Vance didn’t respond for a while.
“Vance, come in,” I shouted.
“I’m still here, Darcy. Just trying to save my breath. We’re moving fast. You say Simon is outside of the fence. Okay. That’s good.”
“It is?”
Vance sounded determined. Steadfast. “All of the dead are inside the fence. Maybe they didn’t see him there. Maybe they just think you’re the better meal, since there’s three of you.” He took his mouth away from the microphone, but I could hear him giving orders. “Joe, Bruce, Phil, get down there and get that gate closed-that’ll give us a second or two. Arnold, do you see Simon down there? Take Mary and just pick him up. Don’t stop if he fights you, just hold him still and pick him up. Yes, damn it. That’s exactly what I’m saying. No, we are not leaving him behind. We need him if we’re going to rebuild anything. If we’re going to have a future.”
“Vance,” I called. “Vance, what should we do? I don’t think we can get out of here without help. Tell me your plan.”
“Hold on, Darcy,” he said, and went back to issuing orders.
Outside, the dead started pounding on the office door. The furniture barricade jumped every time they struck. It was loud, very loud in the tiny office, and the air in there started to feel very stale.
“Vance, please. Tell me how you’re going to get us out of here,” I said.
The radio was silent.
“Vance. Please. Vance, you son of a-”
“We’re not, Darcy.”
I opened my eyes. Finster was staring down at me. The barricade started to fall apart.
“We can’t. We don’t have the numbers. If I tried, I would just get all of us killed. I’m sorry. We got Simon to safety, if it’s any consolation. He’s going to be a big help. He’s going to teach us how to build things.”
“That’s-no consolation at all! Listen, you stupid motherfucker, my baby is in here! My little baby. She’s scared, and alone, and-”
“Darcy, it has to be this way. We’re going to run away, and hope the dead don’t follow us. I think they’ll be too busy trying to get at you to notice. Thank you for that. Your sacrifice is going to let other people live.”
“My baby, Vance. My baby is in here.”
“Call me names. Tell me what an asshole I am. If it helps,” Vance told me. “I promise, I won’t turn my radio off until I know it’s over. But I’m sorry. That’s all I can do for you.”
“What is he saying?” Finster demanded. “I can’t hear him!”
“Mommy?” Candy asked. Three-year-old trust only goes so far, I guess.
I swore and screamed at Vance, then, used every nasty, obscene insult I could think of. Called him a prick. Called him impotent. Called him a traitor and a baby-killer. Thought up some new names just for him.
But I knew. Even as the barricade collapsed and the dead poured into the room-even then, I knew, he wasn’t a bad man.
He was good people.
But these are evil times.
Lost Canyon of the Dead by Brian Keene
Two-time Stoker Award-winner Brian Keene is the author of more than a dozen novels, including zombie novels The Rising, City of the Dead, and Dead Sea, the latter of which shares the same milieu as this story. Other novels include The Conqueror Worms, Castaways, Ghost Walk, Ghoul, Terminal, Dark Hollow, Urban Gothic, and his latest, Darkness on the Edge of Town and A Gathering of Crows. Other recent work includes his new, ongoing comic book series The Last Zombie from Antarctic Press. Keene’s short fiction-which has been collected in Unhappy Endings and Fear of Gravity-has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including the zombie anthologies The New Dead and The Dead That Walk.
All that remains today of the dinosaurs are their fossilized bones, towering assemblages of which adorn museums around the world. As children, many of us gazed up at these skeletal monsters and imagined what it would be like if all these spines and ribs and skulls and teeth suddenly came to life and tried to devour us.
Brian Keene was likely one of those children. He says, “This story is about cowboys, dinosaurs, and zombies-the three things all little boys love. I wrote this story after finishing a long, serious novel. I usually write something pulpy and fun after finishing something serious-sort of like a palate cleanser.”
Science has learned a lot about dinosaurs, who were once thought to be slow, lumbering reptiles unable to cope with a changing climate. We now know that dinosaurs were warm-blooded and agile, that they were nearly wiped out by a devastating meteor strike, and that the survivors evolved into modern-day birds (a fact attested to by beautiful transitional fossils such as Archaeopteryx).
One mystery that remains largely unsolved is what color dinosaurs were. Scientists had long assumed that dinosaurs were green like lizards, or maybe gray like elephants. But in recent years scientists have speculated that dinosaurs may have had more varied, colorful patterns, like certain kinds of snakes. Recent analysis of fossil melanosomes may provide some insight.
The dinosaur skin in our next story, however, could probably best be described as green…and mottled…and rotting.
The desert smelled like dead folks.
The sun hung over our heads, fat and swollen like that Polish whore back in Red Creek. It made me sweat, just like she had. It felt like we were breathing soup. The heat made the stench worse. Our dirty handkerchiefs, crusted with sand and blood, were useless. They stank almost as bad as the desert. Course, it wasn’t the desert that stank. It was the things chasing us.
We’d been fleeing through the desert for days. None of us had a clue where we were. Leppo knew the terrain and had acted as our guide, but he died of heatstroke on the second day, and we shot him in the head before he got back up again. We weren’t sure if the disease affected folks who’d died of natural causes, but we figured it was better to be safe than sorry. Since then, we’d been following the sun, searching the horizons for something other than sand or dead things. Our canteens were empty. So were our bellies. We baked during daylight and froze at night.
All things considered, I’d have rather been in Santa Fe. I knew folks there. Had friends. A girl. From what we’d heard, the disease hadn’t made it that far yet.
Riding behind me and Deke, Jorge muttered something in Spanish. I’ve never been able to get the hang of that language, so I’m not sure what he said. Sounded like “There’s goats in the pool” but it probably wasn’t.
I slumped forward in the saddle while my horse plodded along. My tongue felt like sandpaper. My lips were cracked and swollen. I kept trying to lick them, but couldn’t work up any spit.
“They still back there?” I was too tired to turn around and check for myself.
“Still there, Hogan,” Deke grunted. “Reckon they don’t need to rest. Don’t need water. Slower we go, the closer they get.”
I wiped sweat from my eyes. “We push these horses any harder and they’re gonna drop right out from under us. Then we’ll be fucked.”
Behind us, Janelle gasped at my language. I didn’t care. According to the Reverend, it was the end of the world. I figured rough language was the least of her worries.
“The good Lord will deliver us,” the Reverend said. “Even you, Mr. Hogan.”
“Appreciate that, Reverend. Give Him my thanks the next time you two talk.”
Deke rolled his eyes. I grinned, even though it hurt my lips.
We were an odd bunch, to be sure. Deke and I had come to Red Creek just a month ago. We’d bought ourselves a stand of timber there, and were intent on clearing it. Jorge had worked at the livery. The Reverend was just that-had himself a tent on the edge of town and gave services every Sunday. Terry was just a kid. Couldn’t have been a day over fourteen. No hair on his chin yet. But he shot like a man, and I was pretty sure that he was sweet on Janelle. It was easy to see why. Women like her were hard to find in the west. Janelle was from Philadelphia. Come to Red Creek after marrying a dandy twice her age. Don’t know if she really loved him or not, but she’d certainly carried on when those corpses tore the old boy apart in front of the apothecary like a pack of starved coyotes.