Zombies: More Recent Dead

Trail of Dead Joanne Anderton

You don’t realize how many dead things there are out here until you walk over them. Hmm, maybe I should rephrase that. I didn’t realize how many dead things there were out here until I walked over them. Yes, that’s better. No one else would have this problem.

Most of them are lizards, poor things little more than dried-out skin and tiny bones. They shuffle—why do dead things shuffle?—like they’re made of cardboard. All stiff legs and flat backs. Snakes too, and they have so much trouble moving on the sand. Then there’s the odd, dusty skeleton. People who’ve been dead for so long they collapse as soon as they’ve pulled their way out, bones crumbling away in the breeze.

They make me sad, those ones. Really, this is my fault. I know it. And here they are dissolving away like they’ve never existed, all because of me.

I stop for a moment, pull a stolen bottle of water from my tattered backpack and drink quickly. Only takes a sec before I realize there’s something buried at my feet. A beak pokes up into the hot, late afternoon air. It’s dark, with two large holes near the tip. A thin skull soon slithers after it, a few scraggly feathers attached, sticking up like a demented mohawk.

Emu. Damn. If that thing’s still got legs, oh how it will run.

I stuff the warm bottle in my bag and start to jog.

There are worse things than emus, to be sure. So the longer I stay out here the better. Away from cities, farms, any kind of human habitation. If I’m lucky no one else will suffer for my mistakes, my damned, drunken pride.

And I just might stay ahead of the old woman and her stones.

“It is conventional wisdom that a bullet to the head will do. Use something with a good amount of kick, like a shotgun.” The Hunter did not draw a gun; he balanced a Japanese sword with a woven green hilt and glinting edge in the palm of his hand. “But you know why we shouldn’t use those, don’t you?”

Chase looked up at him, pimple-ridden face paler than whitewash. “Yes, sir.” His voice broke, and he shook his head. “It’s not their fault.”

“No indeed. And we’re here to give them peace, to be dignified about it. Not to have ourselves a good time.” Grimly, the Hunter tipped up his wide-brimmed, rabbit-fur hat with his thumb. Dark brown eyes surveyed the park, touching on each of the approaching undead in turn. “Hunting is an old art, boy. You need to remember that.” He leaned forward, weight on the balls of his feet, balanced. Fluid. Ready. “A clean cut to the neck, separate head and body. One swipe is all it takes. No mess, no disrespect. No guns.”

The Hunter leaped forward and cut the undead down. He wasted nothing. Each stroke sliced through a rotting neck, each step took him right to the next cadaver. Slowly, the park emptied. The mass of shambling, rotting corpses became a heap of sprawled, rotting corpses.

Chase watched as the Hunter and the undead danced. He glanced down at the small, ugly-looking gun in his hand. An old-school thing, derringer the Hunter had called it, with a smooth wooden handle and a chrome barrel. Just looking at it made him feel sick. That the Hunter had put a gun instead of a sword into his fumbling, unsure hand said a lot.

“Chase!” The Hunter snapped from across the park. “Watch yourself!”

Chase looked up to a reaching, decayed hand. Yelping, he stumbled backward and lifted the derringer with a reluctant arm. The zombie had not been dead for long. She had hair, it tangled into a bleached-out nest at her shoulders, and most of her face remained intact. There was lipstick on parts of her lips.

She still looked like a person, and that always made it hard.

For one thing, they were quicker. The undead woman knocked Chase’s hand to the side even as he tried to aim the gun. She lunged, bloodied mouth snapping in the air like a rabid dog. Chase gave into his shaking legs and fell, leaving her teetering, head swiveling with almost comic confusion.

It helped, in a way. She didn’t look human any more, acting like some deranged animal instead of a woman. Chase scooted back, aimed up at her even as she saw him collapsed on the churned-up dirt, and fired. The first shot took her in the shoulder, pushing her back. As Chase fumbled for the spare bullets in his front pocket, dropped one in the mud and scrambled desperately to find it, she righted herself. She reached down.

He didn’t need the second shot. With a step and a tight swing of his sword, the Hunter cut her down.

Driza-bone coat flapping in a putrid breeze, the Hunter stared down at his apprentice. He did not offer a hand up. “Knives are too short, close quarters fighting only favors the undead.” He pulled a clean, white cloth from his pocket.

Chase had heard this speech before, heard it many times. He guessed it showed just how little regard the Hunter had for him, how much of a disappointment his so-called chosen boy had turned out to be. The man didn’t have anything else to say.

“Foils are no good for cutting through necks; you need to be on a horse or a trail bike to make sabres any use. But this—” the Hunter wiped his sword with the cloth, removing flaps of crackly skin and chunks of dry flesh. There was never very much blood. “—this is perfect.”

The Hunter looked into the distance, eyes shadowed by his hat, mouth set and serious. “Remember this, and when it is your time, treat her well.” Gently, he slid the sword into a lacquered scabbard at his hip. “You will make a Hunter one day. When I am gone.”

Chase gave up on the bullet, lost in the mud, and pushed himself to his feet. His pants were plastered with muck, especially around his backside where it clung with an uncomfortable weight. Quickly, before the Hunter could pick him up on it, he bundled up a handful of his navy polo shirt and wiped dirt off his gun. All the while, he tried to get the image of decapitating the Hunter out of his mind. But when you’re apprenticed to a Necromancer Hunter, that’s part of the deal. The only way to make sure that when they die, they stay dead.

A cold wind whipped clouds into the sky and threatened rain. With the city’s undead put down, it was time to leave. The civilian survivors needed to be getting back to their homes, cemeteries would need fixing. A lot of flowers had to be planted. They always planted flowers after a rising. A reminder of life, in all its beauty? Or just to try and cover the smell?

A thin, reedy melody rang through the park and echoed from gray empty buildings. The Hunter dug in his jacket and pulled out a small, silver phone, as clean as his sword and just as shiny. Its ringtone, slow and creepy in the midst of the dead, sent Chase’s skin crawling.

“Hunter.” The Hunter began to pick his way through the corpses and gestured to the boy to follow. “Another town? Where?”

The streets were sprinkled with abandoned cars, but not as many as other cities the Hunter had cleansed. People were getting warning now. They didn’t know who the Necromancer was, or even what he was trying to do, but they had been able to predict his movements for a week now and get the civilians out. It made things easier. Zombies on their own could be contained, but zombies with a city-load of fresh people to contaminate? Now that was a national disaster.

“He’s still heading west then.” The Hunter frowned. “No, I’ve never seen this kind of thing before. And I’ve been hunting Necromancers since I was a boy.” He glanced meaningfully at his apprentice. “They usually have a goal, concentrate on a particular spot. Seen them raise the dead for revenge, for love. One even tried to make an army out of the things. Damned disrespectful. But raising a city here, a country town there.” The Hunter shook his head. “This is strange, and I don’t like strange. Especially not from a Necromancer.”

Another pause.

“I know. We’ll hurry. Just keep your soldiers out of my hair.” He tapped fingers on the hilt of his sword. “Because they panicked last time, that’s why! Hard enough to dispatch a city of zombies without boys with guns running around screaming. Hunters have always dealt with the living dead. Let us do what we were put on this earth to do!” He snapped the phone together. “That is why you don’t let the army get involved.”

He sighed and glanced over his shoulder. “Time to hurry, boy. The bastard is trying to lose us in the desert.”

The Hunter broke into a run, threading his way around bodies and cars, and Chase struggled to follow.

I can’t seem to get far enough away. They follow me. People; with their houses and their animals and their damned, walking dead. Didn’t think I’d find any out here, where the dirt is a dark orange and the sparse, thicket-y type grass a little gray. But they’re here.

I glance over my shoulder, count three lizards, the hindquarters of a roo and two lonesome, struggling human arms. When I look forward again there’s a farmhouse. Sudden and close.

I stop, just for a moment, to stare at the falling wooden fence that wasn’t there a second ago. At the peeling weatherboard building, half its veranda sunk into dust, wire-mesh door hanging crooked from its hinges. I don’t stop long; I am aware of the shuffling behind me. Doesn’t look like anyone could live in something so rundown, but that’s not really what I’m worried about. Someone lived in this place once. Did they die here? Were they buried here? And what if they had a pet, some cattle-dog mutt buried beneath the looming gum. Undead dogs are quick on their rotting little paws, let me tell you.

The house is oddly familiar, in the way all rundown houses are. But in the end, the sun forces my decision. Out here, it always does. The dead things behind me stink. My water is almost gone, so too the packets of junk food I stole from a screaming petrol-station worker while zombies tried to clamber over her counter. At least the farmhouse offers shade. So I hurry.

The screen door opens with a groan that echoes down the dark hallway. Like the house is a zombie itself. It bangs when I shut it, resists when I try to do a rusted latch. In the end I resort to a piece of stiff wire to keep it closed. There are still gaps at the floor and again near the ceiling; the door doesn’t line up properly. But they’re too small for the roo, the crumbling stairs hopefully too difficult for the lizards and the bony, disconnected arms.

I wonder if there’s any water left in an old, dry place like this. Sunlight splinters in through the door, but the details of the house remain in shadow. I can’t see the color of the threadbare carpet, I can’t make out the photos in frames that hang on the wall. All I can see is an opening at the end, shifting with a curtain of beads that rattle in a warm breeze.

I brush the beads aside, ignoring cobwebs that stick to my hand and shoulder, and step into a kitchen. Dried eucalypt leaves darken the floor, piling up in corners and beneath cabinets. The windows are open, glass smashed and tattered curtains of yellowing lace fluttering.

A long, dark timber table dominates the room; it pushes out over cracked linoleum from a faded green wall. An old woman sits at one end, thin white hair pinned to her head, floral-patterned dress too wide for her skeletal frame. She looks up at me, and she smiles. Unfocused, watery eyes dance, her hands play with sticks and little white stones on the tabletop.

That’s when I realize I should never have stepped inside. It is her house, changed, yes, but hers all the same. Older, wider, spread somehow from a city two-bedroom to a farmhouse. But I know that table; I recognize those lacy drapes.

I try to take a step back. Something presses against my back. Large and solid, but damp. Cold fluids soak through my shirt.

I gag as rot washes over me, ripe, strangely sweet and thick. It runs down the back of my throat.

Hands grip my shoulders. They hold me upright and ooze against my skin.

“So, dearie.” The old woman’s voice still sounds like the rattling of bones. Only now, it’s a sound I know well. “Have you found what you were looking for?”

“Your Necromancer’s a woman. Did you know that?”

The Hunter tipped his hat back and scowled. The only admission of surprise he was likely to give. “Why do you say that?”

The young policeman shifted on his feet, uncomfortable beneath the Hunter’s scrutiny. “We have reports . . . ah, sir. From civilians fleeing the area, from the emergency service workers sent in to get them out. A woman, probably early thirties. Medium build, blond—”

“Yes, thank you.” The Hunter rolled a cigarette in his hand but didn’t take his eyes from the policeman. He lit it, lazily, and let it dangle from the corner of his mouth as he spoke. “It does not matter what she looks like. I need to know if she is the Necromancer or just some poor girl in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The policeman took off his deep blue cap and ran fingers through sweat-dampened hair. He used the hat to beat at perpetually buzzing flies and leaned back into the shade of the post office’s tin roof. The Hunter did not move, and beside him, Chase tried to follow his example. But whatever it was the Hunter possessed that made even the insects respect him, Chase didn’t have it. He resorted to waving them away.

Replacing his cap, the policeman nodded. “They were following. All of the witnesses were very clear. She had . . . zombies, ah, following her. People from the cemetery.” He gestured back along the dirt road and Chase glanced over his shoulder. There wasn’t much to this town and it had been almost empty when he and the Hunter drove in. Only a few bony cats and half a dozen lizards. The Hunter had dispatched them with ease. “Not only that. Roos and cattle too. Couple of sheep—”

“Yes, thank you.” The Hunter stepped back, into the dirt street and the full blow of the mid-morning sun. Chase followed with reluctance. “I understand.”

“Sir?” The policeman reached out, but didn’t leave the building’s shadow. “We can help—”

“Which way did you say she went?” The Hunter dropped his cigarette and snuffed it into the dust with the heel of his boot.

The young man pointed.

“There, you’ve helped.” With that, the Hunter spun and marched to his car, muttering about who was going to poke their nose into his business next. The car was an old, clunky thing that drunk down petrol and didn’t even have air-conditioning. But it got them out of the small town soon enough.

The Hunter drove in silence, following the road, eyes intent. Chase waited until the older man gave a deep sigh. “A woman.”

Chase looked at him but did not ask. Whatever the Hunter wanted him to know, the Hunter would say.

Chase had learned the Hunter’s quirks quickly, after the weathered, scowling man had taken him away from family and friends. Even got him out of school. All his talk about destiny and the struggle for the future of mankind had impressed his parents well enough. Must have worked on his teachers too.

After two months following the guy around, it would be nice if it had rubbed off on Chase. Would have made things a whole lot easier. But as it was, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this apprenticeship was all one big mistake.

“Not many women Necromancers, not many at all.” With one hand the Hunter riffled through the glove box and found a glass bottle of lukewarm water. He tossed it into the boy’s lap without looking. “Drink, it’s hot out here. Easy to get too dry.”

Chase obeyed, wrinkling his nose at the stifled taste.

“They just don’t have it in them, the need for control that drives a man to raise the dead.” He shook his head as the boy offered the bottle of water. “No, you don’t see many women Necromancers at all, let alone one who would raise so many, so indiscriminately. It doesn’t make sense.”

Dry, orange earth sped along beneath them. Thin trees, bent and drooping, spotted the side of the road. At one point a small flock of emus ran in the distance. Chase watched the sheer monotony of it all and tried not to breathe too loudly. Not while the Hunter was thinking.

“Why would she have them follow her? She’s raised cities and left them there, so why are they following her now? It makes no sense.”

The Hunter braked suddenly and turned off the road. The movement threw Chase against the window, and as he rubbed the bump forming on his forehead, he strained to look out the back. Half a kangaroo hopped beside the trunk of a termite-hollowed tree. Wire wrapped around its tail and snagged on the bark.

It was not struggling to hop along the road, instead it headed into the bush. The way the Hunter was driving. Not on any path, over fallen logs, and hard, cracking dirt.

“No sense at all.”

He hasn’t been dead that long, but it’s hard to recognize him. Guess that’s what the car did. Took off most of his face, and his body doesn’t look the same either. It’s missing something in his back that made him stand straight, so he slouches to the side. His remaining green eye has gone cloudy.

He doesn’t know me.

The old woman sits me in a chair and pushes a plate of rock cakes at me. I just stare at him. He stands at the doorway, hands still raised where he had been holding my shoulders, eye looking straight ahead.

“Eat something, dearie. You’re looking a little thin.”

Finally, I turn to glare at her. Rock cakes and their china plate shatter as I knock them from the table. “Bitch.”

“Now, now.” The old woman smiles, one hand fiddles with a large silver ring on a knobbly finger. “You shouldn’t be speaking to me like that, should you? Or haven’t you learned yet?”

I pull back, fold in on myself like she’s slapped me.

“Have you found what you were looking for?” She collects a small, round stone and strokes it. I feel my back straighten, my knees draw together like a good, polite girl. A great shudder runs through me.

“No. But you know that.” I want to turn around, to point. So I do, but only once she’s put down the stone. “You had him all along.”

The old woman nods. “Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

“Why would you do that?”

She shakes her head. “Maybe you haven’t learnt anything after all. You came into my house, dearie. You made demands like you owned the place, didn’t you?”

When I don’t respond she glances at the white stone. I nod, but don’t trust myself to speak. I just don’t seem to say the right things. “A dead husband’s quite an ask, even for an old witch like me.”

She cackles her laugh. “You can’t have expected it for free.”

I look down at my knees. The memory is hazy, mixed with alcohol and grief, and dwarfed by weeks of shuffling undead. I remember stumbling up front stairs, somewhat less rundown than the entrance to this house. Slamming an almost empty bottle of vodka—God, I can’t even remember if it had a flavor—on the table. Shouting at her, crying at her. Her little, twisted smile. Yes, I remember that.

She gave me a stone, pretty, shaped like a rose but black. And then she asked her price.

“You knew I couldn’t give it to you.” A life for a life, I guess. But a baby? And someone else’s baby at that, because I had none of my own, and she wasn’t willing to take the risk.

Her eyes sharpen and pin me down like a butterfly on a board. “It was too late by then.” She is disgusted by me; I can see it in the wrinkling of her nose. “And you still used my stone.”

I swallow, and for a second consider standing up. How far would I get if I tipped up the chair and ran for the kitchen door? Before she had time to pick up one of her damned stones?

She collects a stick from the table and runs it over her weathered palm.

I don’t bother, what’s left to fight for anyway? “Yes.” My shoulders sag forward, a little more with each word. “I took it to his grave. I placed it there, like you said. Planted it into the earth, as deep as I could dig. But he didn’t come out. I waited, I waited until they surrounded me and I couldn’t breathe for the smell.” I had pushed my way through a cemetery’s worth of dead to get out of that place, and not even the cold sea spray coming up from the cliffs could clean away the stench. They had watched me, empty eye sockets, sagging skin and gaping, grinning mouths. They followed until I came to the road, until I passed shops and people. Then . . . then they had started to feed.

But never on me.

“There is always a price.”

“My husband had just died, I was drunk—”

She snorts, very unladylike. “Doesn’t give you the right to steal from me.” She looks me up and down, out of the corner of her eye. “So you’ve been walking since then? Coming all the way out here, trying to get away from everyone?”

“Trying to save them.” My mouth tastes like orange dust.

“How very noble.” Sounding bored, she pushes away from the table. Perfume drapes over me as she rests her cold hand on my head. “I wonder how many people died, before you thought to do that.”

She steps back. I raise my head, slowly. Open my eyes and turn to her. Have I been crying? The world between us, between me and him, is wavering.

“Now I just have to decide.” She folds the last flap of a velvet cloth over her stones and places them gently in a white handbag with a faux-gold clip. “If I want to keep him.”

She lifts a hand and my husband, my dead husband, leans his cheek against her skin.

I stand, quickly, chair toppling to the floor. Outside, tires skid to a stop over dust and gravel.

The Hunter knew the zombie was there before Chase saw it in the hallway gloom. He grabbed Chase with one hand, pulled him back, forced him behind, and drew his blade with the other. Didn’t even give him the chance to find his gun, but then, what was the point?

But the creature didn’t rush at them. Stooping in the doorway, it turned and grinned with half a face.

The Hunter breathed in sharply.

“Let him through.” A crackly voice commanded, and the zombie stepped aside to reveal a small, ancient-looking woman.

“Who are you?” The Hunter edged forward, sword extended, voice tense and clipped. Chase held back. He fumbled his gun out of its holster and held it high.

The crone laughed. “Come looking for your Necromancer, have you?”

The Hunter stepped onto faded plastic tiles; Chase hung in the darkness of the hallway. One hand clung to the doorframe. The derringer’s barrel was cold as he leaned it against his cheek, the only way to ensure he held it steady.

The Hunter’s blade twitched between zombie and old woman. “How do you—?”

“She’s right here.” The old lady gestured. A younger woman stood by a wooden table. Her face was ruddy with sunburn; she was dressed in tattered jeans and a filthy shirt. Her hands shook, and she clasped the edge of the table as though that was all that kept her upright. “That’s your Necromancer, Hunter. Aren’t you going to do justice for all those her undead killed?”

The young woman shook her head. Straggly blond hair caught in sweat on her forehead and chin. “No.”

The Hunter hesitated. His sword pointed at her, and the young woman closed her eyes. Slowly, the Hunter turned back to the little old lady. “I know Necromancers. I can feel them. She is no Necromancer, although she stinks of the dead.”

The blond woman’s eyes snapped open. They were sharply blue. “Now you.” The Hunter straightened his arm, leveling his sword with the old woman’s smiling face. “You I can feel. But . . . you’re not quite right.” Chase could hear a scowl in the Hunter’s voice.

The old woman cackled. “Pity.” She clutched at a pale handbag, fiddling with the clasp. “If you don’t want to play, Hunter, you should leave. You’re out of your depth here. Can you feel that?”

“I do not think so.” The Hunter raised his sword. “Tell me what you are.”

“Too strong for the likes of you.”

The zombie lurched forward, hands outstretched, and the Hunter spun. The young woman screamed as his blade shot out, as the zombie fell, headless. The old woman was laughing again, hand in her bag. She withdrew a single, white stone.

“Don’t let her—!” The young woman shouted.

Chase jumped forward, aimed at the small, old woman, and pulled the trigger. The derringer clicked, hollow and empty, and Chase realized he had never reloaded it. He just hadn’t remembered.

The Hunter gave a gargling cry as his sword turned back in toward his own, living, neck.

I watch David fall; watch his head hit the ground a moment before his body. Even under all that laughing, I can hear it “splat” against the floor.

I need to go to him. I need to hold him and know that he is truly dead. I hope that he has, perhaps, found a kind of peace now. After I denied it to him.

But I can’t. I shout as the old woman pulls a stone from her bag, as the man’s solid face breaks into shock. She will not make me responsible for his death too.

The porcelain shard is sharp, it cuts my hand. But as the man slices at his own neck with his long, strange sword, I don’t care. I grip it tightly, I feel the blood, and I bring it down into the old woman’s shoulder.

Her laughter becomes a shrill scream. The man’s sword clatters to the ground and he staggers backward. I cut her again. And again. Until her fingers release the small, white stone, and she doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t move.

When she is dead she, thankfully, doesn’t rise in my presence. I guess she thought I had learnt my lesson after all.

Standing is too hard, so I shuffle over to David’s body. He doesn’t look right without his head. I arrange it as best I can.

“Who are you?” The man is also on the ground, leaning against the wall while a teenage boy hovers at his side. The boy’s face is pale, his eyes terrified, but he doesn’t say a word.

“Jane.” Not really an explanation.

The man holds a white cloth up to his neck. There is a small nick there, just enough to bleed. I stare down at his discarded sword. So close. “I am the Hunter.” He nods to the boy. “My reluctant apprentice.”

The boy grimaces.

“We have been tracking you. It was you, wasn’t it? Raising the dead.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” I had only wanted to raise one. Just one. That’s okay, isn’t it?

The Hunter looks meaningfully at the old woman. “Stone witch, wasn’t she?”

I shake my head. I’m not really sure. She was the crazy old woman down the street when we were kids, the one we called a witch. When we grew up she had changed in our eyes, become eccentric and a little sad. But you don’t forget those childhood fears, those stories you tell yourself.

And at the worst point in my life, she was there. Door open. Bag of stones in her hand.

“She is. Powerful creatures, much stronger than a Necromancer.” He clears his throat, carefully. “I’m not too sure on them myself. Those stones are supposed to be lives, I heard. The younger the better. At any rate, they are not an easy kill.” The Hunter is staring at me. Grimly, I meet his gaze. His eyes are hard, but thoughtful. “Pretty good for a first kill. Think you’d like some more?”

I frown. “More?”

“You know what it’s like. Seen it first hand now, I’ll warrant. You know why the dead should stay dead, why those who raise them should be brought to justice.”

I picture the petrol-station worker, backed up against the window as the zombies fed. I only looked back that once. Slowly, I nod. “Yes. I do.”

The Hunter smiles. Wrinkles crinkle beneath his stubble, his dark, serious eyes are almost friendly. The boy has gained some color in his cheeks and looks relieved.

“Tell me.” The Hunter catches his sword with the tip of his boot and drags it closer. With a wince, he picks it up, turns it around, and holds the handle toward me. “Have you ever held one of these?”