark position, next to my kill. I can still hear the others over the howl of the wind. One passes within a few feet of me, but notices nothing. Then he – or she? – keeps walking. The calls and moans fade away.

  When I’m sure they’re gone, I dig a trench for the corpse, and a snowcave for myself to weather the storm.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  The deadhead is a big man, well over six feet. A white man like the others. His nose is slightly black, his beard clotted with snot and frost. He hasn’t lost much weight, and is still bulky and muscular. This herd can’t have been infected for long. His parka has a small red cross stitched over the heart. He must have belonged to a rescue crew of some sort. I wonder if that’s what the group are doing: still wandering the wastes, dimly but diligently following their old purpose. I have seen this before. In the towns, the deadheads return to their homes and offices to putter aimlessly. They wash dishes in empty sinks, push lawnmowers through the snow, stand and hammer pieces of wood as if driving in an invisible nail. It could be that certain parts of their brain – those to do with learned reflex – are unaffected by the sickness. Reason and rationality are gone. All that remains is appetite, instinct, muscle memories.