He swung again, striking the thing’s face this time, and the rotted skull imploded in a gush of pink. The headless body took a final step before it collapsed splashing into the water, which was high enough now to soak Remy’s pants above the galoshes.
Still clutching the shovel, Remy bolted from the flooding living room. It wouldn’t be long before the water flowed down the hall and reached the bedroom.
That thing was alive!
Mind still reeling, he slammed the bedroom door closed and then wedged clothes underneath it. That would hold back the floodwater for only a minute or two, but it was something, at least.
Holding the shovel under one arm, he dragged the dresser to the middle of the floor then clambered on top of it and stood as straight as he could without hitting the low ceiling.
“I’ll be right back, hon,” Remy said, trying to keep the panic from his voice. “Just wait there as best you can.” Marta mewled, gripped the blankets. The morphine was wearing off, and he felt her growing agony in his chest, in his heart.
Age had taken a toll on him, but he knew it had taken more of a toll on the cracked, off-grade ceiling. He jabbed the shovel up again and again, shattering thin plaster, rending pink insulation, splintering worm-eaten beams. Finally, he broke through brittle shingles and saw the night sky. Raindrops pelted his face as he wormed up through the ragged hole and then stood on the roof near a small brick chimney, wind whipping his poncho.
By light of the moon, he saw that the water had taken the entire neighborhood, uprooting trees, rolling cars, flooding houses, creating a trash-strewn sea in every direction. He and Marta could expect to be stranded for a long time. Too long. And then he noticed flailing silhouettes flowing among the houses when lightning revealed what the moon hadn’t-dozens of animated dead, like the one that had broken through his window, caught in the rushing floodwater. Rotted bodies, broken bodies, bodies with limbs missing, bodies stripped of flesh. Some floated and thrashed while others strode through the chest-deep water, straining to escape the vicious current. Over the din of rushing water came a flat, plaintive sound. Moaning, he realized. A wailing chorus from the dead that rose up with a life of its own.
Remy closed his eyes and considered his only choice.
God willing, he’d have the strength to hoist Marta through the hole and onto the roof, and then he’d do his best to cover her with his poncho to keep her dry and hide her from the dead things that surrounded them. But they’d still be stranded. And Marta would still be without her morphine.
Below, Marta cried out in agony. Desperation shot through him. What else could he do?
He scrambled around the roof, looking for a safe way off, but the water was everywhere, rushing past in black, white-capped fury. He scanned the surface for debris, for a bobbing chunk big enough to use as a raft, but again there was only black water. Black water and the thrashing, floating bodies of the animated dead.
Marta cried out again, voice tinged with such pain, such agony, that Remy moaned in frustration and blind emptiness as rage blossomed along with his fear. He beat the chimney until his knuckles were bloody, crying out himself, his own anguish mingling with Marta’s cries and the moans rising up from the dark water around him.
And then he felt a sudden calm come over him. There was another way out of this. Another way. For a moment he felt a flicker of doubt, but another cry from Marta decided the issue.
The animated dead moved with ease and felt no pain. That much had been clear from the thing in his living room. As unbelievable as it seemed, he could not doubt what he had witnessed or question the opportunity that had been placed before him.
He wondered about Marta’s voice as he lowered himself back through the hole in the roof and onto the dresser. Would it return when her pain disappeared? He listened to the moans coming through the wall as clear as a back-up chorus. Maybe the dead could do more than moan. Was that so hard to believe in the face of all this? Maybe the dead outside chose to moan their woe, chose to moan in eulogy for the living who no longer grieved for them.
But such would not be the case with Marta and him. They would choose to do otherwise. They had each other. They’d always have each other.
Remy clambered down from the dresser, rushed to Marta’s side, and leaned over to kiss her forehead. She opened her pain-stricken eyes.
“Do you trust me?” he whispered.
She blinked her eyes once slowly in reply. Always.
Nodding, he turned and opened the bedroom door.
The floodwater rushed in to soak the tops of his galoshes, then chilled his calves, then his knees. The cold water kept rising as he sloshed back to the bed, sat by Marta’s side, and stroked her forehead.
It had to be something in the water that brought the dead back. It had to be.
“Close your eyes, hon,” he said.
But she didn’t close her eyes. He knew she could sense his doubt. His fear. In fifty years, he could never keep a secret from her.
She might have known what was about to happen, too, because she reached out, gently pulled his face to hers, pressed her lips to his ear. And began to sing. For the first time in so, so long.
Her raspy, pain-etched voice scraped only the bottom of the notes she used to reach, but it soothed his spirit just the same, long enough and completely enough until the floodwater delivered them into their new beginning.
Living With The Dead by Molly Brown
British Science Fiction Award-winner Molly Brown is the author of the novels Invitation to a Funeral and Virus. Her short fiction has appeared many times in Interzone, and in the Mammoth Book anthologies: Jules Verne Adventures, New Comic Fantasy, and Future Cops. Other anthology appearances include Steampunk, Time Machines, Celebration, Villains! and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Many of these stories have been gathered in her collection Bad Timing and Other Stories. In addition to writing prose fiction, Brown has written and appeared in a several short zombie films, and some of her stories have been optioned for film and/or television.
One of the challenges of assembling an anthology of zombie fiction is deciding exactly what constitutes a “zombie” story. The term originated in the Caribbean and originally referred to recently deceased individuals who had been brought back to life through magic to serve as slave workers. After the word zombie was used in connection with the marketing of George Romero’s 1978 film Dawn of the Dead, the term has mostly been associated with masses of mindless, hungry undead who kill and convert the living. In recent years, the film 28 Days Later and the video game Left 4 Dead have depicted zombies as belligerent infected who aren’t actually undead. However, they are otherwise so similar to Romero zombies that everyone calls them that, and they can really be classified no other way.
But where do you draw the line? In this anthology series we’ve chosen to take an inclusive view and expose readers to the broadest possible spectrum of zombie fiction. Which brings us to our next story. One thing that’s been interesting to watch is how the term “zombie” has fallen into colloquial usage-i.e., we often refer to people as zombies when they’re performing mindless tasks, or planted in front of the television, or in a state of emotional detachment, even if they’re not trying to kill anyone. On this view, the defining feature of zombies is that they’re animate but not present. Our next story is a quiet tale of suburban life that explores this side of zombiehood.
I went to the park today, and for the first time in five years, Alice looked at me as if she knew me.