Dead Men (and Women) Walking

An Anthology of Things Undead

Edited by Julie Ann Dawson & Julie Hedge

©2009 Bards and Sages Publishing

Smashwords Edition

Cover art by Debra Colvin

Interior art by Ognjen Popovic, Marc Henry Medina, and Benjamin A. Nendza

License Agreement

This ebook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser and should not be copied, transferred, distributed, traded, or sold to third parties without the expressed written permission of the authors. Please respect the copyright of the authors by not sharing unauthorized copies.

Print Book Details: ISBN: 978-1-84728-906-3

For Monica:

The only one in the family ready for the zombie apocalypse

Table of Contents

Dead Man's Tale

Guy Belleranti

Under Cover of Darkness

Guy Belleranti

Adam and Eve Versus the Human Race

Alexander Zelenyj

Waking Finnegan

Josh Benton

Catherine's Well

Jeff Brown

The Consequence of Curiosity

Shawn Westmoreland

First Born

Brian Jaime

Alone in the Dark

Patricia A. Collins

The Fountain of Youth

Lee Pletzers

Paul

E.P. Spader

Old Habits, New Habits

Arthur Sanchez

Honor Bound

Jennifer Schoonover

The Walking Wounded

Emily M.Z. Carlyle

Car Food

Garth Wright

A New Year's Tale

Dave Bartlett

Birthright

Aurelio Rico Lopez III

Searching for Dr. Harlow

Michael A. Kechula

Earth A.Z. (After Zombie)

Brian Rosenberger

Shop 'Til You Drop

Brian Rosenberger

Food Chain

G. W. Thomas

The New Creatures

Tristan T. Tenorio

Bazaar Shades of Sorrow

Penelope Allen

Under a Blanket of Blue

Donna Taylor Burgess

Every Time I Close My Eyes

Tanya Nehmelman

Billy is Three Weeks Dead

Dilman Dila

About the Contributors

Dead Man's Tale

By Guy Belleranti

"A dead man does tell tales,"

the voice whispers,

and the mourners scatter like frightened children.

Their screams filling the room

as the laughing lips of the dead man

tell tales that are his own.

Under Cover of Darkness

By Guy Belleranti

Digging through the dampness

of worm infested earth

they rise from their graves

and spread among the alleys

and weed-choked vacant lots.

As living children they enjoyed playing dead.

Now they play alive.

ADAM AND EVE VERSUS THE HUMAN RACE

By Alexander Zelenyj

Our pact had been simple: If one of us goes, the other follows.

Pacts and treaty promises are easy for the young and love-struck, especially during dire times.

These are dark times we live in, love in.

I look to her, huddled down beneath the filthy blanket beside me. Her warmth reassures me. We're alive. Her soft breathing soothes me but I know I won't sleep again tonight. Sleep has become a precious gift, these days.

Shafts of moonlight slice through the fissures in the derelict barn's roof, illuminating hay bales and discarded saddling gear below us. We'd let the horses go when we found this place. We don't know how to ride and the terror in their black eyes was painful to look at. They smelled the death, or whatever it is. They sensed it shambling in the country all around us, too. We freed them and heard them canter off into the night. I hope they're safe. I hope they stay fleet of foot when they need to be, and run on into tomorrow.

I can just make out the outline of her profile beside me. We're situated far from the horizon lines of moon glow stretching across the straw floor. We're up high on the creaking loft floor, deep in shadows where no eyes can pierce. I lean in close and kiss her softly on her cheek. I make sure to do this very carefully. I don't want to wake her. Sleep is a gift now, and waking into new days only brings tears and hurt.

I hope she's dancing in her dreams, the way she once used to, and I hope she feels warm in that picture.

I'd truly caught her for the first time in the hallway, not the gymnasium itself where we spent all our time practicing.

There were no teacher's assessing her pirouette and fall and my easy catch and maybe that's why it turned into our first kiss. Her lips were warm and she felt perfect in my arms, just the right size bundle of girl for me to hold.

Our program specialized in academic snobbery and we followed suit: We were two against the school, and the rest of the world, too. Because it was easy to be strong. Because everything's easy when you have a new love on your arm.

It would remain this way forever, we told each other every night while cuddling in the library or touching each other in her bed or mine. We relished the act of proclaiming this to each other and did so at any opportunity. We became inseparable, at school and outside of it. This lasted for years.

We graduated from our program and I cracked my ankle on a warm-up run two hours before show-time. The injury left tiny bone fragments inside my muscle which took surgery to remove. My ankle never fully recovered and I can now predict inclement weather like my arthritic mother used to, in my unhealed bone and tissues.

And Maria never danced again either. For you, she'd told me, when I'd seen her trunk all packed with old souvenirs, awards and certificates, medals and her first pair of threadbare ballet slippers. For me, she decided to give up a career of theatre and teaching others how to soar on the air. Because how could she dance without me completing the pair that was us, always us?

Such romantics, we'd always joked, knowing it was true. Knowing we were in it together for the long haul, as they say.

It might have been the single moment that linked us most inextricably. Standing in the stuffy locker room space with her packed trunk beside us, sobbing into each others' ears while we held one another tightly, looking as bravely as we could into our shared tomorrow.

And life went on, in its strange and meandering ways. New job paths explored and discarded, others kept and fulfilled dutifully if not happily. At least we're together: It became our mantra, and it really did make it all better. At least each other, and who cared about the rest of the world when ours was this reliable and familiar?

And life went on, in its strange and unpredictable ways.

Maria calling to me that first morning, waking me from sleep at some too-early A.M. hour. With gummy eyes, staring at the television with her fingers icy and laced through mine in my lap. We watched the flickering screen silently and we didn't speak for a long time after we'd turned it off and sat numbed in our bedroom darkness.

The end had arrived.

It was that simple, according to some. The world we all knew turning into an obscene mirror version of itself. Hell walking inside the vessels of the resurrected, or some such fantastical stuff.

It was lunacy. It was random lunacy in a suddenly disordered universe. Or it was a hoax. A mass joke which no one understood but when they finally did would all share a relieved laugh and realize with huge epiphany that their lives weren't so unfortunate after all.

We heard the screams from the street several minutes later. The truth of the television people's words struck us. We held each other. I think we cried but I can't be certain. We were numb and cold and scared. We tried the telephone but there was no signal, just like in the movies. Everything became dramatic: The power going out, the police sirens wailing like lost children in the street darkness, the terrible moaning which grew louder by the minute as more and more fragments of some hell we couldn't fully fathom found their shambling way into our suddenly changed lives.

It was only a day or so before we abandoned all hope for our friends and families. The thing had spread everywhere; the television told us before every channel became single-color emergency signal screens and silence.

We changed, Maria and I, during those early days. We peered from our third floor windows and saw human body hills mounting in the street below where the police piled them. We saw more and more of the other ones, the ones who staggered and plodded towards the living with the uneasily-defined lifeless energy animating their pale faces. We saw humans hunting humans, or the shells which once housed humanity and which now saw the world with empty flat eyes and with that contradictory, eerie and vacuous hunger in their stares. The sight of blood no longer troubled us. The streets ran dark with it. We saw frantic-eyed men and women devouring coils of entrails on the sidewalks where they'd grappled their victims to the ground. We witnessed people being dismembered and eaten alive by these chalk-faced others. We saw unaffected men dragging women screaming into the darkened building across the street while others laughed and jeered and aimed their rifles towards the heads of the nearest shambling form.

We saw humanity and we remembered that we had each other. Only each other.

Tenants of our building left daily, never to return. They asked us to accompany them, implored us that logic should dictate our decision because there was strength in numbers and at a time such as this numbers were all any of us could possibly cling to. But we ignored their insistent pleas. We were terrified of what we saw and knew with certainty only that we wanted to remain together. And so when the screaming of dying people spread inside the apartment complex itself several days into the chaos, we packed our meager belongings inside our battered old Pinto. We fled to the country outside of the city, where we figured the thing might not yet have spread. Where maybe two people could remain free, and at least convince themselves that the rest of the world was not falling completely to pieces.

We're hunters and gatherers now.

We have been for months, scrounging anything from wild berries in the woods to potatoes from abandoned farmers' gardens. The outlying confectionaries and food marts have all been ransacked by other fleeing survivors and so we no longer visit any of them. We rooted in garbage dumps in the early weeks, before everything had become rotten and spoiled. But now these dumps are only breeding grounds for black flies and writhing maggots.

We don't eat well at all. Our stomachs are always in knots, hunger pangs and the kneading of fear inside us. I wonder how many times we've each thrown up green- and red-spotted phlegm onto the straw here, those feeble dinners of berries and grass blades disagreeing with our city-bred bellies and away they went.

But we agree on our situation and the ways to deal with its severity: All human contact is bad contact, whether with the living or the others. We've seen what results from each, and we want now only what we've always wanted: peace and seclusion in our own little bubble-world. To that end, we've tried and succeeded so far.

Nights we spend trading turns at guard while the other sleeps fitfully in the straw of the loft near the barn's ceiling. We carry either the shovel or the axe or one of the long butcher knives we found inside the farm house. I'll stay awake and alert at the edge of the loft's floor, peering into the darkness below. I'll check my watch by filtered moon glow or star shine and wake Maria only when I know fatigue threatens to overtake me and endanger us both. She wakes fearfully and with a start each time, and so I've taken to cupping my hand gently across her mouth while I whisper softly into her ear each time, as soothingly as I can muster; that it's only me, and that everything's okay. She takes her turn and wakes me long past the time her shift is over, and the cycle begins again. We draw the ladder up with us every night and sleep with it hidden from view.

Daytime is hunting time for us, and we never let the other venture out alone. The thought of it disgusts, horrifies. Two of us is all we've known for so long and now...

Now.

Now it's us versus the human race, or what it's come to. So we creep from our dark barn space with squinting eyes like the Adam and Eve of some new race of moles and face the dawn-light of each new day together as we've always been. We carry our rusty weapons at the ready, knowing we'll use them if we have to, as we have on several occasions in the past already. Every journey outside of our barn carries a risk of a pale cadaver stealing forth from a copse of trees or careening out from behind a shed wall. As hard a blow as can be delivered, straight to the head: This is the way we've learned to deal with them, and our disgust at the grisly work has lessened considerably if not altogether left us.

Maria carries the large leather satchel we found in the barn, along with my old gym bag. We stuff these as full of berries as we can, and anything else that is at all edible, certain flowers whose names we don't know but which we've learned to differentiate from their non-edible companions; and the occasional mushroom heads, the brown- and grey-topped ones rather than the spotted heads because vomiting and shitting violently throughout the night after a dinner of those vile fungi is a sure way to draw those wandering the country at night. We've neglected to try for live game so far. The rabbits we've seen are too fleet, and although the thought of meat awakens insatiable craving in us both, we shrink away from thoughts of killing the animals. They're so cute, Maria has commented several times already while following their twitching-eared progress hopping gingerly from one patch of grass to another. How could we?

I smile at the humanity in her. The noble humanity which we both know we should have abandoned long ago but which still lingers on inside us. One day, though, I know we'll find the means, because we've come so far already, cleaving skulls in two with shovel blows and ruining chalky faces with axe swings.

It's an ordinary afternoon like so many others of the past few months. The skies are silent, devoid of birds or airplanes. No vestiges of human flight have been marked there for weeks in vapor trails ghosting amid the clouds. Only sky...sky everywhere like some past version of the world when the Earth was young. We creep furtively into the thicket, skulking low to the ground, eyes everywhere at once.

I point them out to Maria before she sees them. We stop a moment, gazing through our cover of thorn-barbed shrubs.

There are three of them, wandering aimlessly across the expanse of the glade. Their features are ashen and their eyes dead. What keeps you going? I wonder to myself, knowing that Maria wonders it then, too, but keeps it to herself as well. We've discussed this a thousand times, in whispers in our loft haven. It's the question which haunts, and never leaves. One of them is naked from the waist down, a woman wearing a faded red wound in the centre of her forehead. A bullet's entry mark, or the grisly remnants of an axe blow, or some other signature of contact with the other side of humanity. We watch them shuffle along listlessly, bypassing us in our secret vantage. One of them moans before the group is out range of our ears, and the sound quivers us in our skins as it always does. I look to Maria, hating whenever something unpleasant harries her, and can tell by the grimace she wears that her skin is crawling and she wishes only to hurry on our way and return to the safety of our hideaway.

I nod silently, and we whisper on our way once more. We glide through a patch of twisted briars and get spooked at the sudden appearance of a squirrel which darts out from the base of a nearby tree and watches us a moment before dashing away to another more robust trunk. We travel for several minutes longer than we're used to, our daily explorations elongate in proportion to the food sources we borrow from and deplete so regularly. We're both all nerves and big doe eyes as we make our way further into the woods. The trees become taller the further we go, the enormity of their black bulks towering over us on all sides and making us feel our insect size in the topsy-turvy world.

At last we discover a small skeleton of a bush with a smattering of blue berries. Many look inedible, small shriveled specimens pockmarked with tiny dark splotches, as if gone bad in the air. Those which look at all healthy we drop into the satchel, and prepare to move on. It's then we hear the scream.

It comes from nearby, just through the tangle of trees towards the east. We eye each other determinedly, tightening our grips on our weapons. We slip behind the most rotund tree trunk in our vicinity and wait tensely. A moment passes and then the scrambling sounds of harried flight reach our straining ears. We peer around the trunk and see the boy. He's running wildly, his arms all akimbo as his legs pump him desperately on his way. We follow his backwards glance and see it: jawless, its grey shirt blackened with old blood, the thing shambles after the boy. Its hands reach for his fleeing back as its feet shuffle it speedily along over the uneven ground. Some of them are like this, more animated than their companions, relentless in their frenzied hunger.

I wince as the boy's ankle tangles in the protruding tree roots and careens him forcibly to the earth. The thing would be upon him too quickly.

It must be that old vestige of lingering humanity which throws me towards the monstrosity. I run silently because silence is the best weapon any of us have in these times. The shovel is raised over my head. I hear the light sound of Maria padding behind, following me reflexively.

It's done in a moment and the thing helps me out: Raising its ghastly face from where it leans over the boy, it's an easy target for my quickly descending shovel. It smashes into its forehead, splitting skin and cracking through bone, sending the horror toppling backwards. Once on its back, it's an easy secondary blow which caves in the remainder of its skull and silences whatever madness buzzes in its brain.

Maria and I stand stock still, straining our ears intently. No sound issues from the surrounding foliage. When the boy tries to address us, we silence him with the terror in our eyes. He watches us fearfully, shaking all over. Still nothing stirs, and eventually we allow ourselves to move again. We pad beneath the cover of an overhanging sweep of branches, bringing the boy with us. It's then that we see the congealing red on his wrist and the new eyes in his sickly face.

He's been bitten already, my frozen mind tells me, but the revelation comes too late for either of us to stop his wide champing mouth as he sinks his teeth into Maria's cheek. The boy's head is split neatly in two with the shovel in my hands and his flapping arms stop their frenetic movements once the second blow finds his exposed skull. I tell Maria with my eyes to look away as I do what I have to, and pummel the corpse over and over again with smashes from my shovel. The meaty sound of my work carries no echo on the still air, a dull sound as flat as the look in the eyes of this new breed of humankind.

When I'm finished, I turn and look around me. There is no movement anywhere. There are no rabbits hopping and no squirrels scampering. No birds sound their songs from the branches overhead and no fiends come lumbering through the dense thicket. I turn to Maria kneeling sweaty and terror-eyed on the grass and my vision of her blurs as the first tears well into my eyes.

I kneel down with her, and we cry together.

Some time later we discern a distant howling through the woods and instinctively raise our weapons. I look to her crimson-smeared wet cheek and shake my head in fury or helplessness. I want to curse the world and scream until my voice is lost in these towering reaches of trees and sky and far-away moaning like ghosts haunted by their own sad fates.

But I only take her hand in mine, as I've done countless times in the past, and lead us back the way we'd come. She stops me, though, with her curiously lingering backward glance to the inert form of the ruined boy on the grass. I follow her stare and see it: The boy's hand encircles it, and it takes a moment to extricate his fingers from its hard shiny surface.

An apple. Plump and red like blood, and he'd been hiding it inside his hand as he fled the horror loping on his heels. His fingers hadn't relinquished their mad grip on the fruit even while I'd rained death down on him with my shovel.

We look to one another and then through the trees in the direction from which the boy had come. Slowly, we move forward, silently, too, as if it matters to us still, these covert movements when our world has just collapsed about us.

Minutes later we find the orchard. It remains a piece of ordered tidiness in the world, secluded among the fields and bushes dotting this country landscape. The rows of neatly-manicured trees with their perfectly round tops like big emerald balloons stretch on into the distance. Each carries a colorful bounty of fruit in its green folds. I see them but think only of beads of blood rather than their promise of sustenance the way I would have considered them before, if only we'd happened on this place in some other way. If only today's hunt hadn't ended the day as the blackest I've ever known.

She reminds me the instant we've returned to the barn with our hoard of apples bursting the lining of our bags: Our pact.

If one of us goes.

She doesn't finish it, leaves the promise silent and hanging over us like a pall.

I try to reassure her. Our bond has endured, I tell her, hearing the awkward lie in my voice as I know she hears it, too. We watch each other but the determined pleading in her eyes is too much for me now. I turn away and hate my shame when I collapse into the corner of our loft and sob like a child. I can feel Maria's eyes touching me all over and it burns me more, knowing she has to see me this way. We've always been open with one another but now is a time for lying, and I wish that I could act for her now and force an act of bravado. As if I knew what to do and as if I still believed in any hope of tomorrow for the two of us. She doesn't come to me now, the way she would have any other time. Maybe she's scared of my reaction: What if her touch on my shoulders is cold and all her old familiar warmth has left her? What if the sound that leaves my mouth is a scream as her breath on my neck chills me like it never has?

I hear the horse before I see it. When I look downwards from the edge of the loft, its long sleek head and neck are already peering in through the crack in the barn door. Its large obsidian eyes watch us evenly. It snorts again, a deep watery sound, reassuring somehow. I remember this animal. It's one of the several horses we'd freed months before, from these very stables. Its black shiny fur and single spot of white surrounding its left eye mark it easily. It's come back. I look into its eyes and wonder about the things it's seen on its travels in the past days.

When everything was smoke and ruins everywhere else, maybe it tried to return to its home. The place it knew best of all. Or maybe now it returned to return the favor, and now it's here to warn us of impending doom. But it watches us a while and then maybe it sees the disaster in our vacant stares, or maybe it only smells the beginning of ruin among us in the barn, and it leaves us as silently as it entered. With a low snort it's gone, and the soft sound of its cantering over the dirt and stones outside diminishes with distance, and then we're alone with the huge quiet once again. Even the scurrying of mice through their hay bale castles below and around us is silenced.

Her voice whispers but its sound startles me. It has become hoarse and I tell myself that it's only her frantic, troubled mind, the great fatigue she must be feeling, that gives it its rough new edge. She whispers: We promised each other. If one of us goes.

Again she leaves it unfinished, and so I complete it for both of us. I turn to her with tears in my eyes, and they blur her silhouette looming in shadows before me, and I offer her myself: Bite me, Maria. Some dark humor in it seeps through the horror of our situation, and I hear the silly sound of the words briefly, as if hearing them in a distant time when such words carried no real weight and meant only lighter things.

The tower of shadows above me only stands still, unspeaking. The silence is enormous, weighted down with the significance of the moment. I think of the world outside this barn, the country with its dark woods and lonely fields, and the cities ghostly and empty beyond. And I wonder again as I have countless times during these new days. Why are we in this plight now, and what on Earth does it all mean?

Her voice grates from above me, a croaking in the darkness. No, darling. I can't...bite you. I'd never. But you can use the shovel. And then...

She trails off, because the rest of the words are even more awful for her to ponder than the horror of the reality which she's already accepted. I consider our choices and quiver along my spine. I quiver and tremble and weep because I realize it now more than I ever had before: I don't want to die. I want only to be with her, but not in any of the ways from which I now must choose. I hear our old promise echoing in my thoughts and I'm filled with shame as I realize that it doesn't hold strong for me anymore. Maybe I'm simply older now, too mature for young-love pacts. Or maybe I'm only changing the way the world sees fit these days.

The crunching from the darkness jerks me from my reveries. The ice in my veins leaves as another crunch follows and the memory of the sound from long ago catches up with my tired thoughts. Maria's taking little bites from the apple in her hand, slow and deliberate because she's ravenous but mindful of the danger of too-loud sounds in the night. I listen to her eating and become hopeful for her, and my own hunger swells inside me. I reach to my gym bag and retrieve an apple for myself. My teeth puncture its hard hide and the fruit's juice is amazing where it bursts onto my tongue. I can barely contain myself as I munch along.

But then Maria's coughing violently, and then it becomes an awful retching sound smashing into reverberating echoes from the tall barn walls as she heaves and vomits into the hay. Through the faint glimmer of moon glow I see the moist chewed remnants of apple amid the small puddle of yellow and red water. I clench my eyes closed, knowing that it's truly begun its course now. I hear the ghost of the echoes that rang throughout the barn and listen for answering cries from outside in the night.

But the only sound is the heavy clanking from before me. I look to the floor, perplexed, squinting my eyes and discerning the coils of rusty chain glinting feebly in the semi-light. Without my knowing, Maria has chained herself to one of the wooden pillars set into the wall beside us. I can make out the thick metal hoops where she's looped them about her ankle several times, multiple lacings because we've both seen what the hungry others are capable of when in the throes of their insatiable hunger.

I take a foolish risk and edge close to her. My hand finds hers and I lead her towards a stretching line of moon beam where it pierces through the roof. I wince because her fingers feel very cold in my own. She allows me to lead her and when I turn to her my heart hammers with an ache I've never known until this night. I look into her face and see its haggard appearance, more weary than I've seen her in these long strange days. Her cheeks are hollowed out, as if she hasn't eaten in a very long time, and her skin has a ghostly pallor which the moonlight colors silvery and makes deceptively pretty. But her eyes hold the same hollow cast as the rest of her, and behind the wall of her weariness I see her great fear and I hurt everywhere. The wound on her cheek has swollen her flesh, and the purpling edges of the torn area where the boy-thing's teeth had bitten in look raw and moist. I look to Maria before me and see in her eroding face the home I know and cherish most of all. I feel the rough notched wood of the shovel in my fingers and feel cold and twisted inside me.

I look at her shackled here like some awful captured animal and tears blur her new ugly features from me. I still see her beauty underneath and this is what brings the tears. I have to be brave, now more than ever before. But I want to live, darling, I tell her, my painful gift of honesty to her, the best I can give to her under these dire circumstances.

I want to die, and I want her to die, too, but not by my hand. I'm sorry for my lingering humanity, darling. I'm so sorry I can't be as strong as I need to be today.

She screeches suddenly and spittle flies and spatters the dust at my feet. Her breath is a wind of stink, a breeze carrying carrion and death. It's the new breath of the woman I made vows with, and who I was content to walk into any kind of tomorrow with. Such romantics, the two of us, we'd always joked, and knew it to be true.

Then the moaning comes again from her mouth and I know for certain that all the rest of my dreams will be haunted forever by the sadness of the sound. I stand before her and she reaches for me hungrily, and with this gesture she tells me that she's gone forever. We stay this way a moment, swaying on the noisy-creaky loft floor only inches apart, and I think how this is no kind of dance the two of us should be acting out.

Then, from outside the barn: The moaning.

They've come. The country about us is infested with them and they've heard us at last and now they've come. Hell has spread everywhere.

I watch Maria, the shovel heavy in my hands. I watch her closely and wish hopelessly for some sign of her old life in the contorted face snarling before me. I think of the black horse with its eye-patch of white, and I hope that it's galloping freely somewhere.

The moaning draws nearer, ever nearer to us. Shuffling footsteps crunch through dirt and send pebbles bouncing into the grass. The new brand of humanity edges closer. The mice have begun a frantic scrambling in their secret tunnels in the hay and walls. I watch my darling's pale face and black stare, and we sway together as we take in each other's new eyes. And it's the longest and saddest dance we've ever danced. My humanity quivers, hanging in the balance as the moaning draws closer and the shovel's rough wooden handle settles firmly between my tightening, trembling fingers.

WAKING FINNEGAN

By Josh Benton

It was a black day when Tim Finnegan died. It should have been a day of drinking and celebrating. I'd just been released from six months in prison. I'd been convicted of robbing Captain Kelly; I hadn't done it, but had been sent away just the same. The things a woman can land you in....

So that's how things stood that day. I was in Bobby Thomas' pub when I found out. Daniel Boyd rushed in, and told us what had happened; Tim had been climbing a ladder and fell off. They said between the drink and the fall, he probably didn't feel much.

Feeling much or not, it was a shame. Tim was a good man; sure he'd had a bit of a taste for the drink, but no man's a saint. My adventures with Ms. Bell had shown me that. Nothing like being locked away for six months to help clear up any lingering youthful illusions.

There in the pub, we all hoisted a glass in memory of Tim Finnegan. A few of the lads even had tears in their eyes. He was an odd bird, was Tim, but well liked just the same. He'd surely be missed, and at the time, that was no lie.

The wake was held in Tim's house. Widow Finnegan had gotten the house in fine order as people started to arrive. Tim was laid out on the bed, cleaned up and dressed in his finest suit. A barrel of porter was set above his head, and a gallon of whiskey was resting at his feet.

Richard Hanrahan and his boys had arrived just after I did, and I could hear the music starting up in another room. I wandered back in to mingle with the crowd. Richard and his sons gave me a nod, which I returned with a polite wave.

Voices were still subdued, and everyone's face was lined with sorrow. Smoke was starting to fill the room, and folks were circulating, sharing stories about Tim. The band struck up a soft song, and a few people quietly joined in. It was a sad song, but at the same time, it spoke of a life well lived. I was heading for a piece of cake when Tommy Franklin caught me.

"Liam, it's good to be seeing you. Are you glad to be back?"

"Surely I am, Tom, I just wish it was in happier times."

"That's true enough. I was thinking about that time Tim caught us out. Do you remember that?"

I smiled at Tommy. "Oh, indeed. We were but small lads, and he caught us trying to sneak a peek at Molly Henry swimming down by the river."

"Aye, and after he near to skinned our hides, he stayed on to watch her for himself!"

A few people overheard us and laughed. Molly Henry had been a fine looking young woman, and there was hardly a man or boy who hadn't tried to catch a peek of her. She'd wound up getting with child, and moved to a farming village near the coast. Many a heart, including Tim Finnegan's, had been broken when that happened.

I gave Tom a hardy clap on the back, and excused myself. I caught up a piece of cake without being stopped by anyone else. It was a fine cake to eat, and the first I'd had in months. People must have seen how intent I was upon it, for not a one came to disturb me while I enjoyed it.

I took my plate into the kitchen, and then helped Mary Finnegan bring hot tea out. I passed a few cups around before taking a seat for myself. Frank Riley was sitting across from me, and we nodded politely at one another.

"Doing well, Frank?"

"Well enough, I think. How's your old mum these days?"

"She's fine, and sends her greetings to everyone. Glad to have me back, and threatening me with dire harm should I chase any more 'slatternly women'."

"Truly that sounds like Rose. I remember the time Tim winked at her and offered her a drink. I thought they must have heard her up in Heaven itself. Poor Tim just stood there and listened the whole time. Then he nodded, smiled and wished her a good day and God bless."

"Oh, aye, my mum's never been a fan of the drink. She nailed my da's boots to the floor once, and threatened him with a broom if he, 'set one foot outside this house to go to the pub with that devil Finnegan'."

Frank and I shared a fine chuckle at that. My da and Tim had grown up together, and I'm sure that incident wasn't the only story of Tim Finnegan and Sean O'Hanlon being passed around the room. Frank had been caught up in another story of Tim's adventures, so I slipped away to visit a few more people.

I spotted Old Man Conner off by himself. Now, Old Man Conner truly lived up to the name: he was old when my grandfather was just a boy. No one was even quite sure when he'd been born, or if Conner was a first name or last. He looked the part; a well-trimmed white beard, and not much left on top. He still had a gleam in his eye, though, and that gnarled cane he carried had caught more than one young troublemaker upside the head.

"Mr. Conner, what a fine thing it is to see you. Still in good health?"

He snorted at me, and gave me a fearsome squint. For a moment, I didn't think he was going to say anything.

"Liam, you're a grown man, you are, and you've been up to the jail for half a year. So quit calling me Mr. Conner, and just call me Old Man, or if you're feeling kind, just Conner, like everyone else does."

"Begging your pardon, Conner. So, if I may inquire, how's your health?"

I didn't even see the cane coming around. It wasn't a hard blow, but it certainly came as a surprise. The old man just sat there looking as innocent as a saint. "Oh I have the good days and the bad days. When you get to be as old as me, things can start to get a little run down."

"And just what age would that be?"

"Why I'm thirty just yesterday, Liam. You should be so blessed as to live to so fine an age as thirty."

"But, Conner, Tim was forty-four this year."

"Are you calling me into question, Liam?"

"Of course not, Conner. We all know you're up for sainthood when your day comes."

He rapped his cane against the floor, and squinted up at me. "And don't you go forgetting it. Otherwise I'll not put in a good word for you, and you'll wind up in hell with all the Englishmen."

That was nearly going too far, but I didn't say anything. I still remembered when he gave me hard candies as a lad; well, he gave me candy when he wasn't busy threatening me with his cane.

"It was good talking to you, Conner. You take care."

He snorted at me again as I walked away. I suppose I really didn't have any call to take offense; he treated all the men that way. He was far more polite to those that came calling in a dress and with feminine endowments. That reminded me of something as the band trotted out a jaunty tune. Once, when they were young men, my da and Tim had worn dresses and cheap wigs, and sneaked up to Conner when he was in his cups. Once he figured out what was going on, George Dooly had to convince him to put down an old pike so the lads could get out of the tree.

Mary had brought out more punch and porter, and people were starting to dance. I spun a few reels with lasses I had known, and shared more stories with old friends. The drink was bringing the sentiments out thick, and many an eye was starting to fill with tears.

I took a turn singing with Richard and his boys, and danced some more. I noticed Biddy O'Brian was starting to get more than a bit maudlin, and I started to get a bit worried. There'd been rumors some years ago; whispers saying that she and Tim had been more than just passingly acquainted. Mary never paid the rumors much heed; though, she would concede that her Tim certainly had a roving eye. She never worried so long as the rest of him always came back where it belonged.

Paddy McGee, red in his beefy face, was shaking his fist at Biddy. They exchanged a few harsh words. Biddy just sniffed and turned away from Paddy, but her detractors weren't done with her. Maggie O'Conner started up, and was just short of calling Biddy a slattern and loose woman.

No one had ever heard Maggie speak like that; at least, not in public. We were all shocked, none more so, I think, than Biddy.

Shocked as we were, we were pole axed by Biddy's reaction. She hauled back her fist, and let Maggie have one in the jaw. Biddy was nearly half Maggie's size, but it was a telling blow. Maggie just stood there with her mouth working like a dying fish's, and then just tipped over.

There was nothing for a moment ... we all held our breaths as one. It felt like there, in Tim Finnegan's house, the world had just stopped. For a moment only did it last, and then a ruckus like no other started up.

Mary Finnegan let Biddy have one upside the head. Paddy jumped at Tom, and Richard and his sons had dropped their instruments, and were taking on all comers. Frank Riley tried to hit me with a jug, and I was forced to kick him in the unmentionables.

Old Man Conner was singing. His voice was a deep baritone, and it sounded like some sort of marching song. He was also laying about him to great effect. Nary a soul came within three feet of him that didn't feel the sting of that old cane. Most of them stumbled away dazed, heading back into the brawl. A few of them tried to make an issue of Conner's fun, but found out the hard way that he really was in fine health.

It was truly a row of epic proportions. I don't have many clear memories of what happened in the middle. I recall biting someone's nose, and a lot of hitting and kicking all around. Things don't start to clear up again until the end.

Mick Powers was sitting on the floor, nursing a glass of porter. I'm not sure how he got there; let alone how he managed to find an unspilled glass. I heard someone shout his name, and saw him raise his head up. His gaze was bleary, and he lowered his attention back to his glass almost immediately. Good thing for him too, because someone sent a jug of whiskey flying for his head.

The missile missed by but a scant inch. With quite a noise, it broke against the barrel of porter resting above poor Tim's head. Shards of glass, and runnels of whiskey, trickled down to coat his face; until now, all reposed. For a moment, I thought I saw the body give a slight quiver, but shook it off as the effects of drink and perhaps one too many punches in my face.

I blinked a few times, then took a deep breath, trying to clear my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Old Man Conner, and what I saw made me turn to look straight at him.

He was shaking, and his hands were locked in a white-knuckled grip on his cane. His expression could only be described as one of fear. The man's beard looked like it wanted to crawl back into his face.

Without a word to anyone, Conner started for the door. We were all still in a sort of daze, and he used his can to prod aside anyone who wasn't moving fast enough to suit him. I saw him muttering to himself, but don't think anyone was able to make out the words. He fetched his coat and hat, and then was gone into the night; leaving me wondering how a little spilled whiskey could put the fear into a man like that.

After a minute or two, we all started to come back to our senses. We'd set the place to a terrible mess; broken glasses and crockery everywhere; furniture overturned, and one chair broken; not to mention the mess we'd made of Tim himself.

Quietly, with whispered apologies to Mary and each other, we began to set things aright. It was never spoken aloud, but we all knew we'd pool among our own possessions, and what little money we had, to help replace the things that had been damaged. With everyone working, the job was done soon enough. We made more apologies to Mary, and collecting our things, shamefully departed from her house.

At the funeral, we were showing signs of the wake. I had bruises on my face, and everyone else was showing signs of the fight. No one spoke of it, and we all passed polite nods. I was among the men who loaded the coffin into the wagon, and we performed our solemn duty with what dignity we had, and in quiet contemplation.

The funeral procession was far bigger than the wake had been. Those who knew Tim but had not been invited, or those who had not felt comfortable with being there, lined up behind us. Mary rode next to William McEldoo, the undertaker, and Father John, Tim's priest.

As we set off, a gray rain started to fall. We marched through it, trying not to see the shabbiness of our homes and our neighbors' homes. Trying to ignore the smoke and the soot as we walked through the roughly paved streets. Anger warred with sadness in my heart; looking at us that were poor, and thinking of the splendor men like Captain Kelly lived in by comparison. I pushed such thoughts away, saving them for another time.

It wasn't a far march to the cemetery, but the rain kept coming down harder. Most of us were drenched to the bone. I glanced back for a moment, making sure my mother was taking shelter under a companion's umbrella. We paused long enough to help get those who most needed it under the shelter we could find; often it was no more than someone's coat held above a head. It was a job that needed doing; we were already having a funeral, it wouldn't do for someone to become sick and catch their death from this.

The burial itself started out normal enough. Father John said his words, and tears fell freely from many an eye. Maneuvering the casket took a bit of work; Frank slipped in the mud, and nearly fell into the open grave. When everything was ready, we started to lower the coffin into its resting place ... that's when things started to take a disturbing turn.

We took a grip on the ropes and moved the casket over the hole. It started rocking, and we took a moment to steady ourselves and tried again. Even with the ropes perfectly taut and still, the thing kept rocking. Then the pounding started. Every eye in the cemetery looked on in horror.

From somewhere in the back, I heard Conner's voice. "Hurry and drop it down! Hurry, you lazy slugs, or we're all going to pay! It was the uisce beatha, you never should have let it been spilled!"

I took a tighter grip on the ropes, and turned to look at Conner. The pounding got louder, but I tried to block it out; I wasn't very successful, but I tried anyway.

"What are you talking about, Old Man?"

"The uisce beatha, you shite! It's the water of life, boy, and you let it touch the dead! Get that unholy thing down in the ground or surely we'll all be damned to the fires...."

As he trailed off, I could see his eyes rolling in panic. I don't think anyone had ever seen Conner in such a state. Even as I watched, he ran behind a tree, only to emerge with that old pike of his. I tried to wrap my mind around what he was saying, but my concentration was drawn to more immediate concerns.

Richard had let his rope slip, and we were all tugged forward before regaining control of the coffin. I don't think anyone could blame him for his lapse. The top of the box was splintering, and we could see the beginnings of a hand starting to emerge. Worse than the hand, was the voice.

"Thundering jaysus you bunch of gobshites! What do you think I am, a corpse? If this is your idea of funny, then by God I'll crack someone's skull."

We'd been stunned and rendered speechless more than once since Tim died, but never like this. There was no mistaking that voice, now raised in an angry bellow. That was Tim Finnegan's thick brogue, sure as I'd been hearing it since I was just a small lad.

I'm not ashamed to say that I almost soiled my trousers. Truth is, I don't know what it is that stopped me from it. I saw more than a few men with pants that seemed to suddenly be a bit wetter in the front than even rain would cause.

I didn't see what happened, but I heard Mary. "It's a miracle! The blessed Lord's gone and sent my Tim back to me."

She tried to rush forward, but Richard's eldest boy James grabbed hold of her. My mother later told me that Tom had to grab hold of Conner to keep him from leaping upon the coffin with his pike. They were the exceptions, though. We men tasked with lowering the box into the ground pulled it back up; after that, we made like everyone else, and tried to get as far away from it as possible, while still staying close enough to watch in sick fascination.

I suppose we would have sought advice from Father John. Too bad for us, then, that he had fainted dead away at the sound of Tim's voice. I know I certainly would have been comforted by a priest's advice about then. Especially since we didn't know if we were dealing with something from Heaven, or some horrible blackness brewed up by the Devil.

I think it was the sight of Tim breaking out of the coffin, and bellowing to stun a banshee that finally did it. As his head, then his body emerged, we broke and ran. None of us had ever seen a man come back from the dead, and I think we had all mutually decided that Conner was right when he called it unholy. To my credit, I did pick up my mother and carry her as I ran in fear for my life and immortal soul. I hope someone did the same for the likes of Father John and those other poor sods who were unable to get fast away on their own. I was slowed down a bit, but wasn't about to tell my mother she needed to cut down on the tea and cake. Even if I'd been able to form the thought and make it come out my mouth at the time, my mother, potential legion of hell on our heels or not, would likely have knocked me senseless.

Tim Finnegan was the first of them, but he wasn't the last. In the days following his waking, more men and women climbed from their graves. As near as we could tell, Tim dug up those who died before him, and then poured the water of life over them. With each new arrival, there were more hands to do the work. Soon, they started visiting the recently dead; raising them up shortly after they passed.

People were staying shut up in their homes. Few traveled the streets, and then only when necessary. When someone would die, often with a look of fear frozen on their face, their relatives would try and hide the bodies the best they could. Those who had no relatives weren't so lucky. Old Man Conner died in his bed, and was among their ranks within days.

I was a wreck; jumping all the time at sounds, and flinching at every shadow. My mum's health hadn't been grand for years, and the added strain was taking a visible toll. I watched over her night and day; often forgetting to attend to my own needs.

Even shut up, rumors still managed to spread. Seeing an insurrection of some sort, police and British soldiers had gathered in force. They tried to kill Tim and his crew, but failed utterly. Their bullets and bayonets had no effect. The men didn't know how to fight corpses, and many were killed: more than a few deaths occurred as they stepped into their comrades lines of fire in their haste to escape. In brighter days, news of this defeat being suffered by the British would have brought rejoicing. Instead, it only deepened our fears.

Even worse than the solitude, I felt, was the lack of a drop to drink. The dead had taken it all, and were residing in Bobby's pub. Whenever some fool who hadn't heard, or didn't believe, the news came with a new load, it was quickly taken from them. We thought it might be the only thing keeping them alive, but every attempt to take it back from them failed; so even had our idea had weight, we were never able to find out.

The days dragged on. Eventually, my mum went to bed one night, and never again woke. I went out of my mind with grief at her loss. She had been the only thing I had during those days. Unable to see those few people I knew I could rely on after my stint in the jail, I was left utterly alone.

So that night, I began writing this, my testament, and hatched a most daring scheme. I left my mother outside, for to be taken in by the dead. My father's old gun sits here beside me. Soon, I will hear them coming. When the tramping of their feet sounds, I know what I must do. After tonight, I'll be back with my mum, and truly, I'll finally be able to once again have a drink....

CATHERINE'S WELL

By Jeff Brown

They say it's time for me to confess my sins. Confess what sins? I've done nothing wrong. Besides, I'm not Catholic and this isn't some confessional I am in. Though, quite a few inmates do their confessions in these concrete walled rooms to other inmates who are just as "innocent" as they are. That doesn't really matter, though. You see, I am innocent. For some reason they say I'm lying, they say I'm as guilty as the next "innocent" criminal behind bars. That just doesn't make much sense to me---I passed four of them liar's tests they give to us "innocents before proven to be guilty's." They have no evidence against me. Nothing at all. No weapon, nothing. Worst of all, they don't have a body. I know. I know. People who say they have no proof are usually guilty of the crime they are being tried for. Not me.

But, here I am in this gray, chalky 8' x8' jail cell staring out of a window just a wee bit bigger than my head. I've been in prison for the better part of sixteen years now. For the most part I have been in this isolation ward in a part of the Lee County Correctional Institution that they put the head cases like myself. Presumably.

I'm not crazy. I know what I saw that night seventeen years ago. I know what happened. Hell, they did tests on me to see if I was sane---and I am. They even did one of those ink blot tests---the ones where they pour ink onto a piece of paper, fold it, and make shapes that look like grisly looking butterflies, or big black blood splotches. You know, things that some four-year-old kids could do. And, more than likely they have four year old kids create the blotches for those head shrinks.

They---the psychiatrist---said, and I quote: "He's as sane as the next person." However sane that is.

Never-the-less, I am sitting in a damp and musky jail cell with an open jon, steel sink and an old cot with piss stains (at least that's what I hope they are) on the thin cushion they call a mattress. They said the cot was new when they brought it in about a year ago. But those stains were on there then, and I don't believe I have added to the mess. The prison was relatively new when I got here in 1993, having been transferred from another facility. I was one of the first people that they sent here when it opened. I must say they do treat me pretty damn good, all things considered (especially since they don't let me around too many other inmates). But, all's the same when they don't do a lot of cleaning around this joint. One time I saw a rat the size of a small cat---not a kitten, but a cat.

Oh, wait a minute---I haven't introduced myself, yet. I'm Jonathon Clary. I was a truck driver for Overnite in Columbia, South Carolina, making trips back and forth, up and down, and all around the great U. S. of A. I was a truck driver, mind you. Until all of this happened. Until all of what happened, you ask? Why, I never thought you would ask.

All of "this" is about Bobby "Buster" Lennon and his death. We called him "Buster" when we were kids because of the Buster Brown shoes his mother always bought him. The name kind of stuck, and it didn't seem to bother him too much. Buster was, for all practical purposes, stupid. He wasn't retarded nor did he have any mental problems, he was just plain stupid. He had the common sense that is comparable to sheep. Well, no, sheep have a little more common sense, I guess, than Buster did. Matter of fact there are quite a few animals and people out there who have more common sense than Buster did.

Buster was also my best friend. He had been since the third grade when we got into a fight over who was going to play on the monkey bars first---him or me. Turns out neither of us got to play on the monkey bars. Sammy Johnson got to when Mrs. Grable yanked us both up by our ears and led us to the principal's office. It was seventeen years that we had been friends. Seventeen years ended in the Coachi Swamp.

Coachi Swamp. Now, there's a place I highly recommend taking the wife and kids for a family outing on the weekend. It sits about thirty or so miles outside of Sumter, South Carolina. It isn't very big to be honest with you, maybe two miles in length. At one time Coachi Swamp wasn't even a swamp. It was a lake. Well, not really a lake but it was called one---Lake Coachi. But, that was way back when, in the early 1800's (I think it was back in the real late 1700's that it got its name. But, I'm not entirely sure).

The lake was, from legends and lore and probably a little bit of urban myth, a place of splendor; grace on Earth; beauty in all its ways. The lake was a crystal blue with blossoming flowers all around it. Sycamore and oak trees stood tall and erect as if they were guarding some hidden treasure. The lake was full of fish. Fish that I guess were bream, bass and probably some of those ugly catfish. I don't know if they had names for the fish back in those days. It doesn't really matter anyway---fish are fish, and if you can catch 'em, be it with a pole and a line or by hand, then it was some good eating. That is, if they are cooked properly.

I'm babbling, aren't I? I'm sorry. I do that from time to time.

Well, they say when the sun would set in the evenings its rays would glisten on the surface of the lake. It would look like the sun was sinking right into the water, like one of those greeting cards you could find in those visitors' stations at the borders of every state in the country.

Even with the lake's beauty and its surrounding woods the main attraction at Lake Coachi was a wishing well. The well was built in 1798, by Samual Coachi. That's where the lake got its name from, as if you couldn't figure that out for yourselves. He built it for his daughter, the lovely Miss Catherine. It was a red clay brick well that stood four feet tall and was easily four feet wide. A wood frame had been built with a pulley attached to the top to make retrieving well from the water easy. A hand crank had been installed on the frame with a rope attached to it. The rope was strung through the pulley's base and had a bucket attached to it. Engraved into the wood at the top of the well were the words "Miss Catherine's Well."

People came from miles around to see the lake and its well. Often times they would toss coins in the well and make wishes as if some genie was going to pop out and grant them what they wanted. But, from what I understand, the majority of the wishes did come true, though most of the wishes back then were unlike the wishes of today. I'm sure there were no huge house wishes or wishes for a BMW or even a million smackeroos.

Some people say that old man Coachi somehow or another had the well dug so it actually connected to the lake.

"That would mean that the water in the well came from the lake," Joey Hilliard once said. If that were the case I wonder if they ever hauled up a fish or two when they pulled that pail up from the well? I don't know but I've always wondered about that---pull up some water for your lady friend and give her a fish dinner in the process.

The legend tells it that young Miss Catherine and her lover were down at the lake one evening and it seems they got into a little spat. The quarrel led to her slapping him. She turned and began to walk off, or so they say. Lover boy didn't seem to take a liking to that and pushed her to the ground where she hit her head on one of those pearl white rocks by the water's edge. It busted her skull wide open. Killed her dead. That's kind of redundant isn't it? Killed her dead. Yep, that's definitely redundant.

Seeing his beloved on the ground, dead, with blood gushing from a wound he had given her caused the poor boy to panic. From what they say, he hauled her body to the wishing well and down she went. She probably hit the water with a big splash. Then again, maybe she didn't. Does it really matter?

He ran. Damn near ran out of his leotards or pants or whatever they called the male's clothing back then.

The town's people searched for them for a couple of days. They never found her. They never found him, either. They say that someone did find a letter that he had written telling what had happened, leaving out the part of him throwing her into the wishing well. Supposedly it was written in blood. His blood? Some people even say they found a trail of blood starting at the desk where the letter had been found that led to the door of the barn, which was swung wide open. A puddle of blood was on the ground at the entrance. Muddy footprints about the size of a young lady's were trailing away from the barn.

Did she come back and get him?

After the couple's disappearance---that's what they all called it, a DISAPPEARANCE---people stopped going to Lake Coachi. They said the water they baled out of the well was a rusty color, the color of mud and blood. The lake's water also started changing from crystal blue into a yucky brown color. Many of the fish died and floated to the top of the lake. They were all a faded red color, almost a blood red. The tall erect guard-like trees began to slump and fall. It was as if the lake and its surroundings had died along with Miss Catherine.

Not too long after that people started to disappear. Some of them they dismissed because of circumstance. Like the colored slave who escaped his master and ran into the wooded area that surrounded the lake. They never found his master, who chased him into the woods. Well, that's not totally correct---they did find an eyeball, tendons still attached. The townspeople hung the slave right there at the lake, saying he had murdered his master. It's been said that the slave pleaded with the angry mob, telling them a woman did it.

Two teenage boys disappeared after beating up another boy that was half their size. Police found a bloody shirt that belonged to one of the boys and a shoe that belonged to the other one. His foot was still in the shoe.

In 1908 an entire family disappeared on a picnic outing. Six people, gone. No trace of 'em anywhere. After that family disappeared they closed the lake off completely. Long wooden fences, not too unlike the privacy fences you see around some folks' yards, were built for the entire two-mile length of the lake. There was only one entrance to the lake, and that was through the gate they had also built.

Still, in 1942 a man wanted for robbery disappeared in what's now known as Coachi Swamp. "At least we found the money," one police official was quoted as saying. What a compassionate bastard he was.

In 1957 and again in '59 people disappeared when they went into the swamp through its lone gate---a thirty footer that had pretty much began to rot away by that time. The gate was on a dirt road that would take you closer into Sumter, some twenty-five miles away. They tore up that road and paved a new way into town.

The last known disappearance was in 1974. The girl was in her late teens. I think her name was Missy. She was pregnant and didn't want the kid. They found her body, but it was mangled awful bad. Her stomach had been completely ripped out. She didn't have to worry about the baby anymore.

I was 10 then. I thought she had been torn asunder by some wild dogs or something like that. The police never would speculate on what happened to her. I didn't believe in the curse of Coachi Swamp, even though since the first death at the lake over 190 years previous, 67 people in all had disappeared or died there.

I'm much older now. Not much wiser, but I know the curse is real. The bogey man does exist. And I'm not some crazy truck driver who's had a little too much to drink. I didn't even drink that day. I passed the Breathalyzer and the walk-the-white-line-boy test. It wasn't even a white line---it was yellow.

I was 27 when it happened. I was not a boy, and sure as the world is round, I was not drunk.

All I know is what I've been told. And, of course, what I saw. What I saw is what happened to Buster Lennon on that cold December day just before Christmas back in 1991.

Babbling again, aren't I? That's just like me.

Buster picked me up on the morning of the 13th. It was a Friday. Friday the 13th. Hot damn, I should have known something then. Why weren't we at work, anyway?

As I said earlier it was a cold morning---bitter cold. Buster was dressed in army fatigues with a cap on his head that proudly displayed Dale Earnhardt, The Intimidator, and a bright red 5 in the center of it. At the bottom of the hat was the years Earnhardt had won the NASCAR championship: '80, '86, '87, '90, '91.

I thought it kind of strange though, that he was wearing tennis shoes and not his hiking boots or his galoshes that he wears when we would go fishing out in Wateree.

"We're going huntin'," Buster told me. "I think I know where the well is."

"The well?" I asked. I felt my words choking in my throat. I know I didn't hear him right. I thought.

"Yeah, Johnny. THE well. You know? The well that guy stuck that girl in some thousand years ago."

"You mean Miss Catherine?"

"Was that her name?" he asked as he looked up toward the sky. "What was his, do you know?"

What was his name? I couldn't remember it for the life of me.

We drove from my apartment in Bishopville to the outskirts of the swamp. About a 45-minute drive it was. We drove down the dirt road to the gate in his '77 Chevy pick-up truck. The truck couldn't go any further than the gate. The swamp's weeds and shrubbery had grown over the fence and gate that had been built in nineteen zero and eight. From there we were on foot. It was one hell of a trip to the water's edge---the shrubbery had overrun the entire length from the gate to the water.

Wait. Wait. I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.

"Look, Johnny," Buster yelled, excitedly. He was getting out of the truck and pointing to what looked like a rotted out fence post. The shrubs and overgrowth was now gray or brown, either from the winter's cold air or from years of just being dead. Or maybe even both. The only real green that we could see was the kudzu that was growing on the trees that were still alive---though barely.

He pulled out a long machete from behind the seat of the truck. He walked over to the gate and carefully unsheathed the machete. He raised his arm high above his head. In a clean swipe of his arm, he brought the blade down on the greenery that was clinging to the gate's old fence post. It made a loud 'thud' as blade hit plant and wooden post. He continued to cut away at the plants on the gate until he had managed to clear away enough of them so he could get a hold of the gate.

"Give me a hand, Johnny," he said as he dropped the machete to the ground. He grabbed a pair of work gloves out of one of his pockets and tossed them to me. "Put these on."

"Buster, this is posted land," I said. "We could get into all sorts of trouble."

"Ahh. . . come on," he countered. "Where's your sense of adventure, Johnny?"

I left it back at my apartment, I thought to myself. I lost it the moment you mentioned the well.

My hesitation was enough to get a look from Buster.

"Just give me a hand," he said. He sounded very agitated.

I pulled on the work gloves and together we pulled on the gate. At first we couldn't get it to move, but after Buster had cut away some hidden vines we were able to pull it free. The gate dragged on the ground as we pulled on it. There was no way we would be able to put it back in place on the way out.

As I pulled my work gloves off and stuffed them into my back pocket Buster went back to work with his machete. He was beginning to clear a path with amazing quickness.

"Buster," I said as he hacked at the dead plants. "Buster? I don't like this. We shouldn't be here."

By the time I was able to get the words out of my mouth Buster was too far from me to hear what I was saying. Not that it would have really mattered anyway. He was hacking away at the plants, clearing a path big enough for three people to walk side by side through and still have a little room on both sides of the end people. He looked like he was running as he swung the machete down, back and forth. The Mad Machete Man from Bishopville whacking at the plants with absolutely no mercy. All he had to do was laugh and he really would have seemed maniacal.

"Come on, John," he yelled back. His voice was faint.

That's when I realized I had gotten back in the truck and closed my door shut. For a moment I wasn't really sure I had ever gotten out, much less helped Buster move the gate.

"Aaah. . . shee-it!" Buster yelled.

I had gotten out of the truck and had been headed toward the path when I heard Buster's scream. I almost dropped a load in my undies when I heard that scream. I froze. I was scared.

"Bu. . . Buster?" I asked, quietly. I walked slowly through the area that Buster had cut with his machete. All the limbs that he had cut were dead and lying in his wake. Graying moss hung off of dead tree limbs; dead vines clung to the trees and hung off of foot thick branches from those slumping trees. Kudzu plants were all over the trees.

Abraham. That was his name. Miss Catherine's lover's name was Abraham. Same as Lincoln and that guy in the Bible whose people were to be given to the Promised Land. Nice fellow that Abraham was.

Babble. . . babble. . .

"Buster?" I yelled as I began to run to find him.

"What?" Buster's voice came back. I stopped running. Buster sounded irritated.

"Where are you?" I called out, sheepishly. A shameful feeling it was at being scared of hearing him scream.

"Over here."

I walked, slowly at first then quickened my pace. I was trying to keep the fear of being in this dead swamp where 67 other people had met their demise from getting to me. I certainly didn't want to look like I was afraid to be there in front of Buster. The teasing would never end if he knew exactly how I felt about the place.

Buster, as far as I could tell, wasn't afraid of anything. He always reminded me of that bulldog in those old Warner Brothers™ cartoons. He was the bulldog who wore the brown derby and the red sweater. What was his name? Butch?

I was more like the little Chihuahua that seemed to always be bothering good ole, tough ole Butch.

"What you doing, Butch?" the Chihuahua would ask as he bounded from side to side, dancing around Butch as he walked along the street. "You gonna pound some cat, huh, Butch? Can I go, too, huh, Butch?"

"Ahh. . . Shut-up," the bulldog would always say right after he backhanded the Chihuahua across the room or the yard or even the street.

"Yeah, yeah, sure Butch," the little Chihuahua would say then look toward the camera, as if he were real, and say, "That's Butch. He's my hero. He's not afraid of anything."

"Buster? Buster? What you doing, Buster? Going to go see your girl, huh, Buster? Going down to the arcade, huh, Buster? Can I go too, huh, Buster?"

Ka-pow. Ka-thump.

"Ahh. . . shut-up."

"Yeah. . . yeah, sure, Buster."

I half walked, half ran to where Buster was standing. The Chihuahua was fresh in my mind. He was hacking away at a tall, bushy thicket. Kudzu dangled off of it, along with dead thistles and thorns and vines. There must have been over a hundred years worth of dead plants that made up that thicket.

"What yah....what yah doing, Buster?" I asked, tentatively, and somewhat out of breath. The little Chihuahua was waiting to get the backhand.

"I think I found it," he said. Again, he was excited.

"Found it?"

"Yeah, the well," he said flatly as he rolled his eyes at me. Sweat poured off of him.

"The well?" I asked, dumbfounded.

Buster looked at me with disgust on his face. "Damn it, man, what's wrong with you today?"

"The curse, man," I said, immediately and without thinking. "We shouldn't be here." I felt like I was pleading with him.

Buster threw his machete to the ground. I knew I had said the wrong thing. What was I supposed to say, anyway? I was scared.

"Stay here," he said. He walked away and back up the path he had cut. I was actually glad he walked away. It was better then the ranting and raving he could have done.

I sat on a rotting stump while I waited. A spider the size of a quarter crawled out of a hole at the bottom of the stump. He was a wood brown with black lines that traced his body. He was the perfect color for his surroundings. He stopped and turned in my direction as if he were looking at me. I guess he didn't like me sitting on his house. I brushed my foot at him and he scampered off under some leaves.

It seemed like Buster was gone for a long while---too long. Eternity seemed to pass me by, but by my watch it had only been less than ten minutes. I jumped when he called my name.

"Johnny?"

"What?" I answered as I jumped from my seat on the stump.

Buster laughed at the way he had startled me. "Why are you so nervous, man? We're all alone, Johnny. Ain't nobody here, 'cept you and me."

This did nothing to comfort me.

Buster had two six packs of beer in his hand---Miller Lite, I believe they were. They had been in the back of the truck in an old blue cooler filled with ice. He pulled one of the beers off of the template and tossed it to me.

"No, thanks," I said as I caught the can just shy of hitting me in the face. I set it down on my spider friend's house. Leave it for the spider, I thought. He might want a drink later.

Buster rolled his eyes again. He pulled one of the beers off of the template for himself and opened it up. He took a few gulps and looked at me.

"What?" he asked, disgustedly.

"What?" I repeated. Here it comes, I thought.

"What? What's your deal, Johnny?"

"Buster, this place is cursed. I don't. . ."

"Cursed?" Buster interrupted. "You're worried about a bunch of BS legends? They tell these stories to keep people out of this swamp---they're not real."

"People have disappeared out here, Buster."

Once again Buster interrupted me.

"People disappear all the time, Johnny. The only difference is they've found a few bodies back here. Hell, have they really found any bodies or is that just some mumbo-jumbo they made up also? And all that bull crap about that woman---that Catherine chick---is just a stupid story."

Buster picked up his machete and looked at me.

"Are you going to help me or not?" he asked.

Wow, I thought. He didn't go off near as bad as usual.

"Yeah, sure, Buster," I said.

That's Buster. He's my hero.

Ka-pow. Ka-thump.

Ahh. . . shut-up.

I pulled the pair of work gloves out of the back pocket of my old blue jeans and put them on. I pulled the dead branches and thorns away as Buster cut them down. We must have worked a solid two hours before Buster's machete hit something other than plants.

-Clank-

The sound of steel hitting brick stopped us both. We looked at each other and then we started pulling branches in a fevered pace.

I have to admit I was getting excited, myself, as we cleaned around the base of the well. We stood back and looked at what was left of the 200 year old well. It stood about waist high on me and was still in pretty good shape. It was a good four feet in diameter. The only thing that was missing was its wood frame that had held the pulley and crank. Other than that it looked as if all of the bricks were in place with very little deterioration.

Buster opened another beer and drank it down. He walked over to the well and dropped the can into the well. It clanked a hollow clank that echoed up from the bottom of the well when it hit.

"Aww. . . I guess the well's all dried out," he said sarcastically. Buster spat into the well.

I looked at him in disbelief, my excitement clearly gone now.

"Legend tells us, Johnny, my boy, that this thing is a wishing well. Let's see if it's true." Buster had a wild-eyed look on his face. "They say Miss Catherine was tossed into this very well, way back in... umm. . . what year was that Mr. John-Miester?"

Buster was starting to get a good buzz going by now. I didn't realize it until then that he had drank both six packs already. I think he had gone back for a couple of more beers sometime while we were cleaning away the brush from the well. Four of those beers were already gone.

"1803, Buster," I said, solemnly.

"Yeah. That's it. Way back in eighteen hundred zero and three. Some bitch got thrown into this well, right here two hundred years ago by her somewhat pissed off boyfriend. So, they decide to close this crap hole off to the public to keep people from disappearing, getting hurt or getting their asses killed. Well, that's fine and damn dandy. If all that crap is true, I wanna see the bitch for myself. I want to see Miss Catherine."

I stood listening to his drunken tirade. I had had about all I wanted to hear when he started his wishing well chant.

"Oh, wishing well, oh wishing well, please do kiss and tell. Bring sweet Miss Catherine back from Hell."

"Buster!" I yelled.

"What?" he yelled back.

Visions of Butch and the Chihuahua popped into my head again.

Ka-pow. Ka-thump.

Hey, Buster, you're sauced, Buster. Do yah hear me, Buster?

Shut-up.

Ka-pow. Ka-thump.

Yeah. . . yeah, sure, Buster. That's Buster. He's my hero. He ain't afraid of anything.

"What?" Buster yelled again, snapping me away from the vision.

"Buster," I started. "Bobby, you're drunk. Come on, let's go. Let's go home."

"I'm not drunk," he said defensively. "I've just got a good buzz working. I'm fine."

"Yeah, whatever," I said as I turned and began to walk back toward the truck.

"Hey, Johnny, where yah going?"

"To the truck, Bobby," I said. "It's after three and it's going to be getting dark in a couple of hours. You can stay here as long as you want, but I'm going back to the truck where I'll be waiting for you. And the damn doors will be locked."

I walked off.

Buster ran up behind me, grabbing me by the arm. He spun me around to face him. The smell of beer on his breath hit me hard. I stepped back to get some fresh air.

"Johnny, I'm sorry."

"No, you're not."

"Johnny, I mean it, I'm sorry," he said again.

"So," I said, trying not to let him get to me.

"Can you just stick around a little longer?"

"No, Bobby," I said quickly. "I'm tired of the way you've been acting all day. You go ahead and stay. I'm out of here."

"Wait, Johnny," he said as he grabbed my arm again. "Let's just see the water. Can you do that for me? Let me see the water? Then we'll leave, I swear it."

It was a rarity that Buster pleaded with me, which is what he was doing then. I knew he was being sincere in saying we would leave. He had sworn to it, and for Buster that was as good as gold.

I stood looking at the ground. For the first time I realized there wasn't much light in the swamp. We cast no shadows anywhere. Neither did any of the trees.

"Give me the keys to your truck," I said. "Then, we'll go see the water." I should have told him flatly, no.

Buster frowned as he pulled the keys out of his pocket and put them in my hand.

"Okay," he said and popped open another beer. He chugged it down and walked over to the well. He tossed it in and waited for the sound of it hitting bottom. There was no clank echoing up from the well this time. I don't know about Buster, but that sent chills down my spine and raised every hair on my head to standing at attention.

The lake was only about thirty yards or so away from the well. Buster hacked at the dead plants and made us another path, this one leading to the water's edge. I stood back for a while and watched. Sometimes I had hated Buster. I felt like, at that moment, I hated him more than I ever would have. But, I knew it was the alcohol that was making him the way he was. It was as if I were a woman in an abusive relationship---always making excuses for why I let him treat me the way he did.

Here we go again---babble, babble, babble.

"John-boy," Buster called out. "Come on you've gotta see this." His words were becoming slurred---a great side effect of too much alcohol.

I walked through the new path he had made with his maniacal machete swinging. Buster had reached the water's edge and was now standing next to the murky water. It had an almost sulfuric smell to it and no plants were growing out of it. The trees hung over it like a bride's veil does her face on her wedding day. One other thing stood out about the old Lake Coachi.

"It's black," I said as I looked down at the water. The water was pitch black as if it were some sort of crude oil that had sprung a leak and formed a large pool.

"It's. . . black," Buster echoed in a stunned voice.

He leaned over the edge of the water, his hands on his knees. One hand held a beer and his hat, which he had pulled off of his head when he saw the water. The other hand held the machete in it.

"It's black," he said again.

That's when the bubbles came---green acid-like bubbles that rose to the top of the water and then burst. As the bubbles popped smoke came from them.

"What the hell?" Buster said as he looked closer at the water. The bubbles began to increase in number as if someone were blowing air into the water causing it to bubble like it was.

"Shii. . ." Buster started to yell. I don't remember if he finished the actual word he was going to say or not. I do remember his face, though. He was scared. His eyes bulged, his mouth froze. His hair, which was all of an inch in length, stood on end, and I swear, it looked like it changed from black to white in a matter of seconds.

The bubbling water grew fierce until, finally, two bony hands reached out of the bubbles---out of the water. The hands were reaching for Buster. He had little time, if any, to react. His head snapped backwards as one of the bony hands slashed at his face, cutting him across it, sending blood into the air.

Buster stumbled back and fell to the ground. He dropped his beer, hat and machete. Both of his hands went up to his face, grabbing and holding the side that was bleeding.

"Johnny," he yelled. His voice was not slurred this time. Fear took its place.

I was scared still as I watched a body surge from the lake's black water. The body was clad in the remnants of an early 1800's dress. I think at one time the dress had been blue and maybe even white. The body's hair was long and tangled, dangling from about middle of the skull back. It was tattered and worn, eaten away by time. The front of its skull had a gaping hole in it staring out like an all-seeing third eye. The body moved in herky-jerky movements at first, then quick and graceful. I guess it had to get its bearings straight or something like that, you know, shake out all the cobwebs.

"Miss Catherine?" I whispered, or so I thought I had whispered it. I had really screamed it at the top of my lungs. I am convinced of this.

"Miss Catherine?" Buster yelled back at me in disbelief. "Miss Catherine?"

Miss Catherine was now out of the water. Her bodice was a grisly sight of bones and, believe it or not, flesh.

"No," Buster yelled as Miss Catherine moved toward him. I ran to him and grabbed his arm. I pulled him up and tried to run. Buster started screaming hysterically. Another bony hand had reached up out of the ground next to Buster and grabbed his ankle. I looked at the lake and saw several more bodies rising from the depths of the murky black water. They were all lurching, walking and crawling as they rose from the water.

"No, no, no, no, no, no," I could hear myself screaming. The arm that had come out of the ground and grabbed Buster was now joined by its body as it rose from the ground, bringing with it the wet mud it had been lying in. The body began to pull Buster into the water. I wrapped both of my hands around Buster's forearm and began to pull with all I had in me.

Miss Catherine was now right in front of us. I could smell the stench of her and the other dead people. My stomach began to roll as I felt the vomit trying to come up. I swallowed hard and looked at her. Through the hole in her skull I could see a snake, I guess a moccasin. I saw the snake shoot out of the hole and toward Buster. It struck him in the face, sinking its fangs into his flesh at just above the nose and between the eyes. Buster screamed louder this time as the snake sunk its sharp teeth deeper into his face. Buster began to shake his head violently, making the snake's body snap back and forth in the air.

He screamed louder. And louder. And louder, still.

I screamed with him, tears stinging my eyes. My arms were growing weak as I continued to pull on his arm.

More bodies were crawling out of the water, clawing at Buster. I could only think that these were the bodies of the 67 people that had died here and waited patiently for someone like Buster to come along.

The dead man that held Buster's leg was now half in the water and was biting down on Buster's calf. Blood spurted from his camouflage fatigues. Once again, he let out a pained howl.

I continued to pull on his arm as the snake whip-snapped back and forth with the violent shaking of Buster's head. Blood sprayed from his face and his leg. Then the machete came from out of nowhere. It was Miss Catherine who had brought the machete down on Buster's arm at just above his elbow.

I fell to the ground, Buster's arm still in my hands. Blood poured out from the severed arm. I watched it as it poured all over me.

Buster screamed louder.

I screamed louder.

The dead made no noises, which goes to show that you can't believe everything you see in the movies. They did not moan and groan at all like the movie zombies do.

They pulled Buster toward the water. He was kicking and flailing as they pulled him. The snake was still writhing on his face as he flung his head back and forth. There were a couple of them biting into Buster, eating him as he screamed.

I ran.

I ran, leaving my best friend to die (very much like that fellow, Abraham, had done to Miss Catherine). I could hear him screaming as he struggled to get away from the bony, water dwelling dead.

"Johnny," he screamed.

I ran.

I ran through the dead trees and vines and briars. I ran, trying to stay on the path, unsuccessfully. I ran passed the well. It looked like blood was seeping through the cracks in its bricks. Blood poured from over the top of the well. I know. . . I know I saw a body hauling itself out of that damn well.

I was scared.

I was covered in blood.

I was still holding Buster's severed arm.

I screamed as I dropped his arm and kept running. I never looked back. By the time I reached the truck Buster's screams had stopped. The only real noise was my own breath that was coming out in the form of screams.

Jumping in the truck I pulled the keys out of my pocket. I cranked it up, pulled it out and drove down the dirt road toward Sumter. Buster's screams still rang loudly in my ears. "Johnny," I could hear him yelling over and over. Tears streamed down from my eyes.

"I'm sorry, Buster," I cried. "I'm sorry."

I turned off the dirt road and onto the interstate toward Sumter. A hand came from my right, the passenger's side. I screamed. Buster's tattered, blood soaked body was in the seat beside me. A deep rustic voice came from its snake bitten face.

"Why did you leave me, Johnny?" he yelled. White foam flew from his mouth and hit me in the face. I screamed a hoarse scream.

Buster reached out with his left arm and grabbed my face. "Why did you leave me?" he asked again. "Where's my arm, Johnny?"

The truck swerved, ran off the road, back on and then into on-coming traffic. Finally, the truck smashed into a tree on the other side of Interstate 378.

That's all I remember about that day. I was told by the Sumter County Police that I had busted into the police station, blood drenched and screaming about Buster. I was screaming about him being torn from limb to limb, being eaten by dead people out at the swamp. I'm sure they weren't too happy about me doing that.

Now, here I am, in this jail cell, convicted of killing my best friend, Bobby "Buster" Lennon. They never found his body. They never found his arm. They never found that machete or his Dale Earnhardt cap. They found all the beer cans, though. And a whole hell of a lot of blood.

They searched the black, murky swamp waters for his body. The divers said they could only go down a few feet before they couldn't see their lamps in front of them. The only thing I could think when I heard divers had gone in there is that they were probably just feet away from being pulled under by all of those dead people.

I guess I can live with being in this old, dusky jail cell. As long as they keep those bodies away from me. All those dead bodies. All of those rotted out dead bodies that are at the bottom of Coachi Swamp. Though, I wish they could do something about the nightmares I have. And those screams. Those horrible screams I hear at night.

Buster's out there somewhere. He's out there calling out my name. He's at the bottom of that swamp just like the rest of them. And he's waiting for me. I can hear him at night. I can see him when I close my eyes at night. His torn asunder body, limping toward me as I run from him. His right arm is always missing, his left arm is reaching with bony fingers. The snake bites on his face drips blood and black swamp water.

I can see him.

Hey, Buster, why are yah scaring me, huh, Buster? I didn't mean to leave yah. I tried to warn yah, Buster. I tried to tell yah. . ."

Ahh. . . shut-up.

Ka-pow. Ka-thump.

Yeah. . . sure, Buster. That's Buster. He's my hero. He's not afraid of anything. He's dead, and he's waiting for me.

THE CONSEQUENCE OF CURIOUSITY

By Shawn Westmoreland

Part 1: Awkward Silence

The door to the interrogation room at Scotland Yard shut, leaving Eric Hicks in a room with a detective and a legal aid. Hicks, an American with sandy blonde hair and a lean muscular 5'10'' build, had been arrested. Looking around, Eric could see this was the interrogation room they used for potentially violent individuals. The very chair he sat on was actually bolted to the floor. The metal grate over the glass in the door was nothing more than decoration really, as no regular-sized man could really get through the hole anyway. The walls were a pale charcoal color that matched the suit of the detective whom just sat in front of Hicks. The female legal aid was wearing a forest green-colored business suit. It wasn't quite up Hicks' street, but it was a damn site better than the rest of the room.

At first, Hicks was hard pressed to see any fear in the legal aid's eyes, but after he paid her a bit of admiration, those big blue eyes looked away. She was about the only thing even worth savoring in the room. It was the color of her beautiful lips and fingernails that caught his attention. Both were the same luscious red that he'd come to know so well over the years. That color excited him and stirred his lascivious little mind. Then the detective had to ruin the moment by slamming a flesh-toned folder down, creating an audible slap on the metal table.

Having been in such situations before, Hicks wasn't worried too much, though admittedly, this was the first time he had the pleasure of meeting the English police. The detective overseeing the investigation, Mr. Graham Wilson, just came back from the murder scene and he wasn't very happy. Mr. Wilson leaned forward and, putting his large hands on the table, made his presence known. Wilson was a black man with a presence about him that wasn't too far off the mark from most bouncers in professional clubs. Even when sitting down, his broad shoulders dwarfed the chair the detective was sitting in. A strong chin and a prominent brow bone made the face of the detective a hard one. Hicks was asked how his day had started. His sweet velvety voice almost single-handedly changed the atmosphere of the room, but since the detective already had everything stacked against Hicks, it wasn't worth putting it on too thick.

"I rode the train again today. No, I rode the Underground again. If I'm going to live here in London, I'd better start talking like it, eh? I caught the District Line at Dagenham and switched at Mile End as usual. It was raining today as well, so the humidity brought up all the smells from the concrete that everyone would rather forget about at the stations. Piss, vomit, and blood --you name it. What's with people just pissing where they want anyway? Do they have any idea what they're doing to the rest of us?" "Just get on with it Hicks." The detective's voice was a rough deterrent to the almost sensual voice of the killer in front of him. "Yeah ...anyway, the walkway was packed with people. I couldn't swing a cat in there, truth told. ...Ok look, I didn't mean to start a fight down there. Yeah, I should've ignored those guys, but don't you people always teach others to not let bullies get away with their crimes?

"I thought you only came over here a week ago Hicks? We have the plane ticket information. So you tell me, how do you know what we teach and don't teach?"

Completely ignoring the detective, Hicks carried on talking. "I was on the platform. I had my earphones in to enjoy a little bit of music ...Dog eat Dog, ok? Suddenly, my ear popped. All the noise of the Underground station came flooding in my head. I turned to see who did it, and this big sporty prick was laughing with his mates, pointing their grubby little fingers at me. I asked them what their fucking problems were, and one of them spat on me." "Was being spat on what pushed you over the edge?" "Well, yeah, I mean, I was just minding my own business when they had to start something, so I figured I'd teach one of them a lesson." "Why did you believe you had to teach one of them a lesson?" Eric gave pause at that question. The police detective in front of him wanted to judge Eric's reaction, but the cop wasn't completely prepared for the answer he received. "Because justice had to be done -I think, anyway. When you think about it detective, none of those guys will ever laugh again. I think it was a fine lesson for them to learn. Ok, sure, what I did was somewhat harsh, but really, since they started the mess, I figured I'd show them what a real mess was so they wouldn't victimize someone else later on."

The detective looked at the legal aid next to him for a moment. Both of them realized they were in a room with a man with serious problems already, but the suspect's demeanor was very off-putting. He was rationalizing one hell of an atrocious act in front of them and he seemed to be fine with it. The investigation continued.

The legal aid asked, "Mr. Hicks, what do you believe gives you the right to punish others, specifically the deceased Mr. Taylor in the way you did?" "I think being born gave me all the rights I needed to deal out a bit of justice. Free will is actually about exercising your right to do what you will, how you will, even if its expression through ...color." Those fleshy red lips where tantalizing, almost quivering for Eric's touch, his lick ...his bite. Yet again the detective interrupted Hicks' staring. "Not when you break the law, no, Mr. Hicks. Let's get something straight here. You're not just going to be charged with murder. We have witnesses that can account for your actions after you pushed Mr. Taylor down by the tracks, specifically, what you did afterward with his fingers."

"Oh do tell, Mr. Wilson, what did I do with his fingers? Put them in my pockets? Save them for a rainy day? Ship them to your wife, perhaps?" "...You ate them, Mr. Hicks. You stood there with a man scared out of his mind, and you ate his fingers while you dangled him over the live rail." Hicks' face broke into a smile upon hearing his crime spoken aloud. A single bead of sweat fell from the detective's ear and the lovely lady in red was swallowing more than a normal person usually would. "Hmm ...I suppose I did, but not all of them, god no. The thumbs you see, they get caught in the throat."

Mr. Hicks was amused that the detective was able to keep his cool so far. He wondered just how long it would take to break the cop's will for a moment, and decided to test him.

"Oh, by the way Mr. Wilson, I have something to submit as evidence in the investigation." "What would that be?" asked the detective. ""It's a small reminder of our poor late Mr. Taylor."

Hicks spat out a half-chewed fingernail onto the table. The pink tint of the violated protective object had almost faded away now, leaving a pale opaque shell behind. The fingernail had been bitten off halfway through and was chewed everywhere. It landed directly on the legal aid's paperwork, which caused her to charge out of the room, vomiting as she did. Mr. Wilson took a deep breath and collected his nerve. Using a pair of gloves, the detective collected the fingernail for evidence into a small plastic bag.

"You haven't done yourself any favors, you sick bastard."

"Why, Mr. Wilson, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were making this personal. Surely you don't care for all of your suspects this way, do you? Please be careful, I might claim favoritism." The face of the detective was full of disgust and grew tired of this little game.

"What drives you lunatics to do these things? I mean, do you suddenly wake up one day and decide that you want to become a cannibalistic reject or what? I know its pretty pointless asking you, but just for the hell of it, tell me why. What's it like to say to yourself that you're going to eat someone on any given day? Tell me why you feel the need to feast on someone else's flesh."

Hicks felt the pull of the abyss, of the frenzied stirring of his inner being. He caught himself about to say something he would immensely regret in such a place. Instead, the cannibal looked around nervously for a minute and calmed down again. If the corpse in front of the detective could blush, it would've at such a personal question. Silence filled the room for a minute before he finally decided to speak. "I'm flattered, detective, that you care. I can only do my best in answering your question with the utmost of enthusiasm.

Wilson waited while Hicks stared at him. Neither man blinked, but eventually, Wilson's agitation got the better of him and he exploded. "Well?!" yelled Wilson.

"Oh no detective, you see, it doesn't work like that. I can't exactly tell you here, can I? You'll know when its time. We have plenty of time."

The detective's face was pure acid and his hands, where once they cupped each other, were now balled into fists. "You'll have it where you're going, and you'll have as long as you need to eat yourself to death, Hicks."

"What an utterly interesting prospect you raise, detective. I'm beginning to like you already."

Hicks make a kissing motion as Wilson left the room. Hicks felt sad that he couldn't see those curvy red fingernails and lips again. They were so intense that he barely contained himself.

Part 2: The False Knot

It was dark inside the cell. Hicks could barely see his hand in front of his face, but he knew it was sometime early in the morning. He'd been thrown in this dank little hole to await his court date. Even if he did get bail, it wouldn't help because there was no one at present to help him out anyway. The small cot was rather uncomfortable to Hicks, but he'd only have to suffer another night or two before he could be back in action.

Devouring the flesh of the living drove Hicks, but it didn't make him a less passionate person, at least not in the sense of caring for others who deserved it. He thought about the night before when Mr. Wilson asked the question. "What's it like," Wilson asked. If only he knew. If only the detective knew what sensational pleasure could be had from chewing on someone's body, to consume a part of another's very essence, then he may well answer that question for himself. Hicks decided that he would indeed adopt the detective. The man had an inner curiosity that drove him above the average person on the street and to harness that quality could only be a good thing. To exalt the quality in someone else of Hicks' caliber was even better. The curious always made for such passionate people, at least that's what Hicks believed.

The cell that Hicks had be thrown into on the other hand were so utterly devoid of passion that he was surprised more people didn't kill themselves just because they had to stay in such a place. The walls were rough where multiple coats of light tan colored paint were layered upon one another. The cell was no larger than a bathroom and Hicks found himself staring into the dark, wishing he could just have a nibble of something. Those lips, actually, yes, the legal aid's lips. Hicks would give almost anything to kiss those lips, to suck and savor them -even if the woman had no other redeeming features, those tender fleshy lips could satisfy Hicks. Alas, they were gone forever -or at least, until he got out, but she'd have to wait. He needed to get out of the police station first.

Hicks was pacing back and forth quickly in wait of his signal. He wasn't long in waiting. Movement could be heard down the end of the hallway. Three cells down, the guard flipped the light switch on in the main hallway. The blazing light from underneath the door illuminated a chilling picture inside the dark room. Hicks' eyes were glowing in the dark. Large yellow eyes with large black pupils jerked slightly back and forth as Hicks rushed to tie his shirt around his neck. A black ichor oozed out of his mouth, his throat convulsing and pushing the liquid up and out as his dead body oozed his very essence from within. Finally, Hicks lay down and shut his eyes just as the sliding view holder on the door was pushed aside by the policeman. Shouting could be heard outside the cell. Hicks, forcing his life force deep within him, became limp. His mind drifted into nothingness as medical staff examined him. Hicks was pronounced dead early Wednesday morning, though from what was under much speculation.

Part 3: The Urge

The shelter of oblivion mixed with the bliss of non-existence felt more reassuring than any promise made by men of flesh and bone. The cold blanket of death had wrapped itself around Eric Hicks to keep him safe from the fires of the living. The grip of death even over such a creature as Hicks, however powerful, acquiescence to the Urge was undeniable. Even the abyss couldn't deny his body sustenance for long. Hicks thought about staying in the dark forever, to let his mind slip away and truly become dead to the world, but he knew better than that. He knew that his body would rise again and feast on the living with or without him, to be destroyed or captured for experimentation and try as he might, Hicks couldn't stand not caressing the supple skin of another for the rest of eternity.

Slowly, Hicks' will began to grow again. His senses came even slower, only allowing his mind to clear after several hours of patience within the very shell he willingly left only the day before. Eventually, rigor mortis lost its hold over his corpse and finger after finger, his undying life-force began to assert dominance once again. Eric was vaguely aware of his immediate surroundings and he knew that he was in an open room upon a table. The bright lights above Eric completely blinded him and once he reached up to turn them off, he fell back onto the morgue table. Eric's strength had left him. His mind was hazy and sluggish, but he was alive again, or rather, undead. Crossing the threshold of decay played havoc on the mind, but it also left the body of the person vulnerable to attack. Luckily, most people didn't go around beheading the bodies of suspicious corpses anymore.

The room was set up for an autopsy, and as he was on the table, he could only assume the worst. A discouraging array of instruments that was lined neatly on a metal tray to Eric's left tried in vein to gleam in the dimmed light of the room. These were the instruments that were made specifically for the utter violation of the human form, the very sight of such barbaric tools disgusted the cannibal. There were much better uses for corpses than butchery and burial, if only someone would have the balls to put Man's short-sighted moral ambiguity aside. In fact, a morgue was nothing different than a crude processing plant that didn't function properly. As Eric looked around, freezers filled with the bodies of the dead were tucked neatly away behind metal doors like hidden pieces of secretive gossip that no one wanted to speak of anymore. The dead were no longer celebrated, at least not in this day and age. In Hicks' mind, that was a shame.

Eric's body, having lost its pulse and heartbeat long ago, would be no different than any other corpse, except for the rigor mortis that had been lifted already. As weak as Eric was though, the Urge was growing in intensity all the time. A dull ache at the best of times, the Urge could become a murderous rage if left unchecked or denied for too long and Hicks simply didn't have the strength to 'go under' a second time so quickly after doing so only a day before.

Eric arched his back in order to straighten his body out on the table. He absolutely loathed not knowing who he was going to feed on, but this time, he didn't have much of a choice. He lashed out with his right foot, sending the tray of instruments clamoring on the floor. Once he could hear footsteps coming down the hallway, he feigned rigor mortis and mustered all the self-control he could to be patient for the prey to come to its devourer.

A young man of no more than 20 years old came around to survey the commotion in the room. He wore a cacophony of different colors, ranging from the outer blue garments to having some manner of gothic attire beneath it. There were scars on the boy's face where he'd taken out his piercings in preparation for assistance with Mr. Hicks' autopsy. The morgue assistant cursed the corpse on the table for still having the shakes and proceeded to pick up the instruments from the floor.

Eric lifted an eyelid to see just where the boy was and fortunately, the boy's back was turned. Hicks rolled off the table with a grace that totally betrayed his deathly appearance. As Eric approached the boy, he could hear music coming from the boy's mp3 player. The charade was dropped and the cannibal straightened up completely and walked calmly toward the hapless victim. As Hicks' eyes began to change to their natural coloration of bloodshot yellow, the young man turned and stared. Hicks grabbed the man by the throat with an unnatural strength. The man grabbed a hold of Hicks' arms in an attempt to free himself from death's grip, but it was no good. Hicks began to smile as he slowly dragged the boy closer. Before long, the boy's face began to turn an unhealthy shade of purple and Hicks was bombarded with punches and kicks, but none of them did any good. The prey had been caught, the predator triumphant.

Hicks grabbed onto one of the boy's arms and jerked away hard. In an instant, the attached shoulder was dislocated. The boy let out a stifled murmur into the air and Hicks realized that he had to squeeze a little harder to completely seal off the airway. Hicks twisted the young man's arm all the way around and held it up, cupping the back of the arm to his mouth. There, in the sterile autopsy room of the morgue, the dead had risen to steal life from those who took it for granted.

Part Four: The Willing Feast

Eric Hicks thought the Thames River looked so beautiful at night. Its surface was nice and smooth due in no small part to a lack of wind and, as the lights shined from Canary Wharf, the water was brought to life by a plethora of colored lights. The reflection of multiple skyscrapers was a sight that Eric enjoyed no matter where he went because it showed that mankind did have a capacity for ingenuity and ambition --both emotions that Hicks held close to his own moral code. But he wasn't there to fulfill his moral code; he was there to break it. He wanted to flaunt his actions to the very police that had tried to put him away. In Eric's mind, it wasn't revenge in the sense that most people view the emotional response. No, he felt he needed to give them a little taste of the impossible. Eric Hicks was dead to the police. They would think the morgue assistant took his body and ran with it ...until they found the car a couple of days later. After that, only one man would really know what happened. That man was unfortunately on Hicks' to-do list.

The morgue assistant's car was parked on the dock near the water. Hicks got into the driver's seat and rolled the windows down. He'd torn holes in the trunk of the car to help sink it and the body wasn't going anywhere anyway. He reversed the car around 30 feet and then raced toward the water. Right before the car's front tires touched the wooden pier, he jumped out and rolled with the momentum. As Eric sat and watched the car bubble down toward a murky end, he thought more about his own soon-to-be new assistant in life. His delight was all too apparent is his smile.

As Eric spent the next day watching and waiting, he discovered that his body had been reported stolen by a worker at the city morgue. This had the effect of amplifying his already considerable presence within the media. While the turn of events was an inconvenience, it didn't bother Hicks too much. He'd been avoiding authorities for well over 100 years. The fact that he hadn't been caught after he'd escaped every time was a testament to his resolve and skill to blend into just about any western civilization and keep a low profile. He enjoyed sneaking around to steal the life of those who he deemed worthy. A battle of the mind was nearly as engaging as a battle of the soul to Eric, and he did so love to play games of cat and mouse. The mouse had now become the cat, and it was time to hunt the prey.

Detective Wilson was easy enough to look up through phones books and Library internet computers; it seems Mr. Wilson has been quite popular with apprehending a wide variety of unsavory sorts over the last 7 years. The anticipation rose in Hicks who could hardly contain glee for the night to come. Once he found Wilson's address, he went to check on the place to see what needed to be done to surprise the cop and to convert him to a different way of thinking. Since the detective owned a pricey 2-bedroom apartment, Eric decided to keep an eye on Wilson's apartment by breaking into the adjacent vacant apartment and listening for people coming down the hall. Eric knew it was a risk, but by the time anyone knew that he'd broken into the place, they'd never find him anyway. Not when he was going to be bunking with the detective from now on, that is.

When Graham Wilson finally came to his front door at 6:30 in the evening, Eric could see that the detective had a bad day. His shoulders were slightly slumped and his head was leaning down slightly. Slow uncertain movements confirmed that indeed, the detective was going to be off guard tonight. Eric could only lick his lips and watch intently. There was nothing between himself and Wilson except a wooden door. Eric saw the detective's hands fumble around as they dug in his coat to find the keys to open the door. They were strong hands, and would serve Wilson well in the days to come. Wilson was also much taller than Hicks and would need to feed more often, but that wasn't a problem. London had more neglected people than almost any other city in the world, and with such resources as those readily available to a detective, finding food would be much easier. Before Wilson could open the door, his mobile phone buzzed. As Eric listened, he heard how Wilson's sister was coming over in around two hours for some rest and relaxation, as the two hadn't seen each other in some time. A twisted grin lit up Eric's face. So, company was to be expected, was it? What lovely news he thought, and family no less. Eric looked forward to meeting Wilson's sister so he could get a more broad knowledge of Wilson's familial contacts. Things were looking better all the time. Eric watched Graham's body movements to see when the time was right to sneak up to the door. As Wilson's conversation with his sister geared up about recent events, Hicks readied his bubble gum and half a credit card for the right moment. As Graham opened his front door and walked through, Eric quickly stepped up and pushed the top of the credit card to the inner doorframe and pulled his body back around the corner in the hallway. The top of the cut up credit card had bubblegum stuck to the back of it, and, when the door swung to close, the credit card would stop the metal tongue of the door from connected with the doorframe. Eric realized early on in his stay in England that most doors, even when not locked with key, still wouldn't open, having built-in locking mechanisms in the door handles where you could only open the doors from the inside. It was an annoying feature of these doors, but one that could still be dealt with. As Eric listened, Wilson continued his conversation on the phone and was walking further and further away from the door, so Hicks could only assume his plan worked.

Eric opened Graham's door ever so gently and peaked in. Graham was still talking to his sister as he walked into the kitchen. Eric swiftly opened the door and shut it with care, making sure to take off his little device. He crawled over behind Graham's couch and stretched his body out along the length of the nicely made piece of furniture. As Eric listened to the rather monotonous conversation, he took his shoes off and tucked them neatly under the couch so he could move around easier if the need arose. Eric took a quick peak around the couch to watch as Graham opened his freezer to find something suitable for dinner. Eric took care of the next potential problem that could hinder him later. He reached over to the lamp table and unplugged the wire from the phone and the wall and rested behind the couch again.

Most people didn't realize that they had so many instruments around the house that could spell their own doom. In a day and age where people carried guns and knives, Eric really saw no need, though the occasional blade did come in handy at mealtime. He folded the phone wire back on itself, halving its length and tying one end together. He then wrapped each end around his hands 3 times. Eric's garrote wire was now at hand.

As Eric listened, Wilson told his sister that it was dinnertime and he wanted to have a shower and eat before she came over. Soon enough, the mobile phone was turned off and Graham approached the couch. Eric tensed his legs, ready to shove the couch away from the wall and into the detective, but there was no need. Wilson's coat landed on the edge of the couch, its top hanging over the edge and touching the cannibal's head.

Graham took off his shoes and his vest and put them next to the couch. Eric soon heard the snaps that he was waiting for; the detective was taking his gun holster off and laid it on the couch, gun still safely within. As Graham walked off down the hallway and into the bathroom, Hicks reached around the side of the couch and unsnapped the gun from its enclosure and put the device under the kitchen sink. Hicks was momentarily startled as he heard the bathroom door open and he readied his wire, but thankfully, the detective walked into his bedroom at the end of the hall for some clothes.

Now that Eric had some time, he looked around the kitchen of his new home. It was very spacious and there was plenty of countertop space, marble finish, no less. Eric's finger ran down the marble to the edge of the oven. As Hicks looked inside to see what was cooking, he pulled open drawers until he found the utensils lined neatly in separate trays. He pulled out a filleting knife and pushed the drawer back in. Pain was a necessary thing in these times. Though pain would Eric's deed be completed, through his will, would the pain come to a head for the detective. Eric opened the oven and pulled out the pan of fajitas. He sat them on the side and opened each one in turn, taking care to not tear their half-frozen skin. After several slices of the knife, Eric picked up the pieces of his own flesh and deposited them within the meaty wraps. Once he put them back into the oven, Eric took a quick look around in Graham's bedrooms, finding them to be suitable for the times ahead. Graham was an ordered individual and kept all his belongings in neat order. This was another essential quality that Hicks was looking for, because it helped the transition so much.

Resting back behind the couch again, Eric began to listen to the detective as he came out of the bathroom and into the living room again. Graham turned the television on and the 6:00 p.m. news was on. The final test was about to take place. Would Wilson make Eric proud? Would the detective take the steps of Hicks before him? The sound of the oven's door opening prompted Eric's full attention again on Wilson. Would he eat one there, right in the kitchen where the Offering took place? No, it was not to be. Graham didn't take a bite in the kitchen, preferring to have his meal and watch the news at the same time. As Wilson sat down, Hicks wanted to cry out, to embrace his soon to be comrade. The process was so close to being complete, to being realized.

The top news story of the night focused on a recent finding in the Thames River. As Graham sat up and at his meal, he listened closely, as did Eric, who at that point was ecstatic at the fact that the Offering of his flesh had been taken freely. The case about the dead body of Mr. Hicks wasn't over yet. The morgue assistant's car and body within were dragged from the river a little while ago. Preliminary reports suggest that the boy was dead for at least a day or two but the police weren't confirming anything yet. The media was taking the story in various directions, but the most common theory was that someone else -- possibly one of Hicks' cannibalistic friends -- came to get his body and the morgue assistant was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eric risked a look at the side of the detective's face from the side of the couch. "No, this wasn't some friend. This was Hicks. God I don't know how, but it was Hicks." Wilson had passed the test. Instead of thinking in the terms of regular men, Graham decided to look beyond Man's logic and conclude the impossible, however improbable.

After Wilson swallowed the food in his mouth, Eric felt the wires in his hands one last time, and lopped them around the detective's neck in one smooth stroke. "Hello Graham!" said a slimy voice from behind the couch. "I do hope you haven't missed me too much over the last couple of days." The detective was struggling to bring his upper body up to gain some kind of leverage on the smaller man, but it was no use. Hicks had pinned his feet under the couch and was using Graham's own weight against him.

Graham's mind was racing along at top speed while trying to slip his fingers under the wire that threatened to cut off his air supply. How did Hicks get in the apartment? How did Hicks even found out where he lived? Graham's back was arched and he was nearly falling over backward due to the pressure Hicks was putting on his neck, but he knew that if he didn't stay in the position, he could well strangle himself. Graham realized that his gun was only an arm's reach away and instead of trying to stop him, Hicks actually moved along the back of the couch to let the detective realize that his gun was no longer where it should be. Hicks started talking in an overly excited voice to his new friend.

"I truly can't believe you actually wanted to know, Graham. To be able to share with you the delights of my kind is an honor above almost all others. To actually have you, the leading investigative officer of my case, be the one to realize that this world holds truths that no mortal logic can dictate was truly an accomplishment. You asked me, why we cannibals ate the flesh of others. Such a weighty question! To answer in short, we eat the flesh of the living to survive, to grow powerful, and to live. Our sustenance is the flesh of man, our drink, his blood. And you, my new brother, have tasted one of mine tonight.

Graham started his struggle anew as the cannibal sought to poison his mind. The big man kicked out at the coffee table and sent his food flying all over the floor. He jerked one last time but the preternatural strength of Hicks was far too much for the large man to overcome. As Graham leaned back on the couch to ease the pressure, Hicks continued.

"Oh come now, surely you noticed those little extra pieces of meat I put in your food while you were having a shower, yes? You don't? Look at my arm, detective, and let your eyes do the talking. What ...you don't believe me? There, over by the television, you can see a piece of my arm hanging out of your meal. That's right; I've cut myself just for you, Graham. I've bled for you because I care about you. We're going to go far, you and me."

Graham's eyes were fixed on the open wounds upon Hicks' arm. It looked like a knife that just cut off long thin pieces of flesh caused the wounds. The wounds weren't bleeding though; they didn't look like they had bled at all. "You did say you wanted to know how it felt, so, now that you've actually tasted the flesh of your fellow man, please, tell me how it feels Graham. Does it invigorate you? Do you feel dirty, like you've broken some sacred bond with God? Does it frighten you that another man's cooked flesh was indistinguishable from your own dinner?" Graham's arms began to shake in the air as Eric pulled just a little bit harder.

Graham's body finally began convulsing violently. Hicks released him and stood behind the couch, watching his soon-to-be brother of flesh losing his life. In a way, Eric greatly admired Graham's stamina throughout this little episode. It was a nod to Eric's ability to pick someone to change. Thick, blackish red foam poured from Graham's mouth as Hicks began to speak again.

"Like it or not brother, you're going to find out what it's like to be one of us, to be of the Undead. You see, you've tasted my flesh, and it's so much more than just meat off the bone. It carries with it the curse of death itself, a curse I've given to you. From now on, you'll know what the Feast is all about. Blood will be your water but flesh, glorious juicy flesh of the living will be your sustenance. Without it, you'll slowly lose your mind over the years, becoming a monster not fit even for hell, but with the flesh of others, you'll become so much more than you once were. The physical boundaries of a mortal's coil you've been tied to will be all but erased. Your body is dying, yes, but you'll get over it. We all have, to one degree or another. The Urge, we don't."

Graham vaguely heard the words Hicks spoke. His body was racked with pain. A poison in his belly was spreading to all of his limbs, to his heart, to his very mind. Barely able to move and not able to think coherently, Wilson moved his eyes to see Hicks leaning over him, smiling. Wilson began to feel some dread sensation that his soul dared not admit. "There's no need for talking, my friend. I know what you're thinking. Your mental fugue will clear with time. It's always the same with the Urge in the beginning. You must feed your sickness to get better."

Graham's eyes glossed over as an almost opaque yellowish liquid filled them. Eric's eyes had changed as well, giving off a yellowish glow where he looked. The large man had stopped moving now; he could only lay on the floor and take the world as it came to him. Eric left the man on the floor and began to pick up the scattered pieces of his flesh that were kicked on the floor. Once he was done, Eric sat behind Graham's head and cradled the newly changed cannibal.

"Here Graham, here is the flesh of your brother. Yes, that's it. Chew it, swallow it, and see how simple flesh combats the Urge. This is the most important lesson of all for us. We must feed to subdue the Urge, but we mustn't let the Urge overcome us, or it will destroy our very souls. That's right, all down the hatch." Eric fed the man the last vestiges of the gathered flesh from the Offering and helped the new corpse to sit on the couch. "You stay there for now. I need to get this place cleaned up. We do have company coming over, after all."

In order to not alert their meal when she arrived, Hicks cleaned Graham up with a wet towel and put new clothes on the new horror. Hicks' emotional attachment to Wilson had changed dramatically within the past hour. Just as Hicks was brought into the darker recesses of the moral pits of humanity by someone else, Hicks was now nurturing someone else who asked after why such things were the way they were with cannibals. Eventually, someone would ask Graham the same question, and the answer would be juicy sweet in the telling.

FIRST BORN

By Brian Jaime

A muddy foot, blistered, bruised and bleeding, stumbled across the forest floor. Tattered britches made way to the worn body of a withered man. He exhaled and inhaled rapidly, doing his best to keep going. Frequently, he would look back behind him as if he was checking up on an advancing predator. He was thin, worn and dirty. His filthy hair clung to his sweaty unkempt face.

He struggled to remember who he was, where he had come from and why he was running. His mind raced with empty thoughts. All he knew was that he had to run. He had to keep going and get as far away from the direction from where he had come. He didn't know why. He just knew that he had to.

Somewhere behind him, a flock of disturbed birds flew out from a thicket of trees. Had he been followed? He paused, only for a second, to study the dense forest. It was quiet. Sunlight crept in from the loose canopy above. He hesitated and then crept back slowly, the chill of a cool breeze swept across his bare neck.

The pain came instantaneously; beginning on his neck's left side and working its way across his chest and down his spinal column. His body surged with discomfort and he fell to his knees. Grunting, he gnashed his teeth and searched for the origin of the malaise. His ears rang and his mouth grew cottony and bitter. He stood up, arched his back and continued further, passing through thin trees and low brush.

The forest gave way to a clearing, a meadow of wild flowers and tall grass. He dashed out into the sunlight and staggered across the field until he came to the side of a narrow, dirt road. His feet flopped under him and he hit the rocky earth head-on. His vision swirled and, all at once, everything went black.

"He's doing much better now," a voice said.

"Oh, Sabine, I do hope he comes around soon. Your father aims to call the constable if he fails to wake through the night."

"Do you think he's a criminal?" a younger voice said.

"No, Zacharie, I doubt he is. Now no more talk of pillagers and foragers. Off to bed with you."

The man slowly opened his eyes. He could see a tubby woman ushering a small boy into an opposing room. A young girl was using a small towel to clean his wounded feet. The sensation was more than he could handle and his left foot twitched. The girl sprung back and then noticed that he was awake.

"Oh, sir, finally you are able to join us," she said. He did not speak. At that moment, he didn't remember how to talk. His mouth was still sore and dry.

"We found you out near the Old Forest just past the meadows."

She smiled at him innocently. "Mother!" she called. "Mother, the gentleman is awake!"

Her mother rushed into the room carrying a large pitcher. She placed it on an old table and leaned over her patient.

"What is your name?" the pudgy woman demanded.

"Wa-wa-water..." he managed.

"Fetch him a cup," she told her daughter, "His memory is weak. We'll let him rest until your father comes in."

The water quenched his parched mouth and he settled back down on the makeshift cot. Slowly, he dozed off to visions of torture, blood and beautiful women.

----------------

"The time is upon us..." an unfamiliar voice echoed through his mind. He snapped up. The pain from his neck coursed throughout his body. He sat for a moment and then searched for the origin of the mystic voice. The room was dark and empty. He felt the left side of his neck and discovered it had been bandaged with rags. Two voices, just outside of the chalet, drew his attention and he snuck to the window to investigate.

"The poor man is practically an invalid," the old woman said.

"Isabelle, he has puncture marks on the side of his neck," her husband responded.

"What are you implying, Victor?" She eyed him suspiciously. "Surely you're not talking of vampires."

"They kill our cows. They kill our horses. What are next, our children?"

"The man..." she began.

"This man will have to leave as soon as he awakens." He turned away from her and continued sweeping the small porch. His wife, having been put in her place, grabbed a bucket of feed and placed it on a shelf below the window. Inside, the man ducked in fear of being seen.

High above the home, a flurry of activity traversed the starry night sky as three seductresses circled the air waiting for the right time to attack. The eldest of the three sniffed the air and wheezed. The other two stopped and hovered in adoring silence.

"The time is upon us," she said. Her companions smiled at each other. "It begins."

An icy breeze blew the front gate open. Victor stopped and felt a cold chill.

"Isabelle," he whispered. His wife did not hear him; she continued straightening the window's ledge. He turned and saw the first, the eldest, of the three female vampires advancing upon his house.

The other two were closing in from the sides, one only feet away from his unaware wife.

"This property has been blessed," he said.

"The ramblings of an old preacher are of no concern to us," the eldest vampire hissed. Her younger sisters giggled shrilly.

His wife looked up, startled by the vampire to her left. She dug into the bucket of feed lifting out a handful of seeds, which she tossed at the blonde creature. The vampire seethed and dropped to her knees, picking up the scattered seeds. Isabelle turned back toward her husband who was busy tossing a ring of garlic, which had hung on their front door, around the neck of the third vampire. The demon struggled with it and toppled over, vomiting bloody chunks all over the sleeping tulips. The middle vampire smiled and advanced on the couple.

"I am not so easy," she said with narrowing eyes.

"Your look says otherwise," Isabelle fired back.

"You," the vampire said, pointing at the frumpy woman, "You will feel much pain."

"You cannot enter our property without being invited," the man protested.

"Correction," the bloodsucker said, "I cannot enter your house. Your property, well now, that's something else."

She progressed toward them, brandishing sharp fangs and claws.

The man backed away from the curtained window as he heard the bloody ferment of the doomed doublet. He felt the side of his neck perplexingly. He was a vampire?

"What is it?" Sabine said from behind him. He turned sharply, not knowing what to say. "Where are my parents?" she pleaded.

He said nothing, only looked to the window. The girl followed his eyes and ventured to the thin pane of glass. Her brother crept up next to her, rubbing his eyes. He yawned and tugged at her nightgown. She could see her mother lying on the ground.

"Come sisters. Eat while the blood is warm," an unseen presence said.

A blonde woman knelt next to her mother and tore into her belly, drawing out a handful of gore. She held it, like a bunch of grapes, and feasted.

"Children," the same voice echoed from the other side of the wooden door, "May I come in?"

"No!" Zacharie exclaimed.

"Very well," said the voice, "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Please sir," Sabine asked of the stranger, "Help us."

The man started to speak, but, just as he found the words, a pain began at the base of his spine. He staggered to the center of the kitchen, the pain drawing him to his knees. The children watched as his spine began to bubble and shift.

"Is he a werewolf?" the wide-eyed boy exclaimed. His terror-stricken sister did not reply.

The man bellowed as the bulge in his lower back moved upward toward his head. It stopped at his neck and moved in the direction of the two puncture wounds. The wounds began to separate and tear, revealing a small, grey head. The head pushed out as the man slumped over, dead. A slimy, peppery-eyed baby forced its way out onto the kitchen floor. Two small, veined wings unfolded themselves and flapped vigorously. The baby opened its mouth, which began to squeak and hiss, revealing two rows of razor sharp teeth. It cooed and, in seconds, it was upon the children.

The vampire brushed open the door and walked into the bloody mess, followed by her sisters. She lifted the snapping baby into the air and gasped.

"Sisters," she declared. "She is a...boy! The prophecy has come full circle."

The three vamps gathered around the small demon child in amazement. For centuries, all vampires had been women. A curse had descended upon the vampire race hundreds of years prior. There had been a foretelling of one, born a male, who would break the gypsy hex and become the most powerful of the Nosferatu. The eldest vampire wiped away the blood from the infant's mouth and held him tenderly in the moonlight.

"He will be called Dracula," she deemed, "And everyone will fear his name."

ALONE IN THE PARK

By Patricia A. Collins

Like a panther on the prowl, the big black Cadillac glided silently down the quiet suburban streets. Its headlights, like two huge, glowing eyes, cut through the inky darkness, illuminating row upon row of newly- built, middle-class houses, which were surrounded by rolling, manicured lawns.

It was summer in suburbia, and James liked nothing more than to cruise through the neighborhoods with his windows rolled down, breathing in the scent of newly mown grass while listening to the laughing, excited voices of children at play.

It was getting late, and although most of the little ones had been called in for the night, a couple of lucky children had gotten permission to play for a few more precious moments in their front or back yards, under the watchful eyes of their protective parents.

James thought it was a shame how people had become so suspicious of each other in the past few years. These days, parents seemed to think that around every corner lurked a pedophile ready to pounce on their sweet, little darlings and whisk them away never to be seen again.

He longed for the more innocent times of his childhood: when kids were allowed to stay out long after dark, running and playing with friends; parents didn't have to worry about constantly keeping a close eye on their children; and a child wasn't taught to be automatically wary of any stranger who approached him or her. But James knew those carefree days were long gone, replaced by the mistrust that seemed to prevail in this day and age.

The big car took a right turn, heading back toward the driver's apartment building. James figured he'd have a late dinner, watch a little TV, then get to bed early, since tomorrow morning he had to get up and go to the unemployment office. He still couldn't believe that he'd been fired from his last job. He hadn't particularly liked being an elementary school janitor, but at least it had paid the bills. If only that little brat hadn't gone tattling on him, he'd still be working there.

It had all been a big misunderstanding, he thought. He didn't even touch the girl, only made a comment or two, and then off she went crying to her teacher. James knew he'd never actually touch one of the kids where he worked. He was smarter than that, had more self-control, and knew better than to shit where he ate.

James was so lost in thought that he almost drove right by the park without noticing the lone child who was happily playing on the swing set. At the last minute, however, he spotted motion in the near darkness, saw the girl, and immediately applied the brakes.

The man couldn't believe his luck. Here was a child, alone after dark, in a park far from any residential housing. This is too good to be true! James thought to himself as his palms began to sweat in anticipation.

He took a deep breath to calm himself, reached over to the glove box, opened it, and removed the contents. Then, after checking in the rearview mirror to make sure that he didn't appear too disheveled, James climbed out of the Cadillac and slowly walked toward the child.

As James drew nearer, and his eyes started adjusting to the moonlit surroundings, the details of the girl's appearance slowly became clearer. She was very pale, with long blond hair that fell to her waist. Her clothing consisted of a bright yellow t-shirt, emblazoned with a cute little bunny; torn jeans; and a pair of scuffed-up tennis shoes. Judging by her size, James was sure that she could be no more than six years old.

The girl looked up when she heard the man approaching. James held his breath, hoping she didn't jump up and run screaming at the sight of a stranger coming toward her in the dark. Surprisingly when she saw him, a huge grin spread across her small face.

"Hello," she said innocently.

James, sensing a perfect opportunity, replied quickly, "Well, hi there young lady. My name is George, what's yours?"

"Jennifer, but I like to be called Jenny."

"Well, Jenny it is then," the man agreed, trying his best to seem friendly and harmless. "I was wondering if you could help me, Jenny. I was walking my puppy a few blocks over and somehow he slipped out of his collar and got away."

James showed the child the leash and collar that he had just taken out of the glove compartment and asked, "Did you happen to see him here in the park?"

Jenny scrunched up her small face in for a moment as if in deep concentration, then replied, "No, I haven't seen any puppies and I've been here a long time."

Trying to seem crestfallen in order to evoke the child's sympathy, James sighed heavily. "I'm never going to be able to find him on my own," he lamented, "the park's just too big!"

He'd used the missing puppy excuse many times before. It was a very effective way to lure unsuspecting little girls into his vehicle without any screaming or struggling. They were all more than happy to climb into his car and go off in search of the non-existent dog. Holding his breath, the man waited to see if the child took the bait.

"Don't be sad, George," The girl said. "I can help you look for him!" Jenny jumped out of the swing and, after quickly crossing over to where the stranger stood, trustingly placed her small hand in his.

James almost swooned with excitement as her cool, soft skin made contact with his clammy palm. This is almost too easy, he thought, grasping the child's hand tightly, as he led her over to his waiting car.

As her abductor quickly drove away from the park, the child drummed her tiny feet against the car seat, apparently oblivious to the dangers of her situation. Speeding down the highway, Jenny stared intently out the window trying to catch sight of the arrant puppy.

James couldn't believe that his plan was going so smoothly. Even though they were far from the park by now, the girl still appeared to have no idea that anything was amiss. He hoped that the child would remain oblivious to her peril until he'd gotten her far away from prying eyes. But even if she finally did become afraid and begin to scream and fight, James was prepared. Before he left his apartment every morning, he always made sure that he had plenty of duct tape in the glove box, and a good length of rope and shovel in the trunk. "Always be prepared" was James' motto.

"Can the puppy be way out here?" the child asked, turning her large, inquisitive eyes to the adult sitting beside her.

"Well Jenny, he's a very quick little dog, and he could be almost anywhere by now. That's why we need to drive so fast, to catch up to him," her kidnapper replied. The answer seemed to placate the girl, who, turning back to the window, resumed her vigil.

The man could barely keep his attention on the road as the car purred down the highway. His eyes kept straying back to the little girls long blond hair, and the way its silky waves lay against her fragile little neck: a neck that was so thin and delicate that he could easily squeeze the life out of the child by using just one hand.

James swore to himself that this time would be different. With the other girls, he'd been inexperienced, scared of being caught, and too excited to control his impulses; but with Jenny, he would take his time, because rushing with her would be a travesty, like gulping a fine wine or bolting down a gourmet meal. No, he thought, beautiful little Jenny is definitely a bouquet to be savored, and savor her I will.

They were approaching James' favorite place to bring "his girls". It was a very woody, secluded spot about a mile off of the main road. Three of his victims were buried in this area; they were probably little more than hair and bones by now. James hadn't used this spot in a while; he knew better than to keep coming back to the same place time after time.

Usually he would roam around the tri-state area, snatching up a victim whenever the opportunity presented itself, careful not to take more than one child a year from any given locale. He had several burial sites around the region, and would use the one that was closest to the spot where he'd kidnapped the girl. He did this to keep the authorities from discovering that all of the disappearances were related.

James knew that he was smart, smarter than the average serial killer at least, and even though he'd done away with his victims quickly, he'd always made sure to take his time when hiding their remains. Each time, he carefully buried the small bodies in deeply dug holes, covering the newly turned earth with debris to make the ground seem undisturbed. The killer hoped that his luck held out, and the graves went undiscovered for years to come. That way, he'd be able to keep hunting as he pleased, without constantly worrying about being hounded by the police.

"I see him over there!" James exclaimed, pointing toward a dense copse of trees.

"Where? Where?" Jenny shouted, jumping up into her seat and pressing her small face close to the windshield, trying to locate the spot that "George" was pointing too.

"Right over there, he just ran behind those trees!"

As he brought the car to a sudden halt, James reached for the girl's shoulder to keep her from tumbling headfirst into the glass. He held her not because he cared for her safety, but because he didn't want even a scratch to mar her velvety skin before he had a chance to explore its perfect smoothness for himself.

"Come on, Jenny, let's go catch him before he gets away again!" James said breathlessly, grabbing the little girl's hand and pulling her across the seat and out of the car before she even had a chance to respond. The child, barely able to keep up with the large man's fast-paced strides, almost tripped and fell more than once before they made it to the thicket.

The killer realized that he was safe now. There was no one living for miles around to hear the child's screams, so he could finally drop the Mr. Nice Guy persona, which he hated so much, and let the real James make an appearance. Jenny's abductor turned to look at her. Instead of the smiling, happy stranger she'd come to trust, the little girl was faced with a panting, leering monster that was intent on her destruction.

"I've got a secret to tell you, Jenny." The killer held the girl by both arms and pulled her so close to his sneering countenance that she could smell the odor of decay that wafted from his mouth with every word he spoke. "My name isn't George, and I didn't lose a puppy."

James stood immobile as he waited for the child to realize the life threatening danger that she was in. He loved this part of the game. When the truth finally dawned on the children, their little faces would crumple into tear-filled grimaces of terror, and then the screaming and begging would begin. Oh how he loved the screaming and begging!

That wasn't happening with this little girl though; she was still calm and tranquil. The only noticeable difference was that her innocent smile was now replaced by a twisted little leer, while a definitely unchildlike intelligence emanated from her hungry eyes.

James frowned in confusion. Why wasn't she crying? Why wasn't she screaming? Why did a look from this defenseless, little girl suddenly turn his legs rubbery and his stomach into a nervous, clenched knot?

"I've got a secret to tell you too, George," the child whispered, grabbing her captor by the flesh of his cheeks and pulling his face close to her own. "My name isn't Jenny, and I'm not really a little girl."

The child's breath reeked, but it wasn't the fetid odor of decaying teeth or the stink of rotting food that permeated her every exhalation; it was the pungent stink of old blood. Too late, James understood that tonight, their roles would be reversed: he would be playing the part of the victim, and she, the monster. He tried to struggle, but the vampire's grip was like velvet-gloved steel: baby soft on the outside, but hard and inflexible underneath.

"You know, I was sitting in that park for so long, that I thought I'd begun to lose my touch," the creature hissed, "but then you came along and showed me that, even after 300 years, I've still got what it takes to attract men like you."

And with that, the tiny bloodsucker twisted her victim's head to the side and bit into the meaty, sweat-scented flesh of his throat.

THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

By Lee Pletzers

Mack walked the city of the dead. He strolled across deserted streets and stepped over bodies, littering the area. For months he had walked and walked and walked. Scrounging food from wherever he could, and hoping to find someone else alive in this hell-hole of corpses and sweltering heat.

Crashed cars and busses filled with the dead, blocked all exits from the city. He was cut off from the rest of the world, if there was a world left.

Litter skittered across the ground; newspaper sheets, candy wrappers and other paper-like junk. A few beer cans turned in semi-circles, headed for the gutter. God, he'd love a beer right now, but all the stores were empty; beer, wine, sprits -- all of it gone.

On his right was a park where just months ago, he had enjoyed a day there with his wife and son. They had skipped stones across a small duck pond and laughed at ducks racing out of the way.

Mack spied a wicker chair and a fishing pole with a small bucket next to it close to the pond. The owner was nowhere to be seen.

This city was dead. This city was for the dead.

The sun was high in the clear blue sky and its light reflected off shiny office windows with estate-like names; Barron's Hall, Yellow-bird Manson, etc.

Each had a good view of the park.

A flash of movement from Barron's Hall, caught his eye. He turned to face the building straight on. From the blackened glass, he could just make out a pair of eyes looking at him.

He stared at the watcher as the watcher stared at him.

Had he truly found someone alive, after all these months? Hope swelled in his chest, the thought of no longer being alone was almost impossible to believe.

The watcher vanished from the window.

He crossed the street.

The blackened glass reflected his dirty clothes, unkempt brown hair, sunken cheeks with a grayish tinge to them, brown eyes wide. He watched his feet shuffle forward.

Up against the glass, he cupped his hands and peered in. Whoever was up against the window wasn't dead, 'cause he or she was gone. It was very dark looking from the outside to the inside, so Mack decided he should enter the building.

He tried to see some sign for the building apart from it's pathetic name, but couldn't see anything that would give away the offices inside. He remembered the days before Death visited, the days of family happiness and joy. He recalled seeing this building with a guard posted outside every day and night.

He pushed on the X shaped door and entered the large foyer. Sunlight gleamed on the highly polished floor. Directly in front of him was a metal detector and next to that was an x-ray machine, like those found at airports. Along the side was a long reception desk and beside that were elevators. Close to the windows at the far end of the hall was a large, heavy looking door -- which was open an inch or two.

He walked through the metal detectors. Two quick beeps from the machine startled him. He turned to it and stared in amazement at the flashing light. This place has electricity, he thought in amazement. There hadn't been electricity in the streets for months. He turned to the elevators and saw the yellow number one was lighted.

Cupping his hands over his mouth, he yelled, "Hello?" His voice echoed in the large space, bouncing off the walls and returning to him. "Would like to know if I'm the only person alive in this city." Mack waited for a response. He stood statue still, almost held his breath.

The door at the end opened slowly. A woman in her twenties or thirties, Mack was never good at guessing ages, stood framed in the doorway. Her hair was long and straggly, she looked as if she hadn't washed in ages; the clothes she wore had mud stains on the miniskirt and grime on the blouse. She stared at him coldly, her arms behind her back.

Mack held his hands in front of him and took a step forward. She flinched. "Don't worry," he said softly. "I come in peace." What a stupid thing to say, he thought but it did the trick. Her face relaxed. "What's your name?"

She shook her head and smiled. Her teeth were brown and several were cracked. Strips of white and black flesh were jammed in gaps. She pulled her right hand from behind her back. The skin was gone, peeled away. The exposed flesh looked dry and cracked. Between her thumb and index finger, she held a white billiard cue ball.

Mack took a step back.

A cough, long and rough ripped forth. Her head tilted to the floor and she seemed to study her feet a moment as the coughs continued to rack her. A gurgling sound issued in the back of her throat. Her body convulsed and suddenly vomit spewed to the floor. Blood and undigested skin splattered her feet.

"Hungry," she said in hoarse voice. "Starving." Slowly she looked up at Mack.

"You...ate...?" He could barely catch his breath. His stomach twisted inside with the rancid smell of the vomit seeping into his nostrils.

Her arm moved like lightning. The cue ball flew forward. Mack had little time to react. His hands rushed to cover his face as he dropped to the hard floor. A window behind shattered, the sharp sound screeched in his ears as large unbroken chunks dropped from the frame and hit the marble floor.

This bitch was fucking crazy.

She sauntered toward him, swinging her arms lazily at her side.

Mack picked himself off the cold marble floor, black mirrored glass sparked the outside light into his eyes, forcing him to squint.

Through blurred sight, he saw people outside, a large group. At least twenty, a few he recognized.

They all stared at him, all frowning. Their eyes were dead, dull orbs. He bumped something, and the woman screamed in his ear. The shock punched him sideways, his hands automatically covered the side of his face.

Crunching glass got his attention. They were coming in through the empty window frame. Some seemed not sure of their steps and moved slowly forward, while others were very sure. They grimaced as if they saw something so disgusting, it made their insides boil.

Mack didn't want to admit it to himself, but he knew he was facing an army of the infected, yet, they'd gone past the virus and evolved into something more. Something hungry.

A small group advanced first, as more gathered at the broken window; faces bloodlessly white, eyes bloodshot and some were blood-red from burst capillaries or shattered veins.

The fastest amongst them wore a black as coal suit, his hair was neatly styled and he wore a nametag with his picture on the corner. This man was smiling.

The woman hissed in Mack's face. Mack, his full attention on the man advancing, shoved her aside, knocking her to the floor.

The black suited man was closing in, drawing nearer in slow even steps. He seemed to be studying Mack with intense curiosity; his eyes often squinting in thought or mistrust.

The woman stood, her body bent at one side. Blood ran from the corner of her mouth. She lunged at Mack, her fingers ripped into his neck. She was strong and the struggle hard. Her fingernails dug under his skin, pulled at the loose flesh. Pain jolted through his body; his head jerked involuntary. She leaned in as if to bite him, but he managed to get his forearm between her face and his.

Stretching, his hand grabbed a fist full of dirty, matted hair. He yanked her head back, raised his fist to end her now, when her eyes caught his attention. They weren't dead eyes like the others -- they held a sparkle only the living had. A certain sheen.

He released her and she hit the floor hard. Instantly, the woman struggled to her feet. She stood fully erect within seconds. She smiled; her tongue rolled over her broken teeth.

The front of her head exploded.

A small object bounced off his cheek. The ripped forehead skin hung down over her eyes. The bloodstained skull was burned, the blood dried and brown; a fragment of bone lay on his shoe. Not a single drop of blood escaped from the hole.

The woman stood, perfectly balanced until her body sagged and crumpled to the floor. Behind her stood the man wearing the black suit and clasped in his hand was a black bulky gun of a type Mack had never seen before.

"She failed," the man said. He motioned, pointing the gun over his shoulder. "They all failed." He frowned as if suddenly in thought. "Many in fact. Too many, except you." His eyes locked on Mack. "Why not?"

The army of the infected advanced, only a few steps behind the man in the suit. Mack back stepped. The dead stepped around the man as if he were a pillar or other obstacle.

"They don't sense me," the man said as if he's just read Mack's mind. "Pheromones." He smiled. "We can control them."

Switching his attention to the dead, Mack walked backward as fast as he could; keeping a safe distance between them and him. His back hit the cold metal elevator doors. Automatically his hands found the button.

"Wasn't meant to get airborne," the man said. "Everything wants to live. It evolved, just like them. But on you, it worked. It worked beautifully." He shook his head slowly. "It's a pity they're hungry. There are many questions you could help answer."

The elevator pinged and the doors swished open.

"Stop them and I'll give you every answer you want." Mack stepped into the elevator. He stared at the man in the black suit. "Well?" He pushed the button marked R.

"I'm sorry. Can't stop hunger, never could." He raised the gun.

One of the dead broke into a run; it brushed past the black suited man in its haste. Almost at the elevator, the dead man lunged at Mack, he jumped, sailed though the air like a perfect football tackle and dived forward.

The gun fired.

The body jerked from the impact, and hit the floor, across the elevator's boundary. Dark blood, almost black overflowed his lips and rolled down his chin, dripping to the carpet creating a small puddle near Mack's feet. The elevator doors tried to shut, but the corpse blocked them. They closed against his waist and jerked open.

The rest came fast now, as if suddenly realizing they could run. For them, the smell of his blood or pheromones or whatever would be strong to the hungry. To them it meant food. And dinner was trying to escape.

The elevator pinged.

Shit!

Mack bent down and tried to push the body out. It was incredibly heavy and the doors tried to close a second time; striking his shoulders painfully, they jumped open again. Fuck it! He grabbed the body by the head and pulled it inside. The group lunged at him as the doors slid shut. This time they locked into place.

He heard shots pound the door; luckily, not a single bullet punched through and the elevator slowly started to rise. His eyes went to the lighted floor numbers above the door. Soft elevator music played in the background.

It stopped on the thirty-eighth floor. A few stops short of the roof. Mack moved to the back of the elevator, and watched as the doors open. His hands balled into fists.

Mack had gone into survival mode. His brain switched from wanting to meet someone to help stop the loneliness, to a fight to get away, out of the city -- meet no one and be safe.

He had the feeling he'd just stepped into a whole world of trouble...or the truth. Both of them sucked.

The elevator doors slid open.

No one stood waiting. Instead, the opened doors revealed a glass wall, behind which was what looked like a science lab back during his school days; Bunsen burners, steel sinks, three rows of tables, computers on ever one and cables connected to small cylinder objects.

The elevator doors closed. Mack quickly pushed the door open button. He bent down grabbed the corpse and dragged it half out of the elevator as a doorstopper.

The elevator next to his one was on the ninth floor and not moving. He figured it was safe to assume they weren't following.

He looked down the hallway and seeing no one, he entered the lab. His ears strained for any sound and he walked as quietly as possible. Someone or something had pushed the elevator button. Otherwise why would it have stopped on this floor, and none others?

The lab was cold; shivers ran up and down his spine as he slowly walked past each table. Computers were running formulas, thousands of numbers rolled up the screens. One computer had frozen with a message box on the screen, Disallowed request, it read. He moved the pointer to the OK button and clicked it. Numbers raced up the screen, mixed with Roman and Latin style letters. Mack had no idea what any of it meant.

Damn it was cold in here.

Something bumped the wall. A short gasp followed.

He spun a hundred and eighty degrees and his eyes fell on a small closet he hadn't noticed before. Slowly he approached it.

His hand fell on the cold small knob and twisted. He pulled the door open and a broom handle was thrust in his face. There was little strength behind the action. He caught it inches from his left eye and yanked it free of the hands wielding it.

He stepped back. No light reached inside the closet. He could barely see a few white coats and a couple of suit jackets hanging on a rack. The closet was deeper than it appeared from the outside.

"Whoever you are, come out. I won't hurt you." He stared in the shadowed closet. He thought he could see a shape crouched down, trying to hide. "I can see you, so come on. Hiding there isn't good. They are in the building now."

The person whimpered at that comment.

"I promise, I won't hurt you."

The shape didn't move.

"Fine. Have it your way. I'm out of here before those dead fuckers reach this floor." He turned. "They're hungry, you know?" Still no reaction. Screw it. He headed for the door again and stopped.

Whoever it was, was just scared. He shouldn't be angry. Mack decided to try one more time.

"Last chance," he said, keeping his voice even.

The shape moved. "Are you leaving this place?" a quiet voice asked.

"Gonna try."

The shape stood up and stepped out of the closet. A kid stood in the light.

"Jesus," Mack muttered.

"Angie," the girl said. "I'm eight."

"I'm Mack. Do you understand what's happened?" The girl nodded.

"A virus was released," he started.

"Not a virus," the girl butted in. She shook her head. "It was a serum," she pronounced it Sir-Umm. "Daddy said it would help hundreds of thousands of people." She scrunched up her face in thought, struggling to remember. "Daddy said it was a fountain of...something."

Mack could see her struggling to remember. He was about to say it didn't matter, when she suddenly shouted, "Youth! Fountain of youth. It keeps everybody young forever."

"Fountain of Youth, huh?" More like the fountain of the undead, he thought but did not say. "We should go," he said.

The girl didn't move. Slowly, her head tilted and she stared at the floor.

"Come on," he encouraged.

"This is because of my daddy, isn't it?"

Mack sighed. "Angie," he said softly. Uneasiness filled his chest. They were coming. He could feel it. It was like a sixth sense, an image in his head, slightly visible against his sight. He saw rising numbers and suddenly realized this was the first floor or main floor, everyone came here, so naturally the elevator stopped. It was part of the program. "I'm way past blaming anyone for this mess. I just want to get out of here and now. They're coming."

She nodded and held out her hand. He took her small hand in his and held it firmly and headed for the elevator.

The door banged against the dead guy. He glanced at the elevator next to his. Quickly rising white lights above the door grabbed his attention.

"Oh fuck." He picked up the kid, surprised at how light she was and the fact she didn't seem to mind and fight against him. She knew the situation, knew what was going on.

He ran along the hallway, hoping to God there was a stairway at the end of it. There was. He pushed open the door, hard and fast as the ping of the elevator announced their arrival. The stairwell door hit something on the other side, knocked it out of the way.

Driven back, the man in the black suit lost his footing, missed the lower step and tumbled down. He bounced once on his back and hit the lower landing, headfirst. His neck twisted at a strange angle and the snap of bone was loud and sharp.

"Daddy!" the girl cried out.

"He was lost, sweetie," Mack said. He was relieved when she seemed to understand and hugged his neck tighter.

He closed the door softly behind him. As it shut he caught a glimpse of them. At least fifteen piled out of the elevator and spread through the hallway. Most went into the lab. Mack heard crashing and shattering glass. He shook his head as the door finally shut, at least none of them were headed this way.

He heard the pounding of feet on lower level stairs. That's why they didn't come this way...others were.

"We can't go down," he said more to himself than the girl gripping his neck tightly. "Gonna have to loosen up a bit there, Angie-sweetie. I gotta breathe."

"Please go," she begged, keeping the grip tight.

It isn't that bad, Mack figured, he could handle the tight hold for now and turned to the steps rising up. He had no idea what he was going to do once he reached the roof but the sound of feet below killed any thoughts of later. Now was what was important and he raced up the facing flight and the next two.

Mack was breathing hard when he reached the door to the roof. Angie's grip had tightened. "Loosen up," he ordered her. She did slightly and he pushed down the bar on the door.

Everything looked so different from up here. Slowly he walked to the edge. On all sides he saw burning buildings off in the distance, destroyed houses and offices, windows smashed, cars overturned.

Some of the truly dead lay on yards and in cars sweltering as they rotted. It wasn't so bad this high up, away from it all.

The city gates were somewhere out there, yet all he could see was destruction. The virus had truly gone airborne. There was nothing as far as he could see. Gray billows of smoke rose to the sky in all directions.

Memories flashed like images against the desolation of the city he had known his entire life: Him talking to a man in the black suit standing at his front door; a salesman: "It completely cleans the water system, attach it to the bottom of your tap and enjoy clean water...forever." He'd answered, "Forever is a long time." The salesman nodded. "And it's free."; his son in bed, pale faced; Helen crying, hugging her son, trying to awaken him from eternal sleep; Mack standing over the bed, helpless; Helen in the kitchen, yelling at him: "Do something!" A plate flying past his head, smashing against the kitchen door: "You worthless piece of shit!" Helen crying; Helen dead; the city in panic; riots, fires, death; the army called in -- police overwhelmed; martial law enacted and enforced; citizens dropping dead in yards, cars, streets; fleers shot on sight; a gate erected; thousands locked in the city; nights filled with gunfire; Mack staring at a blank television waiting for some kind of news. Nothing. Then one night all was silent and the next day he had walked.

"Mack?"

I love you, Helen.

"Maaaccccckkk."

The girl's voice destroyed the image of his memories, each like windows on a computer, suddenly closed as if someone had pressed the X button without his consent.

"Maaackkk," she sang. "Come baacckkkk, Maaaaaack."

He stared at the scenery, not completely sure the images had gone yet. The girl's singing forced him to the here and now. It wasn't easy, not with his breath being chocked from him...

What?

Mack gagged, snapped back to reality. Angie had her arms tightly around the back of his neck and her knee against his Adam's apple and the little eight-year-old girl pulled hard. He strained against her weight; Angie was practically hanging off his neck, her face twisted with the exertion. Her young muscles burning every ounce of strength they possessed.

Mack's vision blurred.

Angie's twisted face smiled.

Angie...closet...Mack...streets...Angie...no...food...Mack hungry...Angie the same. Angie...Angie...Angie. How the fuck was she still alive?

Her eyes sparkled with eight years old innocence. They sparkled, absolutely fucking sparkled with...hunger, as she opened her mouth.

Fear gripped Mack like never before. He watched her lean toward him, but her knees blocked any advance. His energy seeped into oblivion with each passing second. He tried to push her off him, but her interlocked fingers held firm.

The dead were coming and it didn't matter, he was about to join them. It hadn't taken long to search the floor and make their way up her here. Like before, he saw...steps, boots, sneakers and dress shoes.

Mack's vision blotched at the side like ink blots on paper that spread out in a large mess. His legs trembled, knees buckled and like a dead weight, he dropped to the gravel-coated rooftop.

The jolt knocked Angie's knee from his neck. Air, tasting like smoke and burnt meat, exploded into his lungs. He grabbed her skinny arms and raised them over his head. Angie shrieked. The innocent girl routine -- almost worked.

Roughly, he shoved her away from him. The rooftop edge had a tiny barrier, a two bar railing, her feet tripped against it and she fell screaming. Her arms flapped, looking, begging for something to grip. Mack stepped away.

He looked to the door. There was no time to go down and nowhere to hide. At the side of the door, he spied a fire hose of the type used for the top floors of a building that the fire brigade couldn't reach within seconds.

Mack rushed to it. In his head, he saw the rooftop door viewed from the bottom of the steps inside.

Christ, he had no time for thought. No time to change his mind, think of another way. In movies, under controlled conditions, this stunt always worked. He prayed it was the same in reality.

Grabbing the nozzle, he yanked a yard of hose free. It piled at his feet.

The door burst open.

He ran to the edge at the same time wrapping it around his waist. There was no time to secure the thick hose, Mack had to hold and hope.

The undead, mouths covered in blood, and one wearing a black suit jacket a size or two too small, stared at the hose a moment then looked up at Mack. They smiled.

He jumped.

Breakneck speed.

Air rushed around him. Windows flashed by at incredible speed. He fell for only a couple of seconds before the hose stopped with a forceful jolt and shot him toward a blackened window.

He braced for the impact.

He struck it hard, and bounced off.

Suddenly he was falling again. Then jolted to a stop. He looked up and figured the hose reel had come free. It had to be caught against the railing. He looked down. He was five or six floors from the ground. A little to the left was a car; next to it lay Angie's crumpled body.

Mack put his feet against the window and pushed away, praying the hose reel would hold. If he got enough of a swing, there might just be enough force to break the window. Big time pain was headed his way.

But God damn it, he didn't want to die.

Mack got a good swing going when a screeching sound of twisting metal terrified him. He hit the window, bounced again. Quickly, he braced his legs against the window and swung with all his might. He arched away from the window...

And dropped.

He slammed back first onto the car's roof. The force shattered all the windows, and glass sprayed the road.

Mack's eyes were open and he was breathing. Somehow, he was still breathing. A circular shape plummeted toward him from the roof. It took a second for his dizzy brain to realize it was the fire hose reel.

His back screamed in agony as he rolled sideways and dropped off the crushed metal. He hit the ground face first. Felt his nose shatter and the wetness of blood covering his lips.

Slowly he turned his head. Under the car, he could see Angie's hand laying in the gutter, a line of blood traced its way from her shoulder to her palm.

The fire hose reel missed the car. He heard it thump into Angie and fall sideways, clattering on the pavement. Her body jolted from the strike.

"Get up," he told himself and was surprised at how strained his voice sounded. His hand reached up, found the door's window frame and gripped it tightly. Using it for support, Mack slowly got to his feet.

The world around him was blurred.

He took a step forward. Almost fell but regained his balance at the last moment. Then took another step. And another, and another.

PAUL

By E.P. Spader

Breath burst into my lungs like a fast-spreading July wildfire. With it came an explosion of panic; my heart beat quick and irregular and sweat dribbled and pooled in cold, loose pores in my skin. I was shaking uncontrollably and my limbs seemed to twitch and writhe in a spastic melody directed by a foreign conductor. After a moment of this, a feeling of relief slowly crept in and with it came thoughts of Paul. I had to find him---my life depended on it.

Nothing seemed right. My left arm, which I knew was broken, didn't hurt even when moved. I was lying by the side of the road. It was dark, with only a few scattered, dim lights visible on the distant horizon. The others were milling about aimlessly, rummaging through the remains of broken-down cars lying dead in the road for God-knows-what. I didn't feel right. I felt as though I were dying. My head pounded mercilessly and everything was covered in a soft, bluish haze. I had to find Paul. He could help. He was the only one who could. I wished that I had some aspirin.

I got up with very little effort, favoring my left arm even though I didn't need to. It hung limp at my side and dangled there like a dead, broken branch teetering in the wind. A bone jutted painlessly out of pierced purple skin at an almost impossible angle. It looked gruesome. The others glanced at me and provided nods of support but could do little else to alleviate my anxiety. A quick look westward told me that that was the direction I need to go---toward the lights. Paul would be there.

I stumbled along slowly, hugging the side of the expressway in nearly complete darkness as I traveled westward toward the lights. My legs, filled with pins and needles, felt like a toddler's. Every so often I would stumble into a car blanketed by shadows near the guardrail or step into a rut and fall. No matter. I kept my eye on the prize and plodded forward despite desperate, fleeting notions of giving up and dying there in the road like a wounded animal. The others were there, too, following me as if I were some bizarre pied piper of Hamelin. They didn't talk. Like me, they just kept moving.

The sun was up by the time we reached the college---the source of the lights. The doors and windows of its main entrance were barricaded with a flotsam of oddments of wood, furniture and scrap metal. Some of the others began the long, tedious task of deconstructing the barrier, but I was smarter than that; I moved to the south of the building. The maintenance garages were there, and they'd be much easier to breach. A handful of others, taking notice of my plan, followed.

The folding, aluminum garage doors were locked, but barely sturdy. Finding a long piece of iron rebar, I constructed a makeshift lever and easily pried off the lock. The folding door swung up to reveal nothing but a rusted-out tractor and heaps of tools and spare parts buried in the darkness within. Beyond the darkness the faint glow of artificial light leaked from beneath a door. And beyond that, voices.

All at once, something in me changed that affected my fundamental reasoning. My pulse quickened. My eyes grew wide and thirsty. The voices, now deafening due to an escalating argument among, from what I could tell, two young men and a woman, rang heavily in my ears and acted as the catalyst that had me running for the door. In my haste, I clumsily knocked into a pail that flew end-over-end into a pile of debris. The door immediately flew open. In its threshold, silhouetted in a bath of fluorescent light, stood three people: two men and a woman. Paul was among them.

"Paul!" I screamed, sounding more like "Parr," with a deep-resonating gurgle. Constricted and dry, my throat was simply unable to wrap itself around the word. Again: "Paul!" Worse this time, resembling little more than a grunt.

A flash of light and thunderclap came in response as I was thrown back from the impact of the .12 gauge slug that burrowed deep into my chest. Unhurt and undeterred, I immediately got to my feet and continued my full-out sprint toward the door.

"No!" Paul screamed.

The throng of the others were piling into the maintenance garage behind me, but I reached Paul first. He was mine. They'd simply have to share the other pair amongst themselves.

"Paul," I tried again as I embraced him and held him still. Again, an incoherent croak. I was salivating. My eyes were saucers. I bit into the back of his head and felt the warmth of his blood trickle past my teeth. I managed to crack through his skull in less time than I ever thought possible.

His brain tasted like pink cotton candy.

OLD HABITS, NEW HABITS

By Arthur Sánchez

The Wednesday night meeting of Z.A.P.2, (Zombies are People, 2 -- the morons couldn't figure out how to incorporate a "T" into their name so they use a number), is well under way when Hammer and I get there. Hammer hates the place and it's always a struggle to get him to show up. He hates having to go to support group meetings. He hates that zombies aren't free to do what they are meant to do. But most of all he hates the group counselor -- Mrs. Finklestein. That's cause Mrs. Finklestein has it in for us. She doesn't think we're good zombies -- which to tell the truth we're not. So I had to make certain promises to Hammer just to get him in the building.

Of course, walking in Hammer plops himself down right by the door and refuses to go any further. At 6' 6" and two hundred and fifty pounds of rippin muscle nobody's going to change his mind anyhow. But that's all right cause tonight that's a good place for him to be. That, of course, means that I've got to take a seat in the "circle." That's Mrs. Finklestein's idea -- that all us zombies sit in a circle to support each other. I made a crack once about it being the circle of not life but nobody got it. Being dead these numb-nuts have less of a sense of humor than they did when they were alive.

"Robert," Mrs. Finklestein says in her fake cheery voice as I approach the group, "so nice of you to join us -- and almost on time, too." She smiles that big dumb-ass smile of hers -- as if she's said something clever. Stupid old cow hasn't said something clever since before they buried, then ate, Grover Cleveland.

"Bite me," I tell her as I take my seat. Poor old Hoskins, who's in the next chair, actually gives me a glassy stare and starts to lean over -- his mouth puckering as he tries to get his choppers working. Old goat ends up getting saliva on my coat.

"James!" Mrs. Finklestein shouts as she leaps up. Now there's a sight, 400 pounds of dead blubber wriggling to its feet. Even the support hose can't make that look appetizing. "For shame! We are not mindless animals. We are people, too. We can overcome our weaknesses. We are better than that."

I gotta say one thing for the fat cow, when she gets her dander up she can be damn impressive. That tone of righteous indignation in her voice has caused many a zombie to crumble with shame and remorse. Like they're to blame for being what they are. Hoskins rheumy eyes actually start to tear as he mumbles his apologies. I turn away in disgust. What's the point in living (or not living) if you gotta be like that?

"And Robert," Mrs. Finklestein says as she turns to me, blubber all aquiver, "I'd appreciate it if you kept a civil tongue in your head. Inflammatory statements such as that will not be tolerated."

"Sure," I say with a shrug of my shoulders, knocking some of the graveyard dirt off my coat and onto the floor, "love to. If you tell me where I can find a civil tongue I'll rip it out and keep it in my head. It won't be a problem cause I got this hole right back here where that cop shot me last year." I lift up my ponytail and show them where part of my skull is missing. The sight of exposed brain gets Hoskins quivering like a pervert at a tittie show.

Things might have blown up right then and there if Veronica didn't shown up. Sweet, sweet, Veronica, dead six years and guys still try to pick her up. Long black hair, big blue eyes, the graveyard pallor of her skin only making her sexier. Before she got caught, and forced to attend support meetings, she used to cruise the bars downtown for her meals. You know what I'm saying -- a real man-eater.

Veronica's stiletto heels clicking on the classroom floor draws everyone's attention away from Mrs. Finklestein's indignant face. To tell the truth, I think the old cow is glad for the interruption. There is only so much she could do to any of us, and she knows it. So instead of calling me on my bad attitude, she takes the easy way out.

"Veronica," Mrs. Finklestein purrs, "glad you could make it." Notice there's no mention of Veronica being later than Hammer and me. Of course, Veronica barely acknowledges her.

"Good," Mrs. Finklestein says to the assembled group, pretending like nothing's happened, "Now that we're all here we can begin."

Veronica takes an empty chair directly across the circle from me. She's wearing a black leather mini-skirt, black leather jacket with no blouse, and is carrying her favorite black leather backpack. What can I say? She's got her own sense of style. She drops the backpack by her feet and the thing hits the floor like a ton of bricks. Just like a woman, always packing too much.

She catches me staring at her and I give her my best 'good ole boy' grin. She sticks her tongue out at me -- that moist, pink, luscious tongue. It's still coated with the blood of her last meal. Oh, yeah, she's been eating flesh. I knew it the moment she walked in. There's something about a zombie who's been doing what comes natural. They don't slink. They don't slobber. They hold themselves proud. Of course, Veronica's ahead of the game cause she got an admirer down at the coroner's office. Perv lets her pick at the fresh meat when it comes in. No violation of her probation there.

"Robert?" Mrs. Finklestein's high-pitch whine cuts through my thoughts. "Why don't you start us off tonight? What have you done this week to break the old habits?" So the witch wasn't going to let my comments slide. She was getting revenge by making me take the floor. Well, that's ok cause this week I knew what I wanted to say.

Standing up I smooth out the folds of my overcoat and straighten my hair. I look around at the circle and take inventory: Mrs. Finklestein, Hoskins, Jackson, the newbie Patricia (she still picks her scabs and leaves bits of herself on the floor every week), Amos, Veronica, Raul, Johnson, Shirley, Hammer, Mike, and me. The gang is all here.

"Well, Mrs. Finklestein," I say in my best school-boy voice, "I had a good week. I figured out how to break all my old habits."

To my surprise, Mrs. Finklestein actually looks interested. "You did? How wonderful! Please, please, tell us how you did it."

I had their attention.

"Well, I was thinking about our situation -- the fact that we're all zombies -- and about how we all got to be zombies in different ways. Me and Hammer, we're the result of a military experiment gone bad, Hoskins works at the nuclear plant, Veronica was just too bad for Hell, you had a pact with the devil, and Jackson's wife put a voodoo curse on him."

"That's right," the old black man cried out. "But I got her back. I cooked her up in pot of jambalaya and served her with some nice fried okra. Yes, I did!"

"Anyway," I shout so as to not lose the floor, "what I realized this week is that zombies are being made all the time. We're part of the natural order of things."

Mrs. Finklestein starts to look like she is losing hope that I had anything inspirational to say. "Yes, Robert, that's true. But how does knowing our origins help in breaking our old habits?"

"It doesn't," I say honestly. "But it does help put things in perspective. See, there have always been zombies and there will always be zombies. The fact that the government lets us exist only goes to show that they've given up trying to wipe us out. Instead, they dog tag us and find ways of taking advantage of our undead status. Me and Hammer, we do side jobs for the military. Hoskins has been inside so many nuclear reactors that he's been categorized as hazardous waste."

"Just get to the point, will ya!" Veronica shouts with exasperation.

"Patience," I say holding up a finger, "is a virtue." Veronica answers me by holding up a finger of her own. God, I love that woman.

"Anyway," I continue, "that got me wondering why we're the bad guys? How come we're the monsters? Is it because we like to eat human flesh? No, cause that's been going on since people had pots to put their neighbors in. Is it cause we're undead? No, like I said, they found ways of using that too. Nope, the reason people fear us is cause we're undead, we like to eat human flesh, and we like to eat it while it's still wriggling." Several members of the support group were now sitting up in their chairs. The mere mention of eating flesh made their mouths water.

Mrs. Finklestein must have noticed the change too cause she's quick to react. "Yes, Robert, all this is true. So what is it that you realized?"

I smile. "That there's a way to eat our proverbial cake and have it too."

Patricia looks up from a particularly nasty scab she's been picking and frowns. "Is he talking about pastry or flesh?"

"What I'm talking about," and this is when I sweep back the folds of my coat and pull out my sawed-off shotgun, "is cannibalism." I let off with both barrels and blow Patricia's head clean off. Wet gobs of chewy brains fly in all directions and I don't know what's got their attention more -- my smoking gun or all that available meat.

"What's the meaning of this?" Mrs. Finklestein shouts as she jumps to her feet.

"The meaning of this," I say as I expertly reload the gun, "is that I've found the ultimate solution. People fear us cause we eat people. But what if we didn't eat living people? What if we only ate un-living people? It's not like they'd object, would they?" I fire the gun into Raul's chest leaving a bowling ball-sized hole. He looks dumbly at the ragged edges of flesh and starts to pick at it himself.

"That's insane," Mrs. Finklestein says with only the slightest quiver of fear in her voice. "How does that help society?"

"It doesn't," I say with a smile, "but it helps me. Oh, and Hammer too." I look back and the big man is up on his feet -- grinning.

"Hey, you jerk!" Veronica shouts. "What about me?"

"And you too, baby. I wasn't forgetting about you."

"Better not forget about me," she snarls back. She then reaches down into her backpack and pulls out a couple of butcher knives -- long and razor sharp. She leaps upon Mike and with a couple of quick swipes severs his head. Blood spurts everywhere and she immediately grabs the torso and begins to suck down the juices moaning with the pleasure of a fresh kill.

"You can't do this," Mrs. Finklestein says as she realizes the simplicity of my plan. She starts to slowly back up towards the window. "We're members of society. We have jobs. I know the Governor."

"Oh, but I can," I tell her. "See, Hammer and I have already spoken to some folks we know in the Federal Government and they're all for it. Like I told you, new zombies are being made all the time. Our numbers are starting to grow and it's causing concern. So me and Hammer, we made them a suggestion they couldn't resist and we got ourselves the first two licenses ever issued to hunt zombies. It's seasonal of course. Just to thin out the herd and prevent starvation." I hear a scream behind me and I turn to spot Hammer ripping Jackson's head off with his bare hands. Poor fool thought he could get past my partner in the midst of all the confusion. When I turn back, Mrs. Finklestein is making a run for the windows so I blow off her left leg. It's like watching a tower of jello hitting the ground.

"Hey," Hammer yells to me, spitting out bits of Jackson as he speaks. Boy never did learn to cover his mouth when he's chewing. "You promised I could eat her!"

I look down at Mrs. Finklestein's quivering body. Hoskins has already retrieved her severed leg and was happily caressing the limb as he gibbered to himself. It'd been years since the old boy had gotten any leg. "Don't worry," I call over my shoulder, "there's more than enough to go around." I reload my gun.

Surveying the room I see that not everybody is opposed to my plan. Amos and Shirley are sitting side-by-side happily sharing Patricia's remains. They shyly hold up fistfuls of bloody rib bones and nod their heads towards me. I nod back. My license only lets me bag 2 zombies a month so technically I'm done. But we could still put Mrs. Finklestein down as one of Hammer's kills. I walk over to the quivering mound that is Mrs. Finklestein and put the barrel of my gun to the base of her skull. The fat woman turns her terrified eyes towards me.

"Robert," she sputters, "you must resist the old urges. You must break the old habits. Zombies are people too." She actually looks hopeful that she can reason with me.

"No, Mrs. Finklestein," I say, "that's where you got it wrong. Zombies aren't people. Zombies eat people." Then I pull the trigger. It is perhaps the most satisfying kill I've ever made. Of course, I have to retrieve the head for Hammer. He was very insistent before the hunt began that he get to eat Mrs. Finklestein's brain. And you know Hammer, ain't nobody going to change his mind -- once it's been made.

HONOR BOUND

By Jennifer Schoonover

"You gonna marry me now, right, Cyrus?"

I remember sittin' in the loft---air so thick you were drownin' and the hay ridin' into my ass---thinking, over my dead body. Now, ten months later, that'un's exactly what it's gonna be.

Momma told me once that if'n I was gonna marry or breed, do it with a woman offa the mountain, an' above all else, stay away from the LeConte gals, 'cause despite bein' cousins, they was bad news. Now, Lolly LeConte was one of the prettiest gals I'd ever seen and she was after me like a flea onna dog. Oh, there'd been rumors, I suppose, but when she leaned over and showed me her goods and looked at me with those big swamp-green eyes, well... next thing I know I'm in her daddy's tobacco barn seein' heaven.

She waited six weeks before tellin' me she was in the family way. I figgered it wasn't like we were in the old days---hell, this here's the twentieth century and she can go about her own way and she'd be all right. I'd give her money, food, whatever she needed, but there ain't no way I was gonna marry her. Then she told her pa.

Donny LeConte was a big man, but more'n that. He was the seventh of the seventh and had been born with a death mask on his face. He could speak to the trees and could tell you why your crops died or your horse was ailin'. And, Lord, he could talk to ghosts and they'd lissen. He gave me a chance to set things right, holding my coondog by the scruff as I looked out from my window, Momma standin' behind me with her prayer beads cryin'. And as he tore my dog apart, I still swore I'd never marry her. Later, the 'lectric and phone was gone, and town bein' too far away, me and momma figgered on holin' up with a shotgun and a batch a chicken in the house to wait 'em out. That night we hear noises and shufflin' outside...

I never thought he'd take my momma, his own sister n'law. But that mornin' she was gone, blood and swampwater mixin' with the eggs still cookin' on the stove. That night looking outa my window, I seen her, standin' next to Granddaddy and Uncle Arnie, who had a bad day with a chainsaw nigh on two years ago. Nearly a dozen of 'em circlin' the house, starin' up at me with those damned milky eyes. Tried shootin' 'em a couple of times, but they paid it no mind. And seein' my pappy dead five years this past Christmas with his face half gone was 'nough to keep me screamin' for hours up in the attic. They was waitin' for something...

Then a couple weeks ago, Lottie joined 'em, holding a gray-green gurgling infant to one breast, her innards pourin' out from between her legs. 'Parrently, I'm a daddy after all.

Soon as the moon went down this evenin' I knew they was coming, only this time, I hear them tear down the back door. I went up to the attic where I've been hidin' out with my momma's prayer beads. The last chicken was et four days ago and I'm tired. I can hear them in the house comin' up the stairs. I guess it's finally time to meet the in-laws....

THE WALKING WOUNDED

Emily M. Z. Carlyle

Nick met Mr. Birnbaum on the stairs. "Good evening, Mr. Birnbaum," he said. He was known in his apartment building as a polite, well brought-up young man.

Mr. Birnbaum didn't talk, but his smile was sufficient response. It didn't scare Nick the way it did some of the neighbors' smaller kids. "Dad sent me down to the store for some milk." He deliberately wouldn't mention the other person his father had him run errands for. "Is there anything I can get you?" he asked, although he knew zombies don't eat.

Mr. Birnbaum's head seemed about to roll right off of his shoulders when he shook it -- he was quite old. Nick said goodnight then and went on his way, feeling vaguely triumphant. His father didn't like him talking to the Birnbaums.

"Zombies are vile and nasty," he had a habit of saying. "And they smell bad."

"Mr. Birnbaum doesn't," Nick would retort. "He buys more deodorants and air-fresheners than anyone I know. He alone probably keeps some cosmetics factory in Asia in business."

At that point his father would always bring forth his main

argument: zombies were violent and dangerous, which anyone with half a brain -- dead or alive -- knew wasn't true. A zombie was like a loaded gun in the wrong hands, true; but left to its own devices, it was meek, somewhat pathetic and kind of sweet.

Mr. Birnbaum and his wife were babes in arms next to Mrs. Roberts from the second floor, not that Nick's dad would ever believe that. So far as he was concerned, Mrs. Roberts was simply a beldame with certain needs -- an aged lady first, a retired schoolteacher second, and a vampire only a distant third.

"You're only being such an asshole because Mom left, and the guy she went with is fully human, so that's really no excuse." Nick always thought so during his father's rants, but he'd only said so once, and the following day the school nurse had threatened to call a social worker. Ever since then he kept his thoughts strictly to himself.

Nick hurried down the dark street from the convenience store. He skirted the half a dozen ghouls squatting around the burning barrel on the corner and made a beeline for the ill-lit entrance to his building. In his shopping bag the milk carton collided with the disposable plastic cage. The mice inside the cage squeaked in unison.

When Nick was five years old, he woke up one night to find a face floating, pressed against the outside of his bedroom window. It was only upon its third appearance that he recognized Mrs. Roberts. She kept coming to leer at him through the long nights of his childhood, but he never invited her inside, and he never told anyone.

She stopped coming soon after Nick's tenth birthday.

Nick suspected her preference for baby mice tied in with her choice of occupation, not to mention the night terrors of the building's youngest residents. It was a private suspicion, though, never voiced. Nick loved his father, but he couldn't find it in himself to trust the old man's judgment.

The mouse cage was deposited on Mrs. Roberts's doorstep; the doorbell was rung briefly. Nick lost no time running up the six flights of stairs to his door, knowing she could hear him every step of the way, not caring.

His dad didn't look up from their old TV set when Nick handed him the change, so he probably wouldn't notice the missing quarters which were the price of Tessa's favorite chocolate bar, currently nestled in Nick's pocket. He planned to give it to her next Tuesday, in Human Science class.

He wouldn't make plans beyond that point. The thought of her reaction to his silly gesture was scary enough without envisioning what it would be like to introduce Tessa, a daughter of werewolves, to his father.

Nick was resolved to take things as they came, one step at a time.

CAT FOOD

By Garth Wright

Jim Turner did not know at first what he was dealing with. The woman looked malnourished, wore torn jeans and a t-shirt caked with dirt, and acted completely out of her mind. She came at him lurching as though half-drunk, or on such a drug high he expected her to pass out in mid-stride. Unfortunately she didn't. She made a bee-line for him, despite the other pedestrians sharing the sidewalk, all giving her a wide berth. Her hands looked arthritic, fingers bent in a claw-like fashion, and he barely caught her frail wrists in time as dirty fingernails came at his face.

A few people paused briefly to watch her feeble struggles as he held her, and then moved on, but nobody questioned, nor stopped to help either of them, even as he looked around confused. He relaxed his grip as she stopped struggling, and she collapsed against him, fingers curled in his shirt. Surely she couldn't be alone, yet nobody in the crowds gave either one of them another passing glance. He patted her awkwardly on the back, consoling her with a "There, there, no harm done," and looked around for an excuse to slip away from the despondent woman.

When she seemed to show no signs of letting him go, he sighed heavily, making up his mind. "Listen," he said gently, "I'll take you some place where you can get help. Maybe to a phone. Do you have someone you can call?"

She shook her head slowly, suddenly realizing as though for the first time his presence since her initial attack, and pulled away from him. Glancing up and down the street, he suddenly feared she would dart out into the heavy evening traffic.

He hurried up to her, grabbing her arm. "Let me help you." Her eyes met his, his words barely sinking in. "Do you have a name?"

Her mouth opened and closed, as though searching for words. When she found her voice, it was cracked and dry. "I don't remember."

"Will you come with me, let me get you help?"

She nodded, and swooned. "Easy does it." He held her arm, feeling awkward, and guided her away from the curb. "My apartment is close, just a block away. If we need to we can call for an ambulance or cop from there." He very much regretted not owning a cell phone suddenly. He wasn't sure he wanted this woman in his apartment at all. He should've left work on time, and then he wouldn't be in this situation.

He'd just been telling his partner George at the lab that he didn't need the overtime that bad, the car was almost paid off (though it needed a new alternator, and until he had the money it would sit in the parking lot), and his credit cards weren't overdue this month. But no, he'd told the manager he'd take the hours since Sarah on the swing shift was on pregnancy leave. And now here he was, stuck with some junkie wanting to claw his eyes out, going to his apartment, where she would probably puke before they even called anyone. Was it worth the karmic brownie points?

Minutes later, they both stumbled up the two flights of stairs to his place, Jim supporting the woman who obviously felt obliged to dump all of her weight upon him (not that she weighed much, maybe ninety-five?). The hallway remained empty as he leaned her against the wall and fumbled the key into the lock. He wasn't in the mood to answer questions of prying neighbors anyway. The old lady in the corner apartment didn't even have her head poking out. He must've timed it perfectly while she was visiting the can.

"Okay now," he urged, lifting the woman back to her feet, "I need you to start thinking of someone to call, whether you want an ambulance or cop, or your family." As they walked in, he grimaced at the smell of kitty litter. Not that this lady will notice. She smells worse. He guided her over to the couch, somehow managing to kick his cat and the laundry onto the floor as the woman dropped down. "We've got company, Rasputin." The cat glared at him and curled back up in the laundry.

Jim scrambled around the room, searching for the phone. Why didn't he ever put it by the charger where he could find it? He dug through the mail on the table, and beneath the pizza boxes, wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans in anxiety. The bedroom! He'd spoken to his mother last night before bed. Sure enough, the phone lay on the floor in a pile of sheets. He walked hurriedly back to the woman, but her eyes were closed, not registering his presence in the least.

He shook her gently. She didn't budge. "Miss? I have the phone here. Lady?" She looked so pale and lifeless. Suddenly cold chills shot up his spine. What if she's dead? He grabbed her wrist searching for a pulse. Nothing! He checked her neck. Nothing there either. "No! Wake up! You can't die here," He covered his face with his hands. "My landlord will kick me out."

Now he supposed he should call the cops. What an idiot he was, taking some junkie to his place. He should've gone to some place public. Now there would be questions, people pointing, rumors, and hell to pay. His mother would probably quit calling and sending him money.

He went to the refrigerator, searching for a beer. Nothing but expired milk. Well, his grandfather never seemed to mind the taste. He poured some into a glass and drank it down, grimacing. Now he could think. He would have to do what was right. He walked back over to the corpse, but found her sitting up, eyes staring at him.

For a second, his heart leaped to his throat, but the shock was quickly replaced by joy. "You're alive! You scared the hell out of me. I thought you'd died."

She didn't smile, nor did she respond. Her eyes stared at him with a strange mixture of loathing and something akin to hunger, and they never blinked.

He froze where he stood, suddenly unable to approach her. "The phone." He motioned in her general direction, and leaned back in what he hoped was a casual manner. "It's, uhm, right there next to you. That is, if you're ready to use it now. If you, you know, uhh, remember someone you can call." He swallowed. "Would you like some milk?"

Still she did not respond verbally, nor did her expression change as she slowly stood. Her hands once more looked prepared to gouge out his eyes. Then she fell to the floor.

At first Jim thought she tripped. Then rapidly it dawned on him that the motion was more of a pounce as his cat let out an ear-splitting wail. The woman sat on her knees, huddling over Rasputin. Blood ran from between her fingers where they dug through flesh and fur, and her teeth were buried into the cat behind its head. Before he could figure out her actions in any semblance whatsoever of a rational thought, Rasputin stopped squirming.

He surged forward trying to pull her head and hands off the cat. "Stop eating my cat!" he shrieked, giving her hair a hard tug. Her head whipped up, hissing at him. Blood and gore dripped from her sanguine chin, her eyes bloodshot and angry. Before he could react, her hand shot up. Filthy claws raked his cheek as he threw himself back. "What the hell?" he gasped, crawling away from her. If he made it to the kitchen, maybe he could scare her off with a knife. There was no karmic brownie point for helping this person. This was a karmic backhand. His progress stopped when his head contacted the counter.

As he watched in horror, she sucked her bloody fingers clean of the gore, one by one. The curdled milk in his stomach threatening to heave itself back up. She grabbed the cat's tail and tossed it across the room where it landed with a wet slap next to the lamp. Then she smiled, licked her lips slowly as she fell forward on her hands and knees, crawling toward him.

"Take what you want!" Jim shrieked, "You can have the cat! I won't stop you again. Stay away!"

Whether she heard him or not, she gave no sign, but continued crawling toward him. There was no sign of the frail woman now, only a bloodthirsty, cat-eating psychopath making its way toward him. He kicked his feet at her, but she pinned them down with unnatural strength, her nails digging through his pant legs. He threw a punch at her, and her hands were there as well, blocking each blow as though he were nothing but an angry toddler. She bore him down, her body pressing against him. Her breath stank of dirt and dead cat as she brought her face to his own, a black tongue darting out to lick his neck, traveling up along his chin, tasting him. Though he struggled, he could not move.

From the other side of the room, he faintly registered the sound of someone knocking, though it merged well enough with the thudding of his heart that he almost denied it. He weakly called out "Help!" as the black tongue darted into his open mouth.

But as fortune would have it, the visitor at the door must have heard his screams, for the door opened and a shadowy figure walked in. He was saved! Hands grabbed her, lifting her off of him, dragging her back to the couch. He didn't know his savior; he'd never seen the man before. He shook his head, taking in the mess, including the cat, with a sweep of his eyes.

The man walked back over to him, extending a manicured hand to help him up. He was dark of skin, well-dressed, and when he spoke, his words were heavy with some European accent. "I am sorry. She hasn't developed any etiquette yet."

Jim stood on shaky legs. "She ate my cat," he said weakly.

"Oh yes. That." The man shook his head in disgust. "I thought she had better taste."

Better taste? "Who is she?" Jim asked, "Who are you?"

The man, though, was walking away from him, back to the woman. "My dear, you knew better than to run away again," he scolded, "I can always find you. And you've made such a mess of yourself this time."

She looked up at him as he approached. "I'm hungry," she whined, clutching at his pant legs.

The man reached down and pulled her gently to her feet. "You must promise not to run away again."

Jim shook his head in bewilderment. "So what's wrong with her?"

Before he could register the movement, the man was standing next to him, fists wrapped in Jim's shirt, holding him off the ground. "Nothing is wrong with my bride. How dare you!"

"But she ate my cat!" Even as the words came out, he knew he should've held his tongue. The man tossed him against the wall, where he landed next to his dead feline.

"You insult my bride," the man's face twisted angrily, spit flying from his mouth. "Does your cat look eaten? I still see it. If she ate your damn cat, would it be lying there?"

Jim turned defiantly. "You need help! You both need a doctor! Get out of my apartment!"

The man seemed about to charge him, took a deep breath, apparently reconsidering that course of action. "Very well," he said in a calm voice, despite the rage in his eyes, "We shall go." He motioned for the woman to follow, and she dutifully fell in behind him.

As the two approached the door, the man paused, looking Jim in the eyes. "You are lucky to live in such civilized times. Once, this would have been settled differently. As it stands, there is little harm done, yes?"

Jim nodded, willing them to leave faster.

"Come along dear," as he walked out the door. However, she too paused. She wrung her hands, looking at Jim and her husband. He turned, raising a single eyebrow. "What is it? Haven't you troubled this gentleman enough?"

She reached past Jim and grabbed the body of Rasputin. "He said I could have the cat," she said hurriedly. The door swung shut behind them.

A NEW YEAR'S TALE

By Dave Bartlett

"Of all the God damn nights, why now!"

"How should I know? And watch your language, He seems to be mad enough as it is!" shouted Walt Miller over the wind that whipped the snow in entwining "S"-shaped cyclones around his head.

"Well Walt," hollered Ned back at his equally intoxicated companion, "He should've known better than to call up the biggest storm North-fucking-Carolina has ever seen on New Years Eve!"

"Maybe if you hadn't drank so much we would've stayed on the road," said Walt, traces of vitriol in his voice.

"Walt, do you see the conditions? This road is windy anyway! Yeah I drank, but come on, sober I would've done it too!"

"Ned, you told me, 'I'm not going to drink too much, I'm going to be careful.' Well here we are," said Walt, his voice a low, seething baritone as he tried to hold back his anger, "in Podunk, North Carolina, stuck on some backwoods side road, and we ain't near nothin'."

"Didn't even know it snowed like this in North Carolina. God damn not supposed to be like this."

"Ned, would you watch your mouth? Seriously."

"You tell me you have family down here," yelled Ned, ignoring Walt's comments as he stumbled around from the back of the 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee they had driven all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma, "I didn't expect your inbred, retard auntie and her dogs!"

"Leave her out of this," said Walt angrily as he came around from the front of the car, his nice, suede shoes absorbing the moisture from heavy, wet snow that had piled on the roadside at a good eight inches in depth.

"I'm angry is all," retorted Ned, his foppish mat of dirty blonde hair whipping into his face.

"I thought there were going to be more. I know my Aunt Doreen ain't the sharpest tool in the shed, but when I got her invitation, I thought more people would go. I didn't think we were going to be the only ones."

"Well you should've done checked with your relatives and seen who RSVP-ed!"

The party had not been particularly exciting, thought Walt, using the word "party" extremely liberally. Knowing that there was not much going on back in Oklahoma, he figured why not go and drive out and check on his old aunt. He hadn't seen the elderly woman since he graduated high school, about 10 years ago.

The only reason he invited Ned Jenkins was because the poor guy had lost his girlfriend, and his entire social circle was based around her. Walt was the only one in the office who really even got along with him. Ned was. . .crass would be the best word to use. In his college days, Ned had been a bit of a liberal, attending rallies and growing his hair out down his back. He was a real tree-hugging, anti-establishment hippie in those years.

As far as Walt knew, it had been the Army that straightened him out. Now Ned was the office Tech Guy, and he was a Sales Representative for Texas Instruments branch in Oklahoma. Texas Instruments basically had a stranglehold on calculator sales to the country's high schools, both public and private.

Despite being in the armed forces, Ned had remained fairly liberal in his politics, and often talked a lot of garbage about the mostly Republican-run state and national government. He also didn't care much for religion, which Walt could understand, even if he didn't care for his occasionally vocal disdain of Walt's devotion to Baptism. Ned also was in support of the homos. That made him uncomfortable, but Walt had never met one with Ned when they went for drinks after work or anything, so he just tried not to bring it up if Ned went off on a rant when they were knocking a few back.

Now here was this man Ned, leaning against Walt's car, piss drunk, his Khakis & light jacket getting soaked in the wet weather.

"I'm telling you man, your aunt is nuts!"

"Leave her out of this man," said Walt again. "It ain't her fault you got drunk and drove us off the road in the middle of the woods, in a snowstorm!" shouted Walt, raising his voice as the biting wind howled through the trees.

"Sure it is," retorted Ned as he trudged through the snow, warmed by whiskey, toward the shade of a looming willow tree. "She thought your whole family was coming, so she had too much to drink. And she just was offering and offering, the fuck am I going to say, 'no?" blurted Ned, incredulously.

"All I know is you promised. You promised you'd stay sober enough to drive us back to Charlotte and the hotel."

"It's not even that much of a drive!"

"It's an hour."

"Yeah, well, your aunt lives down all these windy-ass roads off the interstate, in some hick town in nowhere! No wonder your family didn't show. Though I mean, Scrabble and Dick Clark," slurred Ned, "That was a fuckin' party man. And she kept talking about that reporter guy on the Good Morning Show, Abner Hollis, all fuckin' night!"

"So, she liked him. He was a North Carolina man doing stories on a little North Carolina towns."

"He vanished man! Three years ago! Move on! He was goin' to do some story on a town that ain't even on the map. Feature their people. Probably a bunch of inbreeds!"

"I know Ned, I heard her story too. It was called Samson, the town."

"Never found him huh. Maybe he liked Samson too much. Or they liked him. Fresh meat, yum-yum."

Walt, getting progressively more infuriated with his smarmy, so-called friend who was spitting his hospitality back into his face, removed his baseball cap, scratched his brown crew-cut, and looked diagonally to the right in order to avoid the baby-face soldier-turned-computer nerd's self-satisfied, intoxicated glare.

"I for one know I enjoyed seeing my aunt. Even if the rest of my family, who live closer than me, decided that they did not."

"Man that's why none of them went! Because they see her too much! Your aunt's a kook man. She has all them clown dolls, and you saw her talking to them like they were people."

"Let's go into the car, huh. I'm freezing."

"Yeah you know, you are pretty calm for someone who is more shit-faced than me."

"I hold it well."

Walt climbed into the driver's side seat, and Ned decided to go into the back seat and stretch himself out. Neither man could see far through the windows due to the ferocity of the storm, but Walt looked anyway, his dark brown eyes staring into the blinding white. In the rustling wind that crackled the branches, he could hear a thousand tiny explosions. Explosion. Fuck not now. The therapy he went to when he was younger helped him cope. He didn't need to do this now. Not while drunk. Not ever.

"Hey Ned?"

"Yeah, what is it man?"

"I'm going to go the bathroom outside, I'll be back."

"Hope your piss don't freeze."

Tempted to say the same about his companion's brain, he instead bit his tongue and stumbled out into the snow.

He had to fight the wind just to make it to the fringe of the forest where he would relieve himself. He had never been a man to piss on hospitality, but he didn't want to intrude on his aunt when she asked if the two boys wanted to stay the night in her small, rickety home. So instead here he stood, frigid, pissing in the snow.

The road had been plowed when the two men drove to his aunts, but a good 3 or 4 inches had piled up on the small street in the time between when they went to his aunt's and when they left. It was serpentine and unlit, winding and curving like a drunken snake leaving a trail in the desert.

Ned honestly had been driving decently, and may not even have been that drunk. But when they hit this particular turn, he had been going much too fast, and now they were stuck in an embankment. This much snow down here in North Carolina. It seemed unnatural. He had seen it when he went to Boston College, but never in Oklahoma or here in the south.

His time in Boston had been interesting. While BC had been a politically moderate school in comparison to other institutions in the city, his fairly conservative upbringing made him feel awkward, even at a Jesuit establishment. Everyone there wanted Clinton in office in '96, he had been a Dole guy. But he voted Clinton.

His political convictions weren't strong to begin with, and anyway, after the events of the two years prior, he just wanted companionship. So he voted, like his frat brothers, for The Other Guy. And those guys had made him feel comfortable. They knew about his loss, but they didn't patronize him ever. He was one of the guys. And you don't piss on hospitality. When you do, you piss in the snow.

Walt unzipped his fly, and released the various drinks he had consumed that evening. After he was done, he turned to walk back to the Jeep to stay some facsimile of warm. That said, the car was not starting and consequentially, the heat wouldn't work.

He tugged at the zipper on his pants, but it wouldn't give. It was caught in the fabric. He pulled harder and harder, exerting too much effort for somebody as uncoordinated as he.

"Damn it," muttered Walt, as he tugged. Finally, the zipper gave way, and popped clear off his pants, landing in the snow.

"Oh now of all the things," he grumbled, and reached down to pick it up, hoping in vain he could reattach it. He had planned on wearing these pants again tomorrow.

As Walt bent over, his foot caught the edge of something buried beneath, and he stumbled forward, his face and body awash in snow. In the process, he kicked up a flurry and covered the zipper in a maelstrom of white.

He didn't even scream or curse. Instead, he knelt in the snow, and turned his head to the sky, his ballcap helping to partially obscure the falling moisture. He looked to the heavens, and asked Him one question: "Why?"

He started laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. The laughter gradually gave way to tears. At first it was a sniffle, then it became the drunken sobs of a desperate, empty man. Walt heard the car door open, and footsteps approach him.

"You okay, you've been out here forev--" Ned caught himself mid-sentence at the sight of his friend on his knees in the middle of a snowstorm, sobbing, his head in his hands.

"What's the matter man," asked Ned, going over to his companion, and standing over him on the edge of the woods, looking down.

"Leave me alone Ned," choked Walt quietly.

"Look, Walt, I've never really seen you show emotion to begin with. Laugh, cry, nothing. This is weird for me."

"It's weird for me too Ned," said Walt, looking up, his eyes glistening, his square, stubbled jaw streaked with tears.

"Let me be, I need time to think."

"It might help if you talk about it."

"No!" said Walt, raising his voice in a rare moment of passion. "No it won't. I talked about everything for years, and look at me now."

"You're a successful guy, a nice guy. And you ain't stupid," said Ned, thinking of anything positive to say.

"You know how I got into college, Ned?"

"How?"

"Because of my father."

"What, does he have money?"

"No."

"You know how I got my job?"

"Your dad."

"You're a smart guy too Ned."

"Does your dad have connections in high places?"

"I guess you could say that. Now he does anyway."

"I don't get it."

"It's okay, you don't have to. But just let me think, okay."

"At least do your thinking, if that's what you are going to call it, in the car. It's God damn cold out here."

"As the Lord as my witness, if you use His name in vain one more time tonight, or ever," growled Walt, a raging intensity seeping into his voice, "I will cold-clock you in the face right where you stand."

"Jeez, get all creepy about God will you," muttered Ned, as he turned his back.

Now Walt was standing.

"It's not creepy, you bastard, It's not creepy, and you saying that hurts!"

"Look, Walt, man,"

"No, 'man', okay, I try an' not be too bad about it, but I need Him, okay. I need God. I need Him now as much as I ever did. There are days where I forget why I'm even here, and having that faith, it might sound stupid to you, but it keeps me from going over the edge."

"I'm sorry, I wish you could have told me before."

"I have. You just don't listen. You don't care about my beliefs. I'm just a simple country kid who blindly worships for no good reason, right?"

"I never said--"

"I have my reason now. Maybe it was blind faith because of my upbringing before. But now I have my reason, and now my faith helps keep me strong. God bless my parents for raisin' me right."

"Hey, right and wrong is all subjective--"

"Don't get like that Ned!" screamed Walter over the driving fury of the blizzard as the wind seemed to pick up again and swirl the flakes every which way.

"To me, Ned, it's right. My daddy raised me right. He raised me right. My daddy raised me right . . ."

Repeating this sentiment over and over, Walt fell to the ground crying again, and Ned approached him to offer consolation. Instead he was shoved to the ground.

"Stay away." Said Walt, with a quiet demonstrativeness.

As Ned put his hands in the frigid snow to help push himself up, his hands came into contact with the same thing that Walt had tripped over before. He started to dig at the snow, until he uncovered a warped sign with faded, black writing.

Samson, 1 mile

Ned stood up, incredulous.

"Hey Walt."

"So help me, Ned--"

"No come here. It's a sign, buried in the snow."

"I don't care," said Walt, sniffling, no longer crying.

"No you do. It says 'Samson, 1 mile.'"

"You're kidding."

"No I'm not. And I might be crazy, but I think there is a trail that cuts through the woods here. There's a break in the trees. Never noticed it before, what with all the snow and shit."

Walt ambled over to his buddy, and sure enough, there was the sign, written in plain English.

"What do you think?" asked Ned.

Walt looked at his friend, confused.

"You want to try that path. See if we can get to the town, maybe someone knows someone with a tow truck or something."

"I don't know," said Walt, stoically, gradually reverting back to his usual demeanor after his meltdown in the snow.

"Well otherwise we just sit here until morning and hope someone else actually is dumb enough to drive down here too."

"It's the middle of the night, I don't want to get lost."

"Fine, play it safe. I'm going."

"No wait," said Walt, "I'm going with you."

"Anything in the Jeep we need?"

"Yeah."

Walt went back to the Jeep, popped the glove compartment, and pulled out a small switchblade. He was worried, because as soon as they uncovered the sign, one thought had been reverberating in his head

Why would a town nobody was sure even existed have it's own road sign?

The two men trudged through the forest path, the surrounding area possessing an eerie calm. The snow had driven off all the animals, and the only noise was the shrill howl of wind through the trees. The two men walked mostly in silence, except for a brief period right before reaching the end of the trail.

"Hey Walt."

"Yeah."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"We both know that isn't true."

"I am okay. I was really drunk before though. A lot of stuff that shouldn't have came out did."

"I'm sorry for being such an asshole though."

"It's fine."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Depends, what is the question about?"

"Your father."

"It was the Oklahoma City bombing."

"Wait what?"

Walt was silent. Then, it clicked in Ned's head. College essays and people who knew Walt from father-son workdays at his father's office, everything from before made sense to Ned.

And then they were silent. They remained silent as they passed the first unlit, ramshackle home. And the subsequent homes they saw thereafter. They both knew they had found Samson.

Walt stopped when they came upon what appeared to be a town center situated within the forest. It was small, a general store and the Town Hall. Situated a decent distance beyond the two places, with just one isolated shack in between, was a small, run-down church.

"So," said Ned, looking to his companion. "Now what?"

"We look for signs of life I guess. Some way to get the hell off that road and back to the hotel."

"Walt, I hate to break it to you, but I ain't seen one car in front of any houses since we been here. I seriously doubt that this town has a tow truck."

"There must be one car in this place."

"I don't know. We got here by a footpath, remember? Don't think no car could fit down that."

"Well then we'll see if somebody has a phone at least. They can call a tow-truck to meet us on the roadside."

"I don't see phone lines, Walt."

Walt looked up into the snow, which had slowed to a moderately paced flurry. As it swirled down onto his head, he saw that, in this isolated woodland town, there were indeed no phone lines, or any sort of power lines.

"Well regardless Ned, I think we really should try to get out of the cold."

The two men looked around at the town's deserted, snow-covered center. They had passed roughly 15 houses on the way in, and, while the visibility was limited, it looked like there were a few more beyond the church. There was not a lit window to be seen. Finally they decided to settle underneath an overhang on the porch of the dilapidated general store.

The two men decided to sit down on the creaking, wormhole-ridden wood of the stoop and stay awake. Neither man's jacket provided much warmth, and both felt the drain of the elements on their cognition and stamina.

"Want me to knock on the door?" asked Ned.

"People are sleeping, it'd be rude."

"Yeah but this is downright dangerous staying out in this weather. We need to get inside."

"Fine, knock."

Ned stood up and went toward the general store. As he did, the rotting, wooden door creaked open a crack with a strong gust of wind. It apparently hadn't been shut tight.

"Well ain't that creepy," said Ned, in a mild state of bewilderment.

Ned pushed the door open further, and stepped inside.

"Get back here!" hollered Walt. "That's trespassing! We're going to get ourselves in trouble!"

"Relax, they'll understand."

"You're an idiot, you really are. Your mama done dropped you on your head."

Walt crept in behind his bolder companion. It was like walking into a crypt. The dust was palpable, and it filled up his lungs, causing him to cough rather violently. The shelves were stocked, yet cobwebbed, as though not a soul had laid a hand on them in years. Along the front counter was archaic honey candy in a packaging that looked straight out of the 1930's. And, as he searched for a light switch, Walt discovered that there was not one to be found.

There were spots on the wall where it appeared a candle could be placed, however. Unfortunately, neither man had even a lighter, let alone a candle. That was when both Walt and Ned heard footsteps coming from a back room, toward a little door in the rear right-hand corner of the store.

"Get out, come on," insisted Walt in a raspy whisper.

"No let's stay. Maybe this guy will help us out."

The door opened and out came a very tall man obscured by shadows.

"If I find ya done stole anything, I'm gon'a shoot you where you stand and not ask no questions!" bellowed the man in a voice that could only be termed as a perpetual bellow.

"Sir!" said Ned excitedly, his voice crackling a bit, "we were stuck out in the cold! Our car broke down, could you help us?"

"Who in the heck are you?"

"My name is Ned, this is my friend Walt. Our car, it broke down out on the road about a mile from here. We saw a sign, it said your town was here. We were hoping maybe you could give us a hand."

"You mean you ain't from here?"

"No sir, we just wanted to get some help."

"We done got a couple of outsiders," muttered the man aloud.

"We're truly sorry," said Walt, who was crouched down behind the first of the three aisles in the store with Ned. Both had ducked at the sight of the huge form emerging from the back.

"Well show yourselves," said the man, walking closer.

Ned stood up quickly, Walt with a bit more hesitation. Ned, not exactly Mr. Social, was very anxious to make a new friend here if it meant saving his own skin and getting to the comforts of their Holiday Inn.

Walt saw the man ambling toward them in the darkness, and couldn't make out any discernable features in the black of the store. Only that he appeared middle-aged, had a grown-out bowl cut, and had to be six foot five, his noticeable hunch taken into consideration.

"Nice to see you boys," said the man as he put both his arms around the back of the two men's shoulders. Walt noticed he was wearing overalls, but nothing under them. His odor was wretched. He smelled like a combination of body odor and human feces. Walt felt a lump start to rise in his throat.

"Come back here, come with me," said the man, escorting them into the room from which he had emerged.

Walt was afraid to open his mouth; afraid the man's foul stench would incite vomit. But Ned made small talk.

"So what's your name?"

"Kane. Not like Abel's brother though. Kay, eh, en, ee."

"That's a nice name."

"No it's not. It's a strong name. Nice names are for faggots." Kane paused. "Like that journalist man. He was a faggot. Last outsider we had in town before you boys."

"Journalist man?" asked Ned.

"Yeah, forget his name. But he had a weak name."

Walt stiffened up. Kane noticed.

"Why so tense boy?" asked Kane, opening the door to the back room.

"Just cold," muttered Walt, not exactly lying.

The three men walked into the back room, and stepped into hell. Walt looked into the small room, his mouth agape, and Kane shoved the two men in.

It was small, no bigger than Walt and Ned's hotel room, bathroom not included. Atop the wall directly before them was a candelabra that contained six candles to illuminate the room. The wax dripped from the candles and onto a dirty, bare mattress that was attached to a rusting metal bed frame. That was the only piece of furniture in the room aside from an old wooden chair.

The stench of decay and excrement in the room was overbearing, and Walt saw it was infested with flies. Infestation was not an exaggeration. There had to be at least 400 flies in the small room. He saw why. In the back corner, on the right, was a large mound of human waste, both liquid and solid. In the front left corner of the room, slumped against the wall, was a rotting female corpse in a blouse. She appeared to have been dead for some time.

Sitting on the bed, in a vastly oversized white T-shirt yellowed by sweat, and tattered jeans, was a teenaged girl of probably 18. She looked pregnant.

"This is my home," said Kane.

Ned turned to run, and Kane punched him in stomach sending him staggering backward toward the bed, flies swarming down onto him.

"You boys break into my home, my store, then try to leave when I bring you someplace warm and let you escape from the cold?" said Kane furiously, his voice dripping with a tone that sounded incredulous but also sounded partly like an act.

" I offered you hospitality, and you will accept it!"

"Daddy, don't shout," said the girl on the bed.

"You don't speak!' hollered Kane.

Walt saw the man's face for the first time and was utterly disgusted. His forehead jutted out too far, like that of a Neanderthal. One of his eyes was in its socket, albeit covered by an oozing cataract, the other was missing all together. The wound had closed itself, leaving a red, crusted shell over the orifice where his eye had been. That said, he moved like a man with perfect vision.

Kane's cheeks inverted inward, and his mouth and chin seemed far too small for his voice.

"Well there," said Kane, his hideous visage looking in Walt's direction, "seems to me your friend here is a faggot like that reporter was. How about you?"

Walt stood silent.

"Come on now, didn't your daddy never teach you nothing 'bout speaking when spoke to? Or was he a loser like your faggot friend?"

Walt bristled, but was afraid to say anything that would incite the man's rage. He was literally a monster.

"I'm--I--Happy New Year," said Walt, choking back his desperation, saying the most innocuous thing he could come up with.

"It's a New Year? Go figure. We lose track of the time here."

"Yes. 2005."

"Golly, time flies then, don't it?"

"Yeah."

"Well is there anything I can do to make you comfortable?" asked Kane, as he walked over to Ned. He yanked the fallen man up by his hair and sent him hurtling toward the corpse that lied in the corner. Ned landed facedown upon the body and began to scream.

"He always like this?" asked Kane, as he sat on the edge of the mattress where Ned had been reeling from the previous blow.

"Sir, what you are doing right now, this ain't human."

"Son, I ain't been human for sometime now."

Walt was silent.

Ned staggered up from the corpse, still screaming, and ran to the door, whipped it open, and ran out through the store. Walt and Kane heard the door to the building open and slam shut.

Kane stood up.

"He's a dead man now," rumbled the madman, his tiny lips contorting into a hideous grin upon his concave cheeks.

Kane stood up and ambled out the door. Walt heard a click, and when he eventually stood up, he found that the door was locked. He turned and looked at the utterly sorrowful girl who was sitting on the bed.

"What did he mean?" asked Walt.

"About what?" responded the girl.

"About Ned being a dead man."

"Self-explanatory I'd reckon. This town don't like outsiders Mister. Near as I can figure, they didn't much like them when they was all alive, and they don't like them much now neither."

"But he was alive. Deformed, but alive."

"All the dead are deformed here." The girl sighed, then continued. "She was an outsider, like I was. She was my mother. Finally dad--Kane . . .Kane, had enough of her."

"I don't understand none of this! Not a single thing!"

"Me neither sir. You can call me Holly, by the way. Holly Berkeley. I've been here. . .if you said it was 2005, I've been here for 40 years."

"But you're just a girl."

"Time stops for the living here as much as I can tell. Unless they kill you like they killed my momma. Then you're just dead." said Holly, pushing her far too long, thinning, blonde hair back from her eyes, revealing a mournful, dirt-caked face.

"I'm sorry," said Walt, sullenly.

"My real daddy was off in Vietnam I remember. Momma and I were going to the show by ourselves, because he had just left for the war and we was lonesome. Anyway, our car broke down, engine stopped working. We saw a sign off on the roadside that said this place was ahead. And we met Kane."

"And that man killed your mother?"

"Yeah, had enough of her. Decided he wanted me instead of her. My momma's protestin' got to be too much, so he beat her to death."

Walt looked at the girl, tears welling in her eyes, as she recounted the story.

"Now," she said, starting to cry, "Now I'm gonna have that thing's child. Momma was too old for child-bearin', she was lucky. Not me. Not me, not me."

Walt gasped. It was the only reaction he could muster.

"This town, it's damned," said Holly. "I don't know what happened to these people. Backwoods, inbred rednecks before maybe, but now, they are just damned. For some reason they didn't die like normal folk. They stay on this earth, and they take people like you and me and your friend and my momma because they are evil people, or something made them evil. And this is what the souls of the evil do."

After a pause, Holly added, "And I'm giving birth to his demon."

"We're getting out of here."

"You can't leave. They'll catch you."

"When he gets back, we are leaving," said Walt, calmly, his hand gripping the switchblade in his jacket pocket.

Walt sat and chatted with Holly for a while as they waited for their mutual captor to return.

"I wish he'd get rid of that body, I really do." Said Holly.

"Why won't he."

"He says he's the man and he makes the rules. The rules are me and my momma are never to leave this room. Even now that she's dead."

"That's depraved."

"That's normal. I remember in the beginning, we'd try and run away, and he'd just tie us to the bed and let the wax from the candles drip down on our faces until we promised never to do it again. It's evil the things he does. I ain't never even seen the rest of this town. Like you, I met him first."

Walt couldn't respond. He just couldn't.

"I hate having to look at her every day. Knowing I've lost her is hard enough, but having to look at the reality of it, to never be able to forget, it's awful."

"I lost my father, I can't imagine having to--"

"Please don't try to, you'll only end up hurting yourself in your mind." Suddenly there was a crash outside, the sound of a strong force whipping open the door. Kane was back.

"He's going to come in here, and I'm going to attack him. Then we're going to find Ned, and get on out of here," said Walt, bracing himself.

They heard the sound of keys jangling behind the door to the back room, and the handle rattled, until finally the door opened.

In walked Kane, looking like something out of an American Gothic painting from hell. In one hand he gripped a bloody pitchfork, and in the other, he held the head of Ned Jenkins by the hair.

"Faggot shouldn't have run," said Kane, his twisted face contorting into a twisted smile. He tossed the head at Walt, who vomited as it bounced off his lap and onto the floor.

"Shouldn't have done that," said Kane, shoving Walt violently aside, eyeing the regurgitated mess on the floor. "At least now my baby has dinner."

Kane started menacingly toward Holly, and she curled up into a fetal position, hoping in vain it would help.

That was when Walt snapped.

"I will not accept this!" growled Walt, lunging at Kane, his switchblade in hand.

Kane turned around, surprised, and the hideous man gargled in horror and dropped the pitchfork as the knife plunged into his neck. All the while, Walt screamed maniacally.

"My daddy didn't raise me to sit by and watch evil men do the devil's work! He didn't you hear! God may have forsaken your town, but He is working through me right now! I am his servant and I will not let you hurt this poor girl anymore!"

Holly stood up, and staggered off the bed.

"Run girl, run!"

Holly bolted for the door and ran out into the winter evening. Her legs felt weak and unsteady. She had not run in so long, and on top of that, she was pregnant.

"Come back here girl," Kane gargled, some sort of greenish-yellow goo oozing from his neck wound.

"No, she won't come back, she is free from you now."

"You say you are the Lord's servant. That's a gol'dang joke son. So long as you are in this town, your Lord doesn't even acknowledge you exist."

"That's a lie."

"That church on the hill up there, in it, we worship a god much more powerful than yours. He has kept us on this earth forever. And he lets us do whatever we want. He is a benevolent god, a kind god."

"He has made you into monsters."

Walt and Kane stared at each other; Kane slumped over the mattress looking upward, Walt looking down with his knife in hand.

Finally, Walt spoke.

"Evil men took my father and her mother. And not even your god will prevent me from stopping you, for Holly's sake."

"You are a fool," said Kane, standing up, and approaching Walt, his face contorted in the same twisted smile.

Holly ran through the snow, and saw lights switch on, one after another, in the shacks as she ran in the direction that Walt and Ned had come from. Doors opened on either side of her, and she saw men, some large and some small, start to give chase. They were silent, their feet falling in the snow the only sounds they made. Their presence was terrifying enough in their quietness. Then she heard the voices.

"That one there!" shouted one. "That's Kane girly! Them outsiders come into town, always bringing trouble!"

Holly continued running as fast as she could, thinking to herself, if the outsiders caused nothing but trouble, how come they never let any of them leave once they hit town. Was it to appease Kane's god? She had no clue. She only knew she was desperate to leave. As she neared the very first house that began the haunted township of Samson, she was shoved from behind. Shoved right over the town line.

Looking up, Holly saw about 50 men looking down at her, their faces contorted and disfigured all like Kane's. This was not just the effect of inbreeding. These men looked like they had seen the devil.

Then, the most bizarre thing happened. In the middle of the winter storm, which seemed to be winding down, there was a rumble of thunder. Then lightning flashed, followed by another, louder, thunderclap. This weather now bordered upon apocalyptic. Oddly, the lightning only flashed within the limits of the town.

"God's calling us back," said one of the things that once had been a man as he looked up at the sky. "He don't like your god very much."

The pack of men turned around, seemingly bound by the limits of the town, and walked back toward their homes. As lightning continued to flash and the thunder crackled, Holly saw that the demonic townsfolk were fading away, disappearing like spirits. Spirits of men who may have been decent once, but who now had given their souls to evil, and were remade in its image. Souls forever damned.

As she stood up in the snow, she noticed something remarkable. There was no struggle indicative of the extra weight from carrying a child. Her stomach was normal. She was no longer pregnant. She looked at her hands. They seemed bigger and arched. She touched her face. There were lines, lines of age and experience. She was in her late fifties. She was old!

Holly turned and walked down the same footpath that had taken Walt and Ned into the town. She saw their footprints, not quite covered by freshly fallen snow. She saw that the sky was beginning to brighten. She had not seen the sun begin to light the pre-dawn sky in the years she had been kept prisoner in that wretched town. Finally she came to the end of the footpath. She saw an automobile, a strange model that she didn't recognize, on the side of the road.

Going around to the back of it, she saw that the word "Jeep" was written, and underneath it, "Grand Cherokee." This must be a new kind of automobile, she thought to herself.

Holly went to open the door, and found it to be unlocked. She sat on the driver's side, and noticed that the glove compartment was open. Her newly aged hands reached inside, and she began to fumble around. Before she could come across anything, she was startled by a loud honking noise.

With horror, Holly whipped her head around, only to see a large truck with a plow attached to the front.

"Hey there ma'am, do you need any help?"

"Yes, this car, it's stuck," said Holly, scared.

"If you want I could give you a lift into the town and get a tow-truck back out here for you."

Holly was uncertain. She was afraid to get in the car with the strange man.

"Well yes or no?"

"Yes. . .yes I'll come."

"You look like you've been through hell," said the plow driver. "Have you been here all night?"

"I've been here too long."

"Well hop in, I'll get you a coffee and some breakfast at the diner in town. Older woman like you shouldn't be out in the elements like this all night. Catch that pneumonia."

This hospitality, it warmed Holly. She had forgotten all about such emotions. She had forgotten what it felt like to be warmed on the inside.

"I'll be right there sir."

"Okay, but quickly, I have the rest of this road here to finish. Dangerous road this one is, even in good weather. Factor in the biggest storm in state history and you have a hum-dinger of a safety hazard. Ain't no wonder you swerved off."

Holly had seen something that had caught her eye in the glove-box of the Jeep before the plow driver had gotten her attention. It was a dog-eared photograph that was on the very edge of the compartment. It was a photo of Walt, smiling in front of a Christmas tree, except he was much younger, probably the same age Holly had been when she had first gone to Samson.

Walt was standing next to an older, heavyset man with a beaming smile on his face that more than compensated for Walt's self-conscious, teenage grin. Holly flipped over the picture. Written on the back, in blue ink, was: Dad And Walt -- Christmas '94

Underneath it, in the same handwriting, although much smaller, was written: Last Christmas together.

Holly stood and wiped the tear from her eye. She put the photo into the pocket of her jeans, and vowed to bring it wherever she went from here on out, as Walt before her once had. It would represent her lasting memory of the kindred spirit who delivered her from evil.

BIRTHRIGHT

By Aurelio Rico Lopez III

The crowd cheered as the DJ spun a new track. The beat pulsed, and scores of red and green lights erupted from the ceiling onto the hundreds of people below. The dance floor was a sea of men and women dancing and swaying to the music.

Carnan sat at the bar and toyed with his drink absent-mindedly, turning the glass on the counter, between his thumb and index finger.

"Hey, buddy! You gonna drink that?"

Carnan hadn't taken a single sip from his drink, and the bartender was eyeing him suspiciously. Carnan reached in his breast pocket, pulled out a hundred dollar bill, and tossed it in the man's direction. "Get lost."

The man took one look at the money and snatched it off the bar top. He walked away, muttering something under his breath.

Pity. Carnan had half-hoped the guy would have lost his temper and tried to beat him senseless.

He returned his attention to his untouched drink. He wanted to try the amber fluid, but he knew it would only taste vile and disgusting. Carnan had often wondered what brandy really tasted like. It was one of those trivial things he wished he knew.

A familiar sensation came over him like an unpleasant, early morning chill. A hand tapped him on the back.

"Mingling with the food again, Carnan?"

He turned around on his stool. The source of the voice was tall, with a fair, almost pale complexion and shiny hair combed backward.

"Hello, Isaac," said Carnan. "Has anyone ever told you that the Bela Lugosi look is out of fashion? Seriously, it's so last century."

Isaac gave a humorless grin, but couldn't hide the contempt in his eyes. "Your father has summoned you."

"My father can get a tan for all I care."

Isaac grabbed Carnan by his shirt and pulled him to his feet.

"Easy, easy! It's a silk shirt."

Isaac snarled. "You will speak of your father with respect!"

Carnan did not flinch. He looked Isaac straight in the eye, and his voice took on a dark, serious tone. "Careful, Isaac. You may be loyal to my father, but unlike him, I have absolutely no qualms about killing you."

Isaac let go as if he had burnt his hands on Carnan's shirt. He stepped back, stunned by what he had just heard, shocked that Carnan had said it, afraid because Carnan had meant every word. He looked as if he couldn't decide whether to flee or beg for his life. Instead, Carnan put his arm around his shoulder like an old high school buddy.

"I'm bored," Carnan said, as if nothing had happened. "Come on. Let's go see what's on the old man's mind."

#

In contrast to the club, the inside of the limousine was a vacuum. The silence bore down on him like a dead weight. Carnan looked out at a thousand neon lights, signs, and billboards. The sun was supposed to be a sign of awakening, but it was at night when the world truly came alive.

His father's estate was a forty-minute drive away.

"Where have you been? The heads of the families left hours ago! They expected to meet my son, my successor, and their future leader. Do you have any idea how foolish you made me look?"

Carnan sighed as he collapsed on one of the chairs in the den. "I have no interest in leading the families."

In one quick motion, his father grabbed his shirt and slammed his back against a bookshelf.

"Great! Now look at what you've done. You tore my shirt. What does everyone have against my shirt?"

"Now see here!" his father roared. "Tomorrow evening, you shall take your place as head of the council. There are many who would like nothing more than to find one, single excuse to deny you of your birthright, so you better get your act together."

"The same way you got your act together, Father? Before you became top dog?"

His father's grip loosened. "Why do you hate me so much?"

Carnan's fingernails raked the side of his father's face, tearing off chunks of tissue. His father staggered backward. "How dare you ask me that question!" Tears began to blur his vision. He turned to leave the room.

"Carnan, wait!" his father called out to him. His face was already mending. Blood platelets were already aggregating, and cells were dividing at incredible rates. In a matter of minutes, there wouldn't be even a hint of the damage that had been inflicted on him.

Carnan paused at the doorway.

"If you don't do this," his father said, "I... we... will lose everything."

Carnan left the room, closing the door behind him.

#

The following evening, inside his room, Carnan donned his best suit. He wore the diamond cufflinks his mother had given him as a gift over two centuries ago. He wondered how she would have reacted to the recent turn of events. He steadied himself against a torrent of memories and emotions.

He could not lose control. Not tonight.

His jaw still hurt. It was odd; his kind could recover from almost any form of injury, but they could still feel pain even after they had healed. No one could understand it.

Another wonder was their inability to cast reflections. There were a lot of theories and speculations, but Carnan chose to believe that God -- or whomever it was who created their species -- had realized that he had made abominations so unworthy of creation that he robbed them of their reflections.

A knock on the door signaled that it was time.

Carnan picked up the objects he had set on his dresser -- a small cloth pouch the size of a matchbox and a black leather box roughly the size of a pencil case. He slid both items into his suit pocket.

The knocking came again, a little louder this time. Carnan opened the door. Two of his father's errand boys awaited him in the hallway. They bowed slightly when they saw him.

"Sir, your father requests your presence," the dark-haired one spoke.

"Really? And here I thought you two dropped by to borrow a cup of brown sugar."

The two escorts looked at each other with blank expressions. Carnan sighed and stepped into the hallway. "Lead the way, Tucan Sam."

The three of them headed to the function room. The carpeted floor cushioned their footsteps. They were only halfway there when Dark Hair spoke again.

"Tonight is a great night, Sir. Marcus and I were just discussing it."

"Yes, Sir," said his companion who Carnan assumed was Marcus. "It will be an honor to serve under you."

Amazing. Carnan had not even assumed his position, and already these two were kissing his ass.

"Swell," he replied.

They arrived at the door at the end of the hallway. Dark Hair opened it and held it ajar to let Carnan through. Then he and Marcus closed the door and stood watch outside the room so that nothing would interrupt the meeting.

Inside, the large room was cool and dark. In the center, dimly lit, was a long table. Carnan recognized those who sat around it as the heads of the twelve families. They all stared at him, looking him up and down. They're sizing me up, Carnan thought. Most of them were at least three times as old as he was. He could detect resentment in their cold gazes. Why should they take orders from someone so young? The silence was broken by his father's voice.

"Welcome, Carnan. We are glad you could join us." He sat on the far end of the table and gestured to the opposite end. "Please, take a seat."

Carnan slowly approached the unoccupied chair. Carefully, he pulled it out and sat down. In front of him, on the table, lay the Book of Blood and a golden chalice from which he was supposed to drink. The cup contained blood from the heads of the vampire families. As the incoming leader of all twelve families, Carnan would drink the contents of the chalice during tonight's ceremony, symbolizing the reunification of the vampire race.

Carnan's father's voice carried to the far corners of the room. "Carnan, it has been the decision of this council that you shall succeed me as leader and protector of our glorious race. Do you accept the council's decision?"

Carnan stood up.

"I do."

"Do you swear to look after the welfare of our glorious race?"

"I do."

"Are you fully aware of the duties and responsibilities you will assume as caretaker and defender of our glorious race?"

"I am." His father smiled. Carnan grit his teeth. A throbbing headache started to build up, and he tried to relax.

"Very well," his father continued. "Then let the ceremony commence..."

"Before we begin," Carnan quickly interrupted, "may I address the council?"

Those in attendance glanced and whispered at each other. Carnan's father raised a hand, and order was restored.

"Speak."

Carnan reached in his pocket and retrieved the two items he had brought with him. He arranged them beside the chalice and the Book of Blood. He cleared his throat.

"First of all, I would like to thank all of you for being here tonight. You have traveled from afar, and I know that the trip was an inconvenience that you, under normal circumstances, would not have chosen to undergo.

"I would also like to give recognition to my father who has led our race for two centuries. He, too, succeeded his father before him."

Carnan's father shifted uneasily in his chair.

"My father had always dreamt of becoming our race's protector and guardian. But when his time finally came to succeed my grandfather, there were questions concerning his dedication."

Worry cast on his father's face, and he raised a hand to silence his son. Carnan ignored the sign and continued. The council had begun to grow restless; they could sense something was wrong. There was no turning back now.

"Afraid that his dream of being leader was slipping away, my great father gave the council something..."

"Silence!" Carnan's father knocked over his chair as he stood up. "Enough, damn you!"

Tears streamed down Carnan's cheeks. "...something that would once and for all erase all doubts regarding his loyalty and dedication..."

"I command you!"

"...something that would ensure his place as leader."

"Carnan!"

"My mother!" Carnan screamed. He pointed an accusing finger at the vampire leader. "That bastard murdered her!"

His father bowed his head in defeat or shame. Perhaps both. A hush descended on the room and its occupants.

"We call ourselves a glorious race, but we are nothing but filth! Nothing more than a society of murderers. Where is the glory in that?"

The council was speechless.

Carnan picked up the cloth pouch on the table and stared at it. "My mother's murder was my father's offering to the council. Here's mine."

He tossed the pouch to the other end of the table. It fell short but continued to slide. His father caught it before it could fall off the edge. With trembling hands, he fumbled with the drawstring. When he had finally managed to loosen it, he held out his palm and emptied the bag onto it. Suddenly, he jerked his hand back and something clattered onto the table.

The council leaned forward to get a closer look.

Teeth!

One member wailed; and another jumped back, tripped on his chair, and fell on the floor.

Carnan threw his head back in laughter. Even in the scarce light, the council could finally see that which they had failed to notice.

Carnan's canines were gone.

"Disgrace!" one of the twelve heads cried.

His father was in anguish. The vampire leader, son of the great Dracul, held out his hand pathetically, as if he could reach out to his son from across the table. "My son, what have you done?"

Carnan never stopped laughing, even as tears rolled down his face. He opened the last item -- the leather box -- and drew out a knife. The council watched in horror as Carnan raised the blade up high and drove it through his heart.

Carnan wasn't sure whether there was a heaven or a hell. But if there was, indeed, life after death, he hoped that no matter where he was headed, Mina would be there to welcome him.

SEARCHING FOR DR. HARLOW

By Michael A. Kechula

"Do you believe in zombies?" Winston Dithers asked the moment he sat.

"About as much as the Tooth Fairy," I said.

"My friend, Dr. Rolf Harlow, believes they exist. In fact, he took a sabbatical from the university and went to Haiti to find one."

I chuckled at Harlow's stupidity. "A zombie hunter, eh? What's he gonna do if he finds one?"

"Bring it back here to Chicago. To conduct experiments. Problem is, I haven't heard from him for several months. I've inquired with the US Embassy and Haitian government, but their replies have been ambiguous. I'll pay you twenty thousand plus expenses to find him. Ten thousand in cash right now, and the balance when you deliver him."

Sounded like easy money. I agreed to find Harlow.

Two days later, I arrived in Port Au Prince. I've been a lot of weird places in the world, but none have ever made me feel so creepy. Something about the atmosphere seemed unholy. Ethereal sounds of jungle drums rode on humid breezes, fading in and out. Wretches meandered aimlessly, looking stupefied. Weird voodoo symbols festered on graffiti-covered walls. For the first time since I was a kid, I found myself getting the willies.

Nevertheless, I got to work immediately. I showed Harlow's photo to taxi drivers and street vendors. Everyone shrugged indifferently.

Harlow's letters to Dithers had mentioned Hotel Balzac and Bahody, a middle-aged chambermaid who'd befriended and mothered him. I headed for the hotel to find her.

"And if you find Dr. Harlow, will you arrest him?" the rotund woman asked when told her that I was a detective.

"I'm not a police detective anymore," I said. "I retired and opened my own detective agency in Chicago. One of Harlow's friends hired me to find him and take him home. His friends miss him."

"I miss him too," Bahody said, eyes filling with tears. "Every full moon, I sacrifice a chicken, begging the gods to bring him back, even if it be from the dead."

"Don't worry. You'll see him again. I promise I'll find him."

"You'll never find him. My sister speaks to voodoo gods. They say he's lost forever. Zombies stole him."

"Nonsense," I said. "Zombies don't exist."

"Is that what they taught you in Chicago?" she asked. "If so, they teach lies."

"Zombies are nothing more than characters from overactive imaginations. They were invented to scare people into complying with laws, especially in remote villages where police are nonexistent. Chances are, people won't molest kids, rape women, or kidnap if they think they'll be turned into zombies when caught. Haiti isn't the only place in the world where phony tales control the population through fear. I could name a dozen other nations that have legends just as goofy. Hey, it works. I'm all for law and order. Call them zombies, vampires, werewolves, or whatever. Keeps people home at night and off the streets. The more scared they are, the less likely they are to commit crimes."

"That's not what Dr. Harlow, believes. He's a very intelligent man who knows the truth about zombies."

"He may be highly intelligent, but he was a fool to come here to search for something that doesn't exist."

"Don't you dare call my white son a fool!" She folded her arms and added, "I have nothing more to say."

I pulled a twenty from my wallet and laid it on the table. "Tell me what happened the last night you saw him."

Grabbing the money, she said, "It was the night of the full moon. The air was foul. The drums spoke of doom. I begged him not to walk to Café Blanc alone. He wouldn't listen."

"Why did he go there?"

"I don't know."

"Where is it?"

"Don't go there," she said. "You'll lose your soul."

"My soul? When will all this lunacy end? Zombies. Souls. Stop talking nonsense and tell me how to get to Café Blanc!"

"No. It's an unholy place. Even rats die when they get too close."

"Then I'll get directions from the concierge."

"If you must go," she said, "take this for protection." She tried to push a small, black, red-eyed statue into my hand.

I called her a stupid, superstitious woman and stormed out.

A waiter at Café Blanc remembered Harlow. "He drank much rum with a voodoo priest, a dangerous man from Destrudo. They left together."

"Where's Destrudo?"

"In the jungle. They say it's a terrible place with zombies and terrifying voodoo ceremonies."

I couldn't find anyone who'd risk driving me anywhere near Destrudo.

"Perhaps Mulu will take you," someone whispered. "They say she's from Destrudo. A strange woman who talks slowly like a zombie. Some say she's wife of a white zombie. There she is now."

I approached her battered jeep. "Take me to the white man who lives in Destrudo," I said, waving twenty dollars.

"You...do...not...fear...to...ride...at...night...with...a...zom-bie?" she asked. Her breath reeked of jungle rot.

"Save the baloney for gullible tourists," I said boarding the jeep.

"You...do...not...believe?"

"Nope. Let's go. I don't have all night."

"Foolish...American," she mumbled.

I snickered at her ludicrous words and slow speech. Ten minutes later, I was on the verge of screaming. While driving manically through jungle paths, her skin took on a greenish glow. Before I could jump from the jeep, she slammed the brakes.

"There's...the...white...man," she said, pointing to a jungle clearing.

Something with a greenish glow approached. It had Harlow's face!

"Dr. Harlow," I called. "I'm Oscar Brown. From Chicago. I'm a friend of Winston Dithers."

Moaning, he approached and touched my face. His fingers were icy. The stench sickened me.

As I tried to grab and cuff him, putrid teeth ripped flesh from my cheek. The pain was horrendous. I tried to get away, but tripped. Suddenly, both were biting my face like mad dogs.

I don't know how I got away. I raced through the jungle like a madman until I blacked out. I don't know how I got back to the city.

* * * *

Since that horrible night in Haiti, my cheeks have dripped pus continuously. Modern medicines can't stop the flow.

Many shamans have exorcised me. I've sacrificed countless chickens to voodoo gods. I've consumed putrid, hoodoo potions. But nothing heals my wounds, or stops Harlow and Mulu from invading my dreams and feasting while I sleep.

Yesterday, I woke up hemorrhaging. My entire right arm was gone!

I don't wanna die. Please help me. I'll pay anything.

Earth A. Z. (After Zombie)

By Brian Rosenberger

Come forth

thundered heaven

the summons heard

they did

what better way

to plague man

than with man

neither locust nor flies

nor darkness would suffice

some called it

the Year of the Toad

as certain amphibians

lie dormant during

dry seasons returning

with the rains just as

they returned casting

off their shrouds of Earth

no longer captives

to the ground

others, less poetic,

named it

the Year Without End

they came

some crawling

some on rotted stumps

shambling mounds of decayed flesh

skeletons of their former selves

they saw

at least the ones still in possession

of theirs eyes did

others, victim to the worm and time,

made their way on instinct

even a blind predator

will find prey

they digested

as much as toothless jaws

jawless faces and

bloodless organs would allow

It was a resurrection parade

like no other

recycled citizens emptying from

their necropolitic cities to

make room for new occupants

the unliving embodiment

of consumerism with the

emphasis on consume

and they did

The meek lost

their inheritance

now sole property

of the dead

SHOP 'TIL YOU DROP

By Brian Rosenberger

Screams wake Rose from her slumber. She sits up, disoriented, looks at the clock. 9 o'clock. Jumping Jesus. She overslept. The noise again, like a cheese grater on her ears. Not screams at all, just the neighbor's dogs. Shut up, she bellows. A hush falls over the neighborhood. The dogs, twin Dobermans with a taste for stray squirrels, cats and small fingers, now cowered, return to beneath the porch, tails tucked, eyes watchful for the source of the roar.

Rose yawns, no time to screw around. She's already late. Rose works as a housekeeping supervisor assistant at a local hospital. She rarely gets a Sunday off and aims to make the most of this one. She steps out of her cloths and into the shower in one smooth motion, the toothbrush in one hand, the other reaching for the soap.

The bathroom is still steamy by the time Rose is fully dressed save for her shoes. She dashes to the kitchen, two slices of bread in the toaster and a tall glass of chocolate milk to wash it down. She's already wolfed down a banana before the toast is ready. Strawberry jam applied to the toast, she gives it a glance. Almost artistic. One bite and the masterpiece is half gone. Between mouthfuls, she retrieves the paper from the lawn, one eye watchful for disobedient hounds. Rose leafs through the paper, ignoring the boldfaced headlines proclaiming National Emergency. "Just some other reason to raise taxes," she reasons, annoyed. She bypasses the employment section, sports, business, and the classifieds.

She pulls out the TV listing for later perusal, then finally grasps her own personal Holy Grail, the ads. Rose devours the ads like a fat man at a Chinese buffet. Nothing escapes her notice. All 2-for-1 deals are filed in the folds of her brain. She scans the recesses of her memory for coupons already clipped. She is preparing for the forthcoming battle and she will not be denied. She finishes her milk, a chocolate mustache disappearing with one swipe of her forearm. My shoes, Rose thinks. Where are my shoes?

She emerges from the bedroom, purse in hand and fully sneakered. She yells goodbye to her husband Duane, already slouched in his chair in front of the TV, waiting for today's football games to begin. She's out the door before Duane can reply.

Rose squeezes into the rusty Toyota pickup. The truck groans. Rose is fat. She knows it. She doesn't need a scale; every movement reminds her. But she's used to it. As she grew into adulthood, her weight grew with her. The family doctor encourages exercise. Rose complies, walking to The Ice Cream Castle at least twice a week, six full blocks from her house. She rewards herself with a jumbo vanilla shake, forgoing the whipped cream; it gives her gas.

Her husband is no picture of health either, unless it's the typical "before" picture. 300 pounds if an ounce and most of it in his gut, Duane's only exercise today will be lumbering from his chair to the fridge, to refill on beer and snacks. If he's feeling really energetic, he'll waddle to the door for pizza, Chinese, Mexican, or whatever nationality he's craving for delivery.

A news broadcast crackles from the dashboard speaker as Rose turns the ignition key.

"that the dead may be..."

She twists the dial. Highway to Hell. Now, that's more like it.

"Maybe I have time to stop for doughnuts," she thinks to herself. That might be cutting it a little close. She'll have at least an hour of driving ahead of her, traffic notwithstanding. "Damn churchgoers," mumbling to herself, "Why can't they worship in front of the TV. Like Duane." She snorts laughter at her own joke.

As she zooms past the doughnut shop exit, the nearly forgotten fragments of a dream derail her train of thought. Muffins. She had been dreaming about muffins: all types of muffins: blueberry muffins, chocolate muffins, muffins filled with fruits, spices, nuts, and liqueurs. Their only commonality, they're all delicious.

But the muffins were chasing her, on tiny muffin legs. The muffins had teeth, much too large for their muffin bodies. She remembers kicking one; it bled cream. The pastries were fast. In her dream, she manages to barricade herself behind a door. The muffins whisper, "We won't hurt you. We're yummy. We think you're yummy too. Let us in and we can be yummy together." The muffins squeeze through the slit of the keyhole, through the cracks. They smell so good.

She doesn't remember the rest of the dream thanks to those damn dogs. Just as well. Her stomach grumbles.

Minutes and miles pass in smooth cadence to Rose's thoughts, which ping pong between the fantasy of a soap opera hunk (who looks curiously like Dr. Rex up on the fifth floor), his stomach smooth and smelling like peppermints, and sweaty anticipation of the multitude of bargains that await. The intoxication of Red Tag stickers, clearance items, and the all-important End-of- Summer sale sends her head reeling. She grips the wheel, knuckles cracking, and begins to hum. Restless, she spins the radio dial, finding mostly static. Finally, a voice, breaking, cracking, almost in tears, "... the end is here, brothers and sisters, the end is..." "The end is here...for you." Rose thinks to herself, smiling as she snaps the radio off, better to drive in silence than listen to that ear pollution.

She surveys the landscape, still hardly any traffic. A WGON news van speeds past her in the passing lane. Men armed with guns and beer cans form a single file parade in a field; squirrels, rabbits, and street signs beware. Probably members of the National Guard playing soldier. Men and their war games. Off to the left is the meat-processing plant. Funny, for years it was just a slaughterhouse. Now with all the new development, it has a name change. Too bad they can't change the smell. Protestors usually gather outside the gates. They harass the passing motorists with signs, coupled with moronic, but energetic paroxysms of chanting, but today only their signs are present, leaning against the chain-link fence, useless like their owners.

"Too lazy to even take their crap home," Rose muses to herself as she pulls at a stray strand of hair. "Either that or the plant is giving out free breakfast samples and the veg heads are all in line. Processed chicken parts equals Genocide my ample ass. Wait till they find out tofu causes cancer and impotence. That will really give them something to protest." Rose winks at the reflection of herself in the mirror.

The mall dominates the horizon. Whoever invented shopping malls deserves to be on a stamp. Hell, maybe even their own national holiday. Rose takes a hard right, just clipping the curb. The truck wobbles. She has arrived, in nearly record time too. The promised land awaits.

"Everyone must still be sleeping; the lot is nearly empty, save for a dozen or so cars." Rose compliments herself for her foresight, brilliant planning, and excellent driving ability allowing for her arrival at the stores before all the other mall-oholics show up.

Just after 10 A.M., she feels that she owns the place. Squeezing out of the truck (again groans), Rose walks the 30 yards to the glass-paneled doorway, panting after yard #15. She notices some teenagers squatting near the corner building. Hungover probably, she thinks. Dope fiends, strung out on that new drug. What was it. Oh yeah. Liquid Funeral. It sounds more like a perfume those emanciated goth bitches would wear. WGON had a big expose all about it. In her day, cheap wine was all you needed to get high, not eating glue or snorting chemicals. Kids these days. Goddamn idiots. Rose pushes on the metal bar and enters the shimmering cathedral of consumerism, greeted by soothing electronic music. It makes her feel like she's on hold. The plaza rings hollow in response to the sugary refrains, the only sound except the squeak of her tennis shoes upon the hard concrete floor.

She walks past the Eyeglass Shack, past Underwear Unlimited, past the Piercing Pagoda. Some of the stores had yet to open; their gates were still shuttered. The mall was unusually empty today; a few early risers, the usual assortment of geriatric mall walkers judging by their stumbling gait but none of the hardcore shoppers she usually encountered. Not that Rose was complaining. The playing field was wide open and Rose considers herself the home team.

Having already exceeded her normal exercise routine which consisted mainly of household labor and unregimented snacking, Rose was still hungry. Burger City lay just around the corner. As she approached, she noticed a crowd formed just outside the entrance.

"Does the line start here?" she queries a haggard-looking gentleman standing near the end. Receiving no audible reply, she takes her place behind Mr. I-Forgot-To Wash. Looking down, she notices the man's suit is slit down the backside, both the pants and jacket.

"Fashion." But looking at his shoes, what she took for grey socks was in fact pale, grey flesh. The hygiene of some people. She was hesitant, weighing her options: to stand in line behind this stinking homeless person, or to make tracks for the Doughnut Hole at the other end of the mall, when her decision was made for her. The bum slowly turned around, revealing a face that belonged in the grave. The rot and the stench were bad enough but this poor bastard must have been in some type of horrible industrial accident as part of his face was missing. Flies and other insects were having a picnic with the surviving scraps. What looked like bone peeked through like an unexpected guest. The guy needs a closed casket funeral, not a cheeseburger with fries on the side. Better make that a formaldehyde shake with extra preservative. Supersize.

Rose turns to leave, sensing that Graveyard Face was surely getting ready to hit her up for change. She moves every bit as fast as her plus-sized figure would allow, avoiding the bum's grimy reach. The Doughnut Hole it would have to be. An even dozen just to put that poor bastard's face out of her mind.

She passes the electronics store where most of the TV's are broadcasting snow, save one. That set, bargain-priced at $179.00, framed the face of the midday anchor at WGON. Rose thought of her as Barbie Bitch because of her resemblance to the doll and her constant complaints. The regular news people must be on special assignment. Barbie was rattling on, something about "... every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them." Must be some type of new pest control problem. Rose made a note to have Duane fumigate. She did not tolerate roaches.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rose sees two things. The first is that she has made a new friend as the bum from Burger City is shambling slowly towards her. The curse of having a friendly face and a Rubenesque figure. The other item, much higher on Rose's scale of importance, a table staffed by two small girls, girls in uniform. Light bulbs of recognition firework within Rose's head. Girl Scouts, and by implication, Girl Scout cookies. Rose loves Girl Scout Cookies. Thin Mints are a particular weakness. She beelines for the table, with Graveyard Face all but forgotten.

Rose steps to the table, summons a smile, when she is struck by the immediate realization that something is wrong. She forgot to stop at the bank; she doesn't have any cash with her. A check it will have to be. She digs into the abyss of her purse, extricating both her checkbook and a pen.

"8 boxes of thin mints please and who should I make the check out to?"

The girls could do with some sun. Pale as chalk, Rose notes. They stare at her with empty, bored eyes. Rose, one eye on the girls, the other on the cookies, is taken completely off guard as the nearest girl lunges forward, sinking her teeth into Rose's checkbook. What the hell? The other girl grabs at Rose's free hand but Rose is used to the pleading clasp of hospital invalids. She avoids the girl and jiggles backward when her movement is halted. She spins, her nostrils recognizing her barrier before her eyes. Graveyard Face is back. This time Rose has no time for politeness. She's been at the mall for approximately twenty minutes and has yet to purchase anything.

Rose drops her purse from the crook of her arm into her hand. Given its contents of various bottles of perfume, a hammer in case of emergency, candies of various sizes and tastes, and just under eleven bucks in small change, the purse is a most formidable accessory. Much like Mjölnir, the fabled hammer of Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, only those worthy are capable of hefting Rose's purse. Assuming the coiled stance of a major league hitter pursuing a homerun, Rose smacks Graveyard Face right in the not-so-sweet spot. Bugs and flesh fly. Rose winds up on the advancing scouts, smashing each in turn, lawsuits be damned. The girls drop like rocks. A double for the home team.

All this commotion has gathered a crowd. Rose suddenly realizes the mall walkers have worse problems than arthritis or weak bladders. It's like a Leper convention, grinning skulls, jigsaw puzzles of skin, faces as green as a b/w film re-colored. It's a veritable pukefest.

Rose straight-arms the nearest shopper, acquiring momentum, as she zigzags through the festering crowd. Rose bulldozes through them like a fullback with diarrhea headed for the nearest bathroom. They rise unblinking and unfeeling, like store mannequins. She clotheslines a security guard, his face already rouged with rot, knocking both his shoes and feet off. Rose is too busy to notice. Fuck shopping; she just wants out of here and perhaps some dessert.

Outside the mall, she finally reaches her car and is confronted by a trio of Gucci girls turned ghastly. Either due to some buried primal group memory or just out of habit, the girls giggle at the fat woman fumbling with her keys. Sounding like someone with throat cancer or choking on wet bread, the girls continue to hack and titter, giving Rose ample time to secure herself into the driver's seat. She forces the pickup into gear. When the irresistible force (Rose's truck) meets the rotting object (Gucci girls), the result equals splat. The girls, no longer slaves to fashion, makeup or popular opinion, only diet, writhe on the pavement like spiders with limbs removed.

She wheels past a security guard, who curiously resembles Keith Richards. The truck backfires putting an exclamation point to her thoughts.

"What the fuck was that all about?"

The needle burns on 65 all the way home, the highest speed the Toyota will allow before having convulsions.

She arrives in the driveway just as a pizza delivery driver pulls up two doors down. Dumbfounded, she watches as the driver plows into the front of a Volkswagon Bus. Boy, those hippies are going to be pissed. The driver gets out the car, one hand holding the pizza like some underpaid Statue of Liberty. The other hand still grips the steering wheel. The driver looks at Rose, motions to wave but seems to realize he's missing a key ingredient in the gesturing process.

Rose opens the door. Home Sweet Home. Duane manages a grumble. She plops on the couch. She stares at her husband, already three days dead, slowly becoming one with his chair. Rose grabs the remote from his swollen hand.

"And give me some of those chips too."

Rose makes herself comfortable, realizing the more things change, the more they stay the same.

FOOD CHAIN

G. W. Thomas

The dim mist settled beneath the windowsill, the minute crack no longer plugged with white paint. The smoke solidified into a twisted and grotesque being. Its skin was deathly pale, hair-less, cold. The eyes, piercing red. The ears, large and swept back in place of hair. The body was uncovered, naked for all to see, though none would have wished to look on such a ghoulish physique. And the fingers, tiny spears, each tipped with a saber-like nail. All in all, the nosferat was a hideous thing.

Its name was long forgotten. Dead, like its soul. But in those odd circumstances when it must appear, only by night, to be one of the living, it called itself Borque.

Borque floated across the parlor floor. It was heading up the long staircase to the bedrooms above. There it knew it would find Kathrina sleeping. It hungered for that which was not rightly its to take. It would suck her blood. It would spew cold sperm into her womb. It would take and take and take ...

A sound stopped the stalking beast. Downstairs, standing motionless, like one of the suits of armor, was Kathrina's father, Dr. Polidori. Borque spun wildly, hissing like a serpent.

"So -- you return, Vladaslav Korbochenko?"

The vampyre spit again, pained to hear its long forgotten name. "Call me Borque!" it demanded.

"I'll call you Hell-spawn!" the scientist roared. "How dare you come into my house uninvited?"

"Tsk-tsk, doktor, and you a Man of Science. But you forget, I was invited. By your daughter --"

"Leave."

"Never."

"No more warnings then. I have tried to respect your existence as part of Nature's scheme -- but no longer." The man retrieved an object from his pocket. The geegaw was a gilt-worked cross of gold, borrowed from a colleague, a doctor of Archeology, Simon Feldman.

The nosferat laughed. "Hog-wash and superstition, doktor." The creature began ascending the stairs once more. "You said it yourself. Nature's scheme. The cross has no effect -- never did!"

"Damn you!" cursed the man, throwing the crucifix to the floor.

Borque chortled again, spinning and leaping up step after step. "She's mine, Polidori. You are all my cattle."

The vampyre topped the stair. The first door on its left, there he would find the beautiful and helpless Kathrina. A diseased hand turned the knob, allowing the cadaverous body to enter. Once inside, Borque screamed like a stuck pig, a pale, inhuman shriek. After a moment, silence returned.

Downstairs, Polidori smiled. He took the stairs slowly, listening to the slow and peaceful breathing of his child. The vampyre was gone. In a moment the vlokvelk would be too. The vlokvelk had little business on this dimensional plane, except for the occasional foray for food. Top of the food chain, the doctor thought to himself. Top of the food chain.

Nature's scheme. He was a Man of Science after all. Just like the sign on the door said:

FREDERICK POLIDORI, DOCTOR OF BIOLOGY.

THE NEW CREATURES

By Tristan T. Tenorio

Its eyes jerked open. It drew long deep breaths, wheezing as it did so. It sat up, and as it did so, it heard sounds, sounds of raised voices and scampering feet. It ambled up to his feet, slowly, clumsily trying to maintain its balance. It looked at its surroundings, trying to make sense of where it was. It was in a grassy place, probably in a park, but it did not know that. The sun shone in its eyes, the air smelled of smoke and ruin and death, but these were all new things to it. This creature, this New Creature, struggled to analyze everything. But it would be damned to fail.

In the distance, the New Creature could see things moving. They looked similar to it, but they were not like it. The New Creature began to feel something. Something that tugged in the back of its confused mind. Not knowing what it was, the New Creature began to move. It walked with slow, sluggish steps, like something that had just awakened. It began to move towards the things in the distance. The things also began to move. They moved much faster than the New Creature, as if they had been doing it for a long time. The New Creature also began to move faster, but it was not able to reach the things before they moved out of its sight. Nevertheless, it continued to move towards them, for there was something that was compelling him to.

When the New Creature reached the spot where it last saw the things, it stopped. It tried to make sense of its surroundings. It could see more things that were like the New Creature lying on the ground.

But these things were not moving. They smelled a lot like the air when it awoke. They had the scent of death, and their heads were damaged. Some were black, shrunken things that crumbled when touched. The New Creature stood over the motionless things as if to mourn, but the feeling, the undeniable desire for something it could not understand, prompted it to move again.

It walked for a good long time, through wide, hard pathways, soft, grassy parks and rocky mountain passages. The sky was soon becoming dark. The New Creature stopped and looked around. It could hear the sounds of shuffling feet, similar to its footsteps. In the fading light, it could see other New Creatures walking about. Like it, they were walking around, listlessly, as if they were looking for something, but unsure of what that was.

The New Creatures came in different shapes and sizes. Some were complete, others missing pieces or parts, but it did not seem to bother them. Most were clothed, fully or in tatters, and some wore nothing at all. They felt no shame, outrage, nor disgust. They felt nothing save a desire, a need.

Then, they heard it. A low, moaning sound from somewhere not too far off in the distance. Instinctively, they began to follow it. Like moths to a flame, or pilgrims to a holy place, the mass of New Creatures rushed, as best they can, to the source of the call. Some stumbled and crawled, others ran and most walked towards the noise.

They began to hear screams, of pain and panic and sounds they could not begin to identify, mixed with the noise of ripping, tearing and devouring. As the New Creatures arrived, they came upon a scene of feasting. Other New Creatures were eating something on the ground. They began to sense something from the thing the others were feasting on. They began to reach for the sprawled thing on the ground, trying to partake of that something they sensed. They pushed, pulled and tore at the thing, tearing out chunks from it. It was warm, sticky and slippery all at the same time, and as if on instinct, they ate and swallowed the chunks of the thing. As they felt the warm pieces slide down their gullets and begin to fill their bellies, they began to walk away again.

It wasn't because they were satisfied, it was because what they were looking for, what they desired from the thing on the ground, wasn't there anymore. And in the haze and confusion of their minds, a purpose was set. Their desire now acknowledged, wrong or right did not matter. Wrong or right no longer applied to them. They only felt a need. A need to fill the terrible emptiness within them, these pitiful, terrible New Creatures, and they would not stop until they found the something to fill that void.

Whatever that something was, they would not be denied it. They knew they wanted something from the things that looked like them but were not them, but they knew not what it was. It was inside these screaming things, these struggling, frightened things, but it would disappear when they were torn apart by the New Creatures, in an attempt to locate that elusive something. Desperate to have that something, the New Creatures would bite and chew and swallow parts of the screaming things, their warm blood flowing into their maws, their reddish-pink flesh swallowed down their throats, in an attempt to get that something they wanted. But they would never be satisfied.

The New Creatures continued walking all through the night, unmindful of the cold, searching for that elusive object of their desire. They knew there were more of the things that looked like them but were not like them, and they would find them. No matter what.

BAZAAR SHADES OF SORROW

By Penelope Allen

His frame is painfully gaunt,

in cinder striped rags,

as he shuffles and haunts

a dreadful second hand store.

Lamps stand on sagged shelves;

no two shades are the same:

he's looking for long lost remains.

He softly calls

my Love  my Life

my beautiful Wife

my Blood  my Child

So sweet and mild

I am your beggar beguiled

but only his echo rises and falls.

Three score and three years

since they disappeared,

muscled away at the rail yard that day.

Too numb struck to protest,

he stoically prayed for the best.

Steam rolled down the line

until he ran out of time

and typhoid caught him

in camped out concentration.

On the eve of his death,

with devotion profound,

he began hunting through mounds

for their burial grounds.

Meeting more aimless souls

than he could possibly count.

At Ravensbrüek,

where women were reviled and defiled:

ashen spirits fumed secrets

of the fiend Irma Grese

and her savage devil dogs.

He scoured reams of logs

through families of names,

but no grasp of the same.

At Auschwitz:

blind to his held fast hope,

the concierge was too cruelly kind

with vivid assertions of Irma's coercion.

A glimmer obsesses his mind.

His beloveds' skin was so clear,

so pure, that it shone,

pale and refined with feathered laugh lines.

He became convinced the jack booted witch

committed an implacable sin

and mutilated his precious kin

to occupy a sadist's moments of leisure -

fingering lamp lit tattoos so stark,

they glow in the dark.

He's consumed with grief beyond belief.

As he spiraled

into despair and despise,

the love light died in his eyes.

With a grim shudder and lurch,

he resumes his world weary search

of grotesque curiosity shops.

His well worn pain and borne disdain

of the macabre mad gadabout crowd:

putting on freakish sideshows

in castoff carnival clothes,

coveting garish and obscene trinkets,

on their junkets to flea market hangouts.

Through jumbles of rummage sales

they dicker, bicker and bray

like the asses they are.

He musn't stray too far

from cluttered tables and stalls

as he softly calls

my Love  my Life

my beautiful Wife

my Blood  my Child

So sweet and mild

I am your beggar beguiled

but only his echo rises and falls.

UNDER A BLANKET OF BLUE

By Donna Taylor Burgess

Sam Clark knew he'd kept her locked in that back bedroom too long when she began to eat chunks of her own face. Pinched off with ragged nails, and when he peered in through the keyhole at her, he could see the hard white flashes of sharp cheekbone stark against her dusky complexion. She had taken her own top lip first and was now wearing this awful permanent grin. Her speech was odd, like a person who had been loaded with Novocain. Her teeth were stained with her own blood.

He moved away from the keyhole and sat back down against the door. He cried into his hands. Should have done it when the first symptoms hit.

At the onset, she'd wanted to argue with him one moment, then the next, she wanted to make up, to make love. He was afraid of her. When he indicated that he did not want to touch her, she scratched his cheek with those ragged nails and called him a weak little fuck.

Later, she begged him to do it--to put a bullet into her head. He promised he would as she slept. But it's hard to shoot your first love in the head. No matter that she was becoming something from a cheap horror movie. And even harder when it was beginning to appear that he might well be completely alone in the world when Ellie was gone.

She later asked for the gun, so she could do it herself, but she had been in one of those irrational moods when she'd asked. He was afraid to hand the gun over, lest she put a hole in his head instead.

Now he sat, a broken man, a weak man, smelling the scent of feces and blood and sickness wafting up from under the door.

***

The beginning of the end did not happen like in the movies. There was no slow spreading, no sense of building dread. No media-generated suspense. This was the blink of an eye. An anticlimax, that was what it was. It was Christmas morning and realizing that there was really nothing there to be excited over. It was a trip to the doctor to check a lump that turned out to be a pimple. Most of the major cities along the eastern seaboard had fallen by the time the first headlines hit the streets.

He'd seen a segment about it on the evening news. He'd been sitting at Kelsey's Pub, overlooking the beach, drinking after work. Not that work was all that stressful. That weak thing, again. Four years of college to get paid for teaching little tourist kids to surf. He got paid--not very well, of course--to play on the beach. The television sat virtually ignored above the bar, the anchor's voice muted out in favor of Buffet on the jukebox. Film footage--it was the end of the world, played out to the strains of "Come Monday." The guy on the stool next to him stopped gnawing a buffalo wing long enough to comment, "Some government monkey must have dropped a vial." He snorted bitterly and wiped away greasy orange smear of hot sauce from his chin.

"Must have," Sam agreed. Then he thought nothing more of it. He had a dozen sessions lined up for tomorrow. Besides, Maine was a long way from where he sat then. Government mistake or not, things would be back under control in no time.

He pulled up out front of his place--a little beach cottage rental, just this side of falling in. Katy had locked the door and shut off all the lights, evidentially pissed that he was out so late. He fumbled clumsily with his keys in the dark, half-expecting the cool-leather touch of a snake or a lizard against his bare ankle.

Inside, he weaved through the dark living room and into the bedroom where he saw that Katy had put the baby there in bed with her. Despite the fact that this was Katy's little signal to him that the sofa was his spot for the night, he smiled drunkenly as he looked down at his little daughter in the pale moonlight. Then he shrugged and went back out into the living room.

He found another beer in the fridge and downed it, then passed out to a grainy old science fiction movie.

It was just before 6:00 a.m. when he heard the screaming. He sprang up, not even awake yet, his heart thudding inside his chest painfully. He stumbled over the cocktail table, fell sprawling and wracking both knees on the floor, and scrambled down the hall to his bedroom.

He stopped dead at the door.

Thinking back upon that moment now, he realized that was the precise moment he went a little mad.

Katy was kneeling on the bed. One of baby Chance's chubby eighteen month-old legs in each straining fist.

It took a horrible moment for him to register exactly what he was seeing. Then he saw that part of Chance's torso was gaping open. The child writhed, howling in agony. Blood gushed from the wound. It was painted on Katy's mouth and up onto her fish-white cheeks like a clown's smile.

"Katy?" he croaked. "Katy, what the hell have you done?"

Katy glared at him through cloudy eyes. Her always perfect blond hair was now a tangled nest.

"Young meat is tender meat, but you're next, you drunk motherfucker!" she snarled. Then she tossed the baby to the floor. Chance landed with a terrible thunk and howled even louder, if that was possible.

Katy slid off the bed and shambled toward Sam. She hiked up her blood-soaked cotton nightie and did a sick parody of seduction.

"You know you want it, Sammy. Come and get it."

He stepped back, shaking his head. "No."

"I'll bite your little dick right the fuck off."

He ran from her then, believing every word she said. He could not recall her ever using that type of language with him. She had never raised her voice to him before, not in their three years of marriage. Not even when he'd deserved it.

He fled the house, and he was screaming like a child running from the boogieman. "Oh God! Oh God!" and out the door, clearing the front porch steps like a hurdle. He tugged the door of the Wrangler open and tore open the glove box. He kept a loaded .38 in there. He'd bought it after a failed car jacking attempt back when he was in school. He had never fired it.

Every few seconds, he glanced back toward the house to see if Katy was coming for him. He waited a moment, but she never appeared.

***

Back inside the baby was silent. The entire house was silent, for that matter, except for that dratted leaking faucet he had promised to tighten. He held the gun out in front of him and he could not stop it from shaking. The thing felt too heavy and awkward in his fist.

He moved slowly through the little house, rubbing at his sleep-blurred eyes with the back of his hand.

"Katy?"

Drip. Drip.

Outside the bedroom and he could smell the patchouli incense Katy burned sometimes. But now it was mingled with a foul stench of waste--vomit or shit. And the metallic air of freshly spilled blood. A lot of it.

Closer and he could hear Katy. Chewing. Chewing on what? Jesus! Lips smacking wet and loud.

He screamed again--could not help himself and plunged through the half-closed bedroom door.

He shot his wife in the face three times before he ever realized he had actually pulled the trigger.

Katy fell back and Chance's legs dropped from her dead grip. Katy had started in on the baby's thick, soft thighs. Bone and muscle peeked through, glistening.

The baby twitched on the floor between the bed and her crib. Then she twisted around to face him, a look of recognition in her clouding blue eyes. Blood was everywhere--on the walls, the bedcovers, the drapes. It pooled on the floor like spilled paint. The twitching worsened and then the baby began to howl again. Sam shot the baby, his lack of experience with the gun causing him to only graze her face. He moved the gun up a fraction of an inch and then he turned away.

He pulled the trigger again and all was silent except for the drip drip of that fucking faucet. In a breath, his entire world was gone.

His knees turned to mush and he sank to the floor, too confused to know what to do. Then he pressed the gun to his own head.

But he was weak. So fucking weak.

***

He fled the island and headed back home to his parent's place. The drive was perilous thing, the interstate an obstacle course, a scenic tour of horror.

Here and there vehicles were stalled and he kept expecting to finally reach a stretch that was impassable. Along the way, he spotted a number of the shambling infected along the shoulder of the road. Some chased the Wrangler and others stood and screamed at him as he passed. He drove faster than he should have through the maze of twisted steel, but amazingly he did not wreck.

There was a big pile-up about fifteen miles from his parent's place and he managed to maneuver along the shoulder, the needle hovering at a steady five miles per hour for a quarter mile. He thought he'd never get through it. The sun was up and already hot and he could smell death in some of those battered cars. As he crept gingerly past the last of the mess he thought he heard someone crying out for help. He did not dare stop.

He prayed he could make it back to Holly Hill before needing gas. His parents lived only 60 miles inland, in a tiny rural community. He hoped the sparse population he had always loathed was a good thing after all.

He found himself dwelling on the events of the morning. He thought he might be in shock. He felt mind-numb and outside of himself watching everything unfold as of he were watching a particularly terrifying flick one moment, and overcome with grief the next.

He wondered if he might have been able to save the baby. Why hadn't he tried? Why hadn't he tried to stop the blood? Tears came again, blurring the road ahead.

He tried the radio and found static along most of the dial. On AM, there was the faint, manic ramblings of an evangelist and Sam quickly discovered he preferred the static to that.

He squinted into the midmorning sun and wondered if the entire world was gone now. And if so, why hadn't he been infected yet? How many others were out there beside the crazy evangelists and himself?

***

Holly Hill was indeed the ghost town he was expecting. He cruised slowly down Main Street, scanning the front of the little shops for any sign of life.

He turned up Fifth Avenue and passed Tanner's Hardware. The door stood ajar and he pulled to a stop out front and tried to see inside.

At the back of the store, he could see movement. He turned off the Jeep and climbed out, taking the .38 and stuffing it into the waist of his jeans. He had been on that street a thousand times but this was the first time he had ever been afraid.

Cautiously, he approached the door of the old shop, turning slowly to check behind him. He stood in the doorway, the sun pouring in and casting deep shadows along the aisles, and let his eyes adjust.

"Mr. Tanner?" he called. "You in here?"

He stepped inside and walked slowly toward the back of the store. The shadowy figure continued to move.

"It's Sammy Walker, Mr. Tanner."

Down the dusty aisles closer to the back counter he walked. He pulled the gun from his jeans and held it ready. On either side of him were various types of screws, nails, bolts and washers, all in big glass pickle jars. Drill bits followed, then big angry looking saw blades hanging neatly on long pegs. A big proponent of organization was Joe Tanner, almost to the point of obsession.

Sam could now make out Mr. Tanner's sloping shoulders and shiny bald head. The man's back was to him and his movements seemed strange. Jerking and spastic. Sam's finger danced over the trigger of his gun. He called out again.

Joe Tanner turned slowly. "Sammy," he whispered. Sam could see that Mr. Tanner's left ear and part of his face on that side was missing.

"See this shit?" he asked. "One of those bastards bit my face. Came right in into my fucking place and bit my face!" He smiled and nodded at Sam. "Come back here, boy. I wanna show you something."

Sam took a tentative step closer, but his heart sank as he watched Mr. Tanner's head jerk spasmodically on his thick neck.

"You okay?"

"Hell no. Do I look okay?" Tanner shouted. Then added more calmly, "Can't get organized lately. Can't get organized... Like my head's not working like it was."

Sam moved still closer, the gun shaking but ready.

"Look at this, Sammy," Tanner said. Then he motioned to a line of jars that sat along the counter. Jars that Sam had not noticed until now. Blood had congealed on the old wood, pooling around the base. It had run under the register and was drying there, thick. Flies buzzed busily here and there. The smell was sickening and Sam tried to breath through his mouth.

The first of the jars held what first looked like gumballs. But as Sam looked closer, he realized that he was hugely mistaken. Not gumballs but eyeballs. There were a couple of dozen at least, bloodshot and staring, blue ones and brown. Some appeared healthy and others jaundiced.

The next jar contained what appeared to be tongues, going brown and shriveled.

Sam did not stick around long enough to look closely at the other two jars. He spun around and took off down the aisle and back toward the front door.

"Come on back, Sammy," Mr. Tanner called to him as he ran. "Come on back, you weak little fuck and put me out of my misery! I ain't man enough to do it myself!"

***

Sam was driving up Cemetery Road away from town when he spotted the girl walking along. She had a deer rifle slung across her narrow back. He recognized that shape immediately and smiling, he skidded to a stop along side her.

"I'd know that ass anywhere," he said to her through the open window.

***

It was an amazing thing, finding Ellie out there, alive, heading back to her old homeplace as well.

Ellie Johnson was his only real girlfriend before Katy, and the first love of his life. She was the girl he would have married if her parents had not been so determined to keep them apart.

It had been almost five years since he had last seen her, but she had not changed one bit. A green-eyed beauty, high cheekbones and a full, expressive mouth. Her mocha skin was flawless and still unlined.

They had gone together through most of their high school years and into college. Until her parents decided enough was enough and sent her to France to study art.

Of course, he knew his own parents were relieved when Ellie went away, though they never allowed him to see it. He knew. All in all it was best for Ellie to end things with him. He was barely sliding by in school and heading to nowheresville fast.

She rode next him in the Jeep, her rifle across her lap now. Her clothes were dirty. Her curly hair was tangled and wild. He had never seen her looking less than perfect, and again the awareness of the situation was forced home once again.

"Been to your parents already?" he asked.

She nodded. "They were gone. All I found was this." She pulled a folded slip of paper from her jeans. "Says they went up to Charlotte to check on my grandma." She shrugged. "I doubt they made it," she said, a bit too matter-of-fact for his taste. It made Sam's heart ache, although he knew that the Johnson's never liked him.

"You don't know that--"

"What about your family, Sam?" she interrupted. "Your real family. Katy wasn't it?"

Sam turned and pretended to look out the side window a moment. He bit his lip and pinched back the hot sting of tears. Saying what had happened would make it real. It would make it final.

"I can't talk about that yet," he whispered.

Ellie touched his shoulder gently and they drove on in silence until they reached the house where Sam grew up.

***

Going back home for Sam had always been sweet because his mother always ran out to greet him.

Today, there was nobody to greet him.

His home was a big farmhouse, over one hundred years old. His parents had restored it with all the modern conveniences they could afford on the modest salaries of an elementary school principal and small town newspaper reporter. White clapboard siding, blanketed along the front porch railing in sweet, fragrant jasmine that was home to more than a few snakes in the summer months. Azaleas lined the base of the house along all sides, bloody reds, pinks like cotton candy, lacey white.

He had always missed the sweet smell of home as much as anything else. The shrubs, the grass, even the dirt from the recently tilled fields of cropland that surrounded his parents' land.

"Anyone here?" he called as he climbed the front steps. Ellie followed, her rifle ready in her hands.

The house was as silent as a tomb, save for the drip drip of the faucet in the kitchen. It had always dripped, even after the remodel. His mother claimed it was their poltergeist. It only helped remind him of the horrors of the morning back at the beach cottage.

They moved from room to room, Sam now gripping his own gun and praying he would not have to use it on his own his own parents. But he knew in his heart that he had already done the most difficult thing he would ever have to do in his life.

In through the foyer and living room, then the kitchen. It appeared they had only gone out to the market for a loaf of bread or some milk. The downstairs was empty.

They then moved upstairs, the boards creaky and lonesome under their feet. Sam moved from room to room, growing more relieved with each passing moment. He couldn't begin to decide what would be worse--finding the half devoured corpses of his parents or his parents coming to devour him. But it was beginning to appear that his parents had fled just as Ellie's folks had.

Finally, he made it to his old room. It hadn't changed any more than Ellie had. He plopped down on his bed and sighed, then laughed nervously.

"They haven't touched a thing, have they? Looks like they were expecting you back," Ellie commented, stretching out next to him.

"Then it looks like they were right."

***

They locked the house well and then returned to Sam's room. They crashed and slept fitfully. Sam wept in his sleep and Ellie held him and whispered into his ear that things would be all right, though they both knew nothing was ever going to be all right again.

It was storming when they woke, and well into evening. The darkness of the country was startling after being away for so long.

Sam climbed from the bed and groped around blindly. "I can't see a fucking thing," he muttered.

Then downstairs there was a sudden THUNK, as if a door slammed. Sam stood stock still a moment and the only sounds were the wind and rain and their frightened breathing.

Then another THUNK. This one was softer. It was followed by footsteps on the warped floorboards.

"Oh shit," Ellie whispered. "What do you think that was?"

Sam found the flashlight he had taken from the kitchen and suddenly the room was illuminated with a soft yellow glow. "Maybe the wind," he offered, "blowing a door shut." Wishful thinking, but Ellie knew better. She picked up her rifle and moved to the door. She opened it an inch or so and peered out into the dark hallway.

There was a big window at the far end of the hall and when lightning flashed again, she could see the stooped silhouette walking slowly toward them.

"My God!" Ellie whispered, "I think it might be your father."

"What? Really?" Sam quickly yanked the door open brushed past her. "Dad?"

"No, Sam. Wait!" Ellie cried, grabbing at his shirt. "You don't know--"

"Dad? Where's Mom? Is she all right?"

Neil Clark moved closer. He was bent, lumbering, his face shrouded in shadow. Sam opened his arms to embrace his father and as Mr. Clark leaned in toward his son lightning brightened the hallway again. Stark light touched the man's face only a moment, but that was all Ellie needed. Face as pale as a blank page, dark lifeless eyes that appeared dusted over. Dried blood crusted his lips. His clothes were stiff with gore and Ellie could smell him, the stench of decay, the hot stink of death.

He bared his teeth and his dirty eyes rolled back into his skull as if he were in ecstasy as he drew his son to him. He was going to sink his dirty teeth into Sam's neck.

Then BAM! BAM! Two shots and Neil Clark's entire head was gone.

Ellie stepped closer, her rifle still up and still ready. Sam was sprawled on the floor on his ass, as if he had been shot himself.

"Goddamn! Ellie?"

Blood misted down, putrid and crimson-black onto Sam's legs. It splattered the floor, the walls behind them. The smell was of something spoiled.

Sam sat a moment, staring at the remains of his father. Then he began to tremble violently. Ellie kneeled beside him and cradled his head against her breasts. "Shhh. Sam, we're going to get through this." He cried a while and she cried with him, her face buried into his warm hair. She knew Sam was identified by those he loved. He was nothing now.

They both were nothing now but fresh meat. And the world was starving.

***

Ellie wrapped Mr. Clark in a sheet and comforter from the master bedroom. She had removed the man's belt and had clinched it tight around the covers. He was as tightly wrapped as a Cuban cigar.

Sam watched her--emotionless, methodical. She was stronger than he ever realized. She would survive this if she stayed immune. If anything, he was slowing her down, putting her in more danger.

"Just don't look at it, Sam," she told him.

Together, she and Sam carried Neil Clark down the stairs and out to the back porch. Blood had soaked through the covers where his head should have been, patches like oil on cloth.

"And don't think of it as your father. He wasn't in there. You know he wasn't."

Sam nodded, sick to his stomach. Ellie mentioned burying the body and at first it seemed a good idea. But then Sam wondered if the bright glare from the flashlight, the noise and movement might draw more like his father to the house. They decided to leave him for the night.

***

They found nails in the drawers of Mr. Clark's workshop at the back of the garage and they nailed the first floor windows closed. They nailed two-by-fours at the base of the doors, making them impossible to open from the outside.

Exhausted, they crawled into Sam's small bed. He could not bring himself to use his parent's room, although the bed was much larger.

Ellie found several candles downstairs in an emergency pack, and stood them on his dresser, nightstand and along the windowsill. She lit them and they illuminated his old room in wavering orange and yellow.

Sam crawled across his bed to the shelf that was braced on the wall above his headboard. "I think I may have something here that's fairly valuable. Unless of course my parents discovered it." He laughed, remembering that his mother and father did indeed enjoy weed on occasion.

He thumbed through a stack of old paperbacks. Horror stories--Stephen King, most of them. Little did he know back when he first read them, he would one day be living his own horror story. He chose The Stand, his favorite of the bunch--a big fat volume, well read by the look of the split spine. He flipped through the pages slowly.

"Ah," he said, smiling. He produced a flattened, crooked joint from the center of the book. "Look at that." It was a pretty sad looking thing, but it would serve the purpose. He fired it up with one of the flickering candles and then took a long hit. Holding breath, he passed it over to Ellie.

***

It wasn't long before they were pleasantly high. Ellie didn't know if it was the exhaustion, or just the simple need to have their minds shut down for a while, but she could not remember ever feeling the effects of marijuana so quickly.

"Remember how we'd huddle by the window and smoke, thinking how clever we were?" She laughed and touched his chest. "You'd always stuff a t-shirt along the bottom of the door so the smell wouldn't seep out."

"I was so afraid my parents would find out," he told her. "Turns out they had a bigger stash than I did. Old hippies, you know," he whispered wistfully. Then, sounding shy he added, "You know something? They could hear us in here making love."

Ellie felt her face grow warm with embarrassment. "Shut up!"

"Yep," Sam went on. Dad told me after we broke up. Said he couldn't understand it, considering how well we seemed to get on."

Ellie thought of Neil Clark again--handsome, a bit flirtatious. Hilarious. Then the image of his stained teeth parting against Sam's neck, his jaundice-yellow eyes rolling back like the eyes of a feeding shark, invaded her mind. She shook her head quickly, as if that would erase those thoughts from her mind.

For an instant, lightning brightened the hazy room and she caught Sam staring at her dreamily. He was just as cute as he use to be, she thought. She wondered a moment what if...

She smiled and breathed out a thin stream of smoke. The smell of the pot disguised the stench of decay left by the mess that had been Sam's father.

"I suppose it doesn't matter how much noise we make now," she said.

"I suppose not," Sam agreed. He pinched the joint out and left it on the nightstand.

"For old time's sake?" he asked.

"For old time's sake," she whispered.

***

Outside the storms continued. In the dancing light from outside, Ellie looked lovely as she began to undress. Sam realized he had forgotten what a true beauty she was.

He smiled up at her, a bit dazed, a bit stoned. He giggled, unable to help himself.

"It's been one fucked up twenty-four," he said.

She moved over to the bed and he slipped his hands around her waist. He took one of her nipples into his mouth.

"Mmmm," she sighed. Then she shoved him back down onto the bed and climbed on top of him.

Sex was clumsy and out of synch, as if they had never been lovers. At one point Sam called out Katy's name, then apologized quickly.

"It's all right," Ellie told him. "Neither of us really want to be here, do we?"

Images of his lost wife and daughter refused to leave his mind's eye and he wilted. Ellie rolled away with a frustrated little groan.

"Sorry," he whispered, pathetically.

She stretched out next to him and lit the remaining twig of the joint. "It's no biggie," she said.

"Got that right," he attempted to joke.

They lay there in silence, looking only at the smoke swirling up and up like thin ghosts. Sam wanted to ask Ellie about her life, but what was the point? Her life was gone, just as his was.

Guns within reach, they dozed. At one point, they were startled awake by a loud thump. The wind had indeed blown the screen door open this time. It banged angrily back against the house, then closed again.

"I am so afraid," Sam whispered.

"I am too, Sam," Ellie answered in the dark.

Hearts pounding and eyes roving the darkness for any moving shape, they waited for dawn's merciful return.

***

Days passed. The electricity was sporadic and things in the refrigerator began to spoil. The entire house carried that same sickly-sweet smell that had been with Neil Clark. Sam gathered the rotting food into a garbage bag and took it out back, far from the house. Ellie covered him, her rifle poised, a scowl on her face against the bright sun. They saw nothing.

They buried Sam's father on the edge of the soybean field beyond the lawn because the earth was easier to turn there. They said a few words and neither of them cried. Tears had run dry days ago, replaced by an odd non-feeling.

That feeling, that numbness was somehow more frightening than the fear and the sadness.

Sam found his eyes always drawn to the soft sloping hills at the horizon, watching for shuffling, stooped figures coming to find them.

He wondered what had happened to his mother, but forced himself to think of other things. The "what-ifs" were too horrible to envision.

Ellie began to have a cautious sense of safety and she tried to infect him with it. He wanted to humor her, but he knew things could change quickly.

Supplies held for the most part, but Sam was sick of canned vegetables and fruits. The Clarks considered themselves a frugal pair, and they had visited the shopper's clubs often. Sam had always teased their overbuying, but now he was certainly glad they had. Especially when he went to the cellar and discovered five cases of imported beer stacked in the cool darkness.

They passed the time having sex, getting drunk and listening to music. His parents had one hell of a jazz collection and they had a constant loop of Coltrane, Davis, Parker, and an army of others. He had hated that music growing up, but it was comfort now. They slow danced like they were anywhere beside an old farmhouse waiting for the world to end.

Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday sang them to sleep at night--"Under a Blanket of Blue," and "Autumn In New York"--their dreamy voices echoing in through a tunnel created by paranoia and alcohol.

***

On the tenth day, the cats began to gather. Sam did not notice anything unusual at first--one or two cats slinking around. It was farm country, after all. Cats always hung around and most times his mother or father would end up feeding them. But by dusk, it had grown to something much more than just one or two.

The mewling, mournful crying was suddenly audible even over the music. "What the hell was that?" Ellie asked.

Sam switched down the volume and Sarah Vaughn faded into the background for a moment. He peered out the living room window and could not believe what he saw. There were a thousand eyes staring back at him. Reflected silver and ghostly in the moonlight, unblinking. He nearly screamed, then realized it was only cats.

Only cats.

"You're not gonna believe this," he said. Ellie came over, put her face next to his and looked out.

They were everywhere, crowding the porch railings. The steps. The rocking chairs and the little side table out there. They paced the lawn, droves of them. Waiting.

Sam and Ellie could hear light footfalls on the roof even, pawing at the upstairs windows. The crying was like that of infants alone and starving.

Sam's father had always kept a big bag of Kitty Chow in the garage, to feed those slinking visitors and he ran out to get it.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Ellie wanted to know.

"We can't let them starve to death."

When he opened the front door, the cats scattered like roaches in the light. He emptied the bag on the front walkway, fifteen pounds at least.

The cats stampeded back and Sam rushed back into the house, surprised and startled. Ellie slammed the door behind him.

"So, what happens when they eat that up?" Ellie asked. She had never liked cats, and Sam could see she was not thrilled with a herd of them just outside the door.

It did not take long to find out what would happen when the food was gone. It was a gruesome scene as they began to tear into one another. The smaller ones went down first, torn apart by the bigger ones. Sam watched the nightmare out the window, his hand nervously rubbing his beard roughened jaw. "I can't believe I caused this," he whispered, although in the grand scheme of things, he knew a bunch of cats were insignificant.

Ellie pulled him away from the window by the hand and then she switched the music back up, even louder than before, to mask the growls and cries outside.

***

He had lost count of the days, but he knew it had been more than a week since the cat incident. It was more the stink of the cat carcasses rotting outside that kept them indoors than the fear of one of the infected paying a visit.

They grew bored and both began to wonder what if anything was left outside the valley. Food was dwindling down. The beer was nearly gone. Sam longed for the ocean and the sun and began to consider returning to the coast. He would ask Ellie to go with him, he decided. Of course, if she did not want to go there, he would stay with her. The idea of being so totally alone scared the hell out of him.

Ellie began to show signs of infection on a Tuesday evening, shortly after an ill attempted venture to some of the neighboring houses. Their only encounter with anyone was with a guy they had known back in grade school. Peter. Peter-somebody.

Pete had always been a bit off and when they discovered him, he was sitting crossed-legged on the floor in a pool of his own waste. The stench was tremendous. It had soaked into his jeans and up the hem of his t-shirt, some caked and dry, some quite fresh. He had devoured his left foot to the bone.

He seemed to be completely unaware of their presence in the house.

"Shoot him," Ellie said.

"He's not doing anything, Ellie," Sam protested. "Let's just leave him. He'll be dead soon enough."

"He's dead now. Do it. He knows we're here--"

"You can't really believe that. He hasn't even moved."

"Look, you go into the kitchen and see if you can find anything we can use. I'll watch him."

Sam shrugged and went to search the cupboards. It was only a few moments it seemed, before he heard a scuffle, then the shots. He jumped, heart thundering, dropping cans of food onto the floor.

"Ellie!"

He found her sitting on the floor grasping her calf. Peter-somebody was sprawled on the floor, his rotting brains spilling all over the rug. His legs still twitched slightly.

"I told you, Sam!"

"What the hell--"

"He fucking bit me."

"Here, let me see." He took her hand and pulled away. Blood jetted from the ragged wound and he nearly fainted dead away. He took a deep breath and pressed her hand back over it. "I'll find some gauze or something."

"Fucking lot of help that is," Ellie muttered. "Cut my leg off, Sam. Maybe it's not in my bloodstream yet."

Sam pretended not to hear her and fled to the bathroom in search of a first aid kit.

She was showing signs of infection before the night was over. Very soon he would be alone again.

***

Now he sat, waiting, back against his bedroom door, Ellie's rifle lying on the floor next to him. She had gone crazy an hour ago, tore up his room, then went into a rant about how fucking weak he was. How stunted. How sniveling. She screamed through the door that she had dumped him on her own; not because of the constant prodding from her family. He was weak and most times she only stayed with him because she had pitied him. She cursed him with language saved for sailors and death row inmates. She clawed at the door furiously and he could imagine her nails splintering and peeling back from the ends of her fingers.

She begged him for death, before things went even further south. He promised over and over again that he would.

He lied. He'd always been able to spit out a lie as easily as the truth. He could smell the death stink coming under the door. He could hear her breath against the wood, almost as if it were on the back of his neck.

"I'll break through this fucking door, Sam. I will take you down with me for doing this," she whispered, wet and slurred. "I will take you down and you will hurt like I hurt right now."

Sam reasoned that surely there were others out there that were not infected, but those thoughts quickly turned to the possibility of being the only one left. Was there a reason to go on, if he was to be all alone? Besides, did he actually think he could survive long enough to find others?

Ellie was right, just like Katy. He was weak. He was an overgrown little boy.

His little daughter had been devoured right before his eyes. His mother, who had coddled him and his father, who had doted on him were gone, too. Everyone who loved him was gone.

His world was as good as gone.

He sat as the sun began to sink and the hallway became dark. Ellie had grown quiet again and he knew she was waiting as well.

Finally he sighed and reached up. He unlocked the bedroom door then he picked up the rifle. He moved across the hallway, opposite the door and placed the gun across his knees.

"I'm waiting, Ellie," he said quietly. "I'm waiting."

EVERY TIME I CLOSE MY EYES

By Tanya Nehmelman

"Emma Help!" Eva cried.

"Eva where are you?" Emma frantically screamed as she searched the murky lake water. In the distance Emma saw her sister bobbing up and down. Emma swam as fast as she could to get to Eva in time. It wasn't fast enough. By the time Emma got there Eva was completely submerged under the water.

"Eva!" Emma screamed as she splashed around desperately trying to locate her sister. Then directly beneath her, Emma saw her sister's figure.

"Eva!" Emma cried.

Suddenly a white face with pink blood shot eyes, and yellow razor sharp teeth appeared in the water, and stared straight at her. Emma felt her heart jump in fear. Through the white face Eva suddenly emerged from the water.

Her lips were blue, and blood trickled out of her nose.

"Emma, it should have been you!" Eva gargled as she grabbed Emma by the shoulders and forced her under the water.

Emma screamed as she jumped straight up in bed. Sweat dripped down her back, and her eyes were filled with tears. She rolled over to look at her alarm clock.

"Great, awake at three again." Emma mumbled.

She turned the T.V. back on and watched music videos. She tried to go back to sleep a couple of times, but every time she closed her eyes she would see that creepy white face.

Seven o'clock came fast. Emma dragged her butt out of bed and got ready for work.

"No sleep again Em? Courtney asked.

"Nope, and don't forget I have to leave early today, I have another appointment." Emma replied.

"No problem." Courtney said.

All day Emma dragged. Her eyelids were heavy and she was so tired. It seemed like it took forever for three o'clock to roll around. Emma finished up and rushed off to her appointment with her therapist.

Emma sat out in the waiting room and doodled as she waited for Valerie to come out and get her. Emma was so focused on her drawing that she didn't notice Valerie standing in front of her.

"Uh um." Valerie whispered.

Emma looked up and said, "Oh, hi."

Then she followed Valerie down the long hall into her office.

"So how are you?" Valerie asked in a cheery voice.

Emma looked down and through her clenched teeth answered, "Fine."

"You're not fine." Valerie replied.

Emma looked up at her.

"Look you've got dark circles under your eyes. Are you having trouble sleeping again?" Valerie asked.

Emma nodded.

"Dreams again?" Valerie asked.

Emma nodded.

"So are you going to tell me about it?" Valerie asked.

Emma shrugged her shoulders and took a quick glance around.

Then she began to speak, "It was about my sister again. It's been

over a year, when are they going to stop?"

"I don't know. What happened in this dream?" Valerie replied.

"Well it was like the day she drowned. I swam out to get her, but was too late again. Then..." Emma trailed off.

"Then what?" Valerie asked.

Emma became real fidgety and wouldn't look at Valerie. Her eyebrows scrunched up as she continued, "I saw the white face." Emma was crying by now. "Then Eva jumped out of the water and said it should have been me."

"You don't believe that, do you?" Valerie asked.

Emma looked down at her feet and shrugged.

"You do." Valerie sighed.

Emma looked her in the eye with her tear filled eyes confirming Valerie's belief. Emma became very fidgety again.

"I should have been able to help her." Emma said.

"Oh honey, it's not your fault." Valerie replied.

"What makes you so sure?" Emma asked.

"You can't blame yourself Emma." Valerie said.

Emma nodded as she once again stared at her feet.

Valerie came up to her and placed her hand on Emma's shoulder. She flinched. "Okay, I want to see you next week." Valerie said as she walked Emma out. Emma nodded.

"If things get bad don't be afraid to call me." Valerie added.

"Okay." Emma answered.

She left the office and drove home. The dreams began to come every night. Emma found herself staying up later and later. Consequently making her extra tired for work, and her work began to suffer. Courtney took notice and sent her home to get some rest.

Emma laid on the couch once she got home. She switched on the T.V. and tried closing her eyes, but every time she did she saw that creepy white face. After lying there for awhile, Emma eventually fell asleep.

"Emma!" Eva cried.

"Eva, Eva where are you?" Emma cried as she searched the dark graveyard.

"Emmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaa" Eva moaned.

Emma followed Eva's voice to a grave. She kneeled down before it. She read the gravestone. Emma's name was inscribed in it.

"It should have been you!" Eva gargled.

A white boney hand with long sharp black fingernails popped out of the dirt and grabbed Emma by the wrist. She screamed and tried to yank her arm away. The white face appeared from under the dirt.

Emma screamed and became more frantic. She yanked with all her might and finally broke free, sending herself flying backwards. But the nails had dug deep gashes into her wrist.

Emma woke screaming. She dabbed the tears from her cheek and felt something warm running down her arm. She looked down at her wrist and saw the three gashes, bleeding. Emma cried as she got up and ran to the bathroom.

She blotted the blood away with a tissue. She knew if she went to the hospital she would never be able to explain this, so she butterfly bandaged the three gashes and wrapped her wrist up with gauze. She started to stock up on caffeinated drinks and caffeine pills. She would be sure she never went to sleep again.

Emma sat in waiting room fidgeting. She knew Valerie was going to ask her about her wrist, and she had a strong feeling that she wouldn't believe her. Valerie came out and led Emma back to her office.

"Emma, you don't look very good. Are you still not sleeping?"

Valerie asked. Emma shook her head no. Just like Emma expected Valerie noticed her wrist and asked what happened.

"You won't believe me." Emma mumbled as she looked down at her feet.

"Try me." Valerie replied.

Emma looked up at her trying to decide if she should tell her or not. "Valerie's always listened before. She'd most likely be the only one to believe me." Emma thought to herself.

"Okay, um two days ago I was sent home from work to get some rest. I fell asleep on the couch, and had another dream. Only Eva's voice was in it this time. I was at a grave with my name on it. A

boney white hand with really long black finger nails grabbed me. Then I saw the face, and pulled my arm free. His nails cut me, and when I woke up the gashes were here." Emma showed her, her wrapped up wrist.

"Let me see it." Valerie insisted.

Emma hesitated a moment then slowly began to unwrap her wrist. Once the three gashes were exposed Valerie gasped. She took hold of Emma's arm to examine the wounds better.

"Oh Emma." Valerie whispered.

"You believe me, don't you Valerie?" Emma asked.

She looked Valerie in the eyes. Valerie could tell by the look in

Emma's eyes that she wasn't lying.

"Yeah." Valerie answered.

Emma's fidgeting began once again as she contemplated on asking her next question.

"Valerie..." Emma trailed off.

"Yeah?" Valerie replied.

"Do you, do you think Death ever makes a mistake?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well maybe it was supposed to be me."

"Emma don't say that."

"Why not? Maybe Death mistook Eva for me; after all she was my twin." Emma suggested as she wrapped her arm back up. "Think about it, maybe that's why he's coming for me in my dreams. I see his face every time I close my eyes. I'm just afraid that the next time I open my eyes he'll still be there."

"Emma, this face in your dreams, how do you know that it's Death?" Valerie asked.

Emma shrugged then said, "I just know."

"Okay, well I want to see you again next week. If things don't get any better call me and I'll work you in sooner." Valerie said.

Emma nodded as she got up to leave.

"Emma?" Valerie said.

Emma turned to look at her.

"I'm serious. And get some rest. If you get any worse you're going to have to go back to the hospital." Valerie said.

Emma got home and plopped herself down on her couch and flipped on the T.V. "I can't go to sleep." She thought to herself.

She began rocking her body back and fourth. She was so tired. Emma kept getting up and walking around to keep herself from falling asleep. Her body was now immune to the caffeine.

Emma could feel herself nodding off, and she kept getting weaker and weaker until she finally fell asleep.

Once Emma closed her eyes she instantly found herself back at the lake. "Oh great." Emma mumbled.

"Emma, help me!" Eva cried. Emma scanned the water until she saw her sister bobbing up and down out in the middle of the lake. Emma was a little smarter this time, she jumped in a row boat and rowed her way to her sister. But once again by the time she made it to her sister, Eva was all ready submerged.

"Eva!" Emma screamed as she looked over the side of the boat. She couldn't see any sign of Eva. She stuck her hand in the water trying to feel for her sister. Something grabbed her arm and yanked her over the side of the boat, and pulled her under the water. Emma struggled to break free, but it was no use. The air was quickly draining from her lungs. She turned to be face to face with what had a hold of her. It was Death, she was face to face with his creepy white face.

She screamed, expelling her last ounce of air. Instantly she began choking on the water. There was a great pain in her chest. Her body struggled to breathe. Her sight was beginning to blacken out. Emma woke up coughing uncontrollably on her couch. Her chest still hurt, and when she looked in the mirror her lips, and the skin around her mouth were blue.

"Oh my God!" she cried. Then she ran to the phone.

Emma pulled out her little phone book and dialed Valerie's number. "Please answer, please answer, please answer." Emma whispered over and over, but it was Valerie's voice mail, so Emma left a message, "Hi Val this is Emma, please call me as soon as you get this message, it's really important!"

Emma hung up the phone, and staggered back to the couch.

"What am I going to do? I think I'm going crazy." Emma whispered to herself as she rocked her body back and fourth. She decided to go into the bathroom and freshen up. She stood in front of the mirror realizing how horrible she looked. She opened up the medicine cabinet and pulled out some make up. Once she closed it the reflection of the creepy white face was staring at her from the mirror.

Emma gasped as she dropped the make up bottle on the floor, shattering it. He grinned at her with his razor sharp yellow teeth. Emma could feel her heart thudding in her chest. She clenched her fist and smashed it into the mirror where his face was. She pulled her bloody hand away from the mirror when she still could see his reflection in the shattered pieces. She quickly turned to be face to face with Death.

"Leave me alone!" she cried as she ran out of the bathroom slamming the door on him.

The phone rang. Emma rushed to answer it.

"Valerie?" Emma gasped.

"Emma what's wrong?"

"Valerie? Death's here!" Emma cried.

"Emma calm down." Valerie insisted.

"He's come to get me, Valerie!" Emma cried.

"Emma I'm going to send some help okay?" Valerie asked.

Emma was silent.

"Emma?" Valerie asked.

Still silence. Death was out of the bathroom and standing in front of Emma. "Emma, are you there?" Valerie asked.

"Death!" Emma choked.

Death grabbed the phone cord and wrapped it tightly around Emma's neck. Emma frantically pulled at the phone cord as she began choking and whimpering.

"Emma! Oh God Emma!" Valerie yelled.

She grabbed another line and called 911.

The paramedics arrived to find Emma's body hanging from the ceiling by the phone cord. Her lips were blue, and her eyes were red where the vessels had popped.

The investigators would later tell Valerie that Emma hung herself. Valerie didn't want to believe it. Emma had never been suicidal, how could she have missed all the signs? She fumbled through her desk drawer and pulled out Emma's file. She slowly opened it up and looked at Emma's photo.

"Oh Emma" Valerie sighed as she touched the photograph.

She closed her eyes with regret. The image was so vivid, the white face Emma had described so many times before was staring at her with a freakish grin spread across his face.

When he pointed a single boney finger at her, Valerie's eyes shot open. She looked down at Emma's file as she wiped dribbles of sweat from her brow. A partial statement of Emma's caught Valerie's attention.

"Every time I close my eyes..."

BILLY IS THREE WEEKS DEAD

By Dilman Dila

I'd spent fourteen nights in my new job at KP Pharmaceuticals when Billy, the guy I'd replaced, returned. He was dead. He'd died the week before they recruited me. The three men I worked with, Jack, Greg and Lou, who'd also worked with Billy for years, had found him in the toilets down the corridor with a knife in his back. They were the only people in the building at the time of the murder. They were the top suspects, but the cops had failed to zero on the culprit, and so, I later learnt, Billy came back.

It started as a scratching on the window at 2:40 a.m. We swerved on our chairs and saw a masked face. A hat and a scarf masked the face. We couldn't see the eyes.

We were stunned. Hundreds of cameras covered every inch of the pharmaceutical and it was our job to watch the TVs every night, but none of us had seen an intruder scaling the perimeter fence, or sneaking past the guards in the yard, or creeping up the wall to this window.

"What the hell!" Lou jumped out of his chair, reaching for his gun.

"Jeez," I rushed to my feet, wiping my piece out of the hip holster. I however knew no slug would hit the face; the panes were bulletproof.

Jack and Greg were on their feet too, and they had their weapons trained on the face.

"Could be just a prank," Jack lowered his gun. "Could be just a dummy."

We turned to a TV on Lou's screen panel. It showed the window from the outside. But the camera didn't see anything. The camera insisted there was nobody out there. Yet here was a face peering at us!

"A ghost," Greg whispered.

Lou flipped a button on the communications panel and he spoke to all the guards. "Red Alert, all Eagles," he tried to sound calm. His lips trembled and the panic showed on his face. "Red Alert. We got a face -- We got something on our window."

"Eagle Two here," one responded. "Checking it out. Over."

It seemed hours before Eagle Two talked to us again. We stood still, watching the face in silence. It stared back at us. I now thought I could see eyes deep behind the scarf.

"Goddammit," Eagle Two said.

"What?" Lou asked. The trembling spread to his hands.

"It's a man!"

"We can't see him in the TV! Shoot him!"

Suddenly, the face vanished. We ran to the window and saw two men in the bright yard. The guard stood about ten meters from an intruder in a hat, scarf and cloak. His gun flashed. We heard the bang. The intruder, hit on the head, staggered a little, his hat fell off, but he didn't fall. His hair looked funny, as though caked with mud. Eagle Two fired again, hitting the man in the chest. He still didn't fall. He walked towards the guard with a strange gait, as though he had a heavy body and no joints. That's when it dawned on all of us that it wasn't a man.

"All Eagles! All Eagles!" Lou screamed into the radio. "Fire at Sector Zero!"

Eagle Two tried to flee. The intruder jumped on him. The guard fought back, ripped off the intruder's scarf and coat, and the floodlights hit the thing's face. It wasn't a human face at all. It was rotting.

The creature's teeth sunk into the guard's head and ate a huge chunk as easily as you'd rip a glob off a potato. I think it killed that man to send other guards a message, for several Eagles had appeared and when they saw the horror devour their comrade, they dropped their guns and fled.

"What in hell is that?" Greg said.

'A zombie," I whispered. I didn't want to believe it. I'd never seen a zombie and the nearest graveyard was five miles away. But the word jumped into my mind and I think the other's thought of it too. Zombie. What could it be doing here? This was just a pharmaceutical factory. What could a zombie want here? That question rang in everyone's head, and the horror out there might have read our minds, for it picked Eagle Two's radio and gave us a call.

"Hello, Control?" it said in a man's voice, it sounded like a long lost friend.

"No," Lou said at the same time Greg was saying "It can't be Billy," and Jack was saying "I must be dreaming."

"Yeah," its human, matey voice scared us more than its face did. "Yeah. It's Billy. Aren't you glad to see your buddy?"

"Oh God, no," Lou said.

I didn't know what to think, whether to laugh at the absurdity of it all or to scream in terror. My three shift mates were about to crumble into vegetables. Lou kept muttering "No, no, no," and Jack couldn't help saying "Just a dream! Just a dream!" and Greg lost his breath as he said "True! True! True!"

"I'm coming in," Billy said, "to find out which one of you killed me."

He ran for the doors. We watched mesmerized until he disappeared beneath the patio. Then we jumped around, to the screen that showed the front doors. We didn't see anything. Just the big, plastic doors. They were locked, bulletproof, bombproof, and it would take more than a truck to crash through. We heard a thud that seemed to rock the building and the plastic danced. Alarms erupted. The zombie was hitting the door. We watched the TV wondering whether this mirage would succeed in tearing apart the invincible door. It failed.

It tried our window next. We cowered against the wall, watching wide-eyed as Billy hit the plastic panes. He had maggots for eyes. We knew he wouldn't succeed because the windows were of the same material as the door. He stopped. He'd smeared goo on the panes. He grinned at us, the maggots in his eyes squirmed. We thought he'd go away having failed to gain entrance.

He knew the building and he remembered where he could get glass to break. The ground floor toilets. He broke the windowpanes and squeezed in through a tiny hole that a normal man wouldn't have managed to use, but he could afford to scrape off a lot of his skin and flesh. On one screen, we saw his clothes piled on the verandah. He'd stripped to ease his entrance. On another screen, we saw chunks of rotting flesh stuck on the window and maggots creeping down the walls. We however still couldn't see him.

"He's coming!" Lou whispered. "I didn't kill him!"

I was numb with the thought of a rotting man walking through the corridors, heading for the second floor security room called Control. I thought it would be best if we fled from the room, but on second thought, I decided we were safer in Control. Billy had failed to break down the front doors and our window. That meant he wouldn't be able to break Control's steel door. Moreover, he'd demonstrated that he couldn't walk through walls. He wouldn't get inside Control.

"Nobody killed him," Greg too feared to raise his voice. His whisper was barely audible. "He knows it! We were buddies! We didn't kill him! So why does he come to us?"

"We were all in here at the time of murder. The camera showed us all in here. He is mistaken. None of us killed him."

Quick, shivering, Lou called Denis Pemprey, the Security Manager. Mr. Pemprey must have been having a bad night. He picked the phone the moment it rang.

"Denis!" Lou whispered. We all noted he called Mr. Pemprey by first name. Mr. Pemprey had been a regular security man before he made it to manager a few months ago. The two could've been friends then and the friendship lived after the promotion. "It's Billy! He's here!" I think Mr. Pemprey said something rude. "But he's here!" Lou was frantic. "He ate a guard! He's coming up! He wants to know who killed him!" I think Mr. Pemprey hung up. "Denis? Denis? Oh shit!" Lou slammed the phone. He smashed the set to pieces against the wall.

"I didn't kill him!" he screamed. He kicked a desk as he yelled. "I didn't kill him!"

"Billy's coming," Jack said. He looked at his gun, then threw it away and collapsed onto the floor. He lay supine, spread-eagled, face white, eyes wide open as though in death. I thought he'd die of shock. He now said, "Billy's coming," repeatedly.

"Did you kill him?" Lou yelled at Greg. His voice competed with the alarms that split the night. Lou looked like a victim of electric shock. His hair stood on his head. His eyes were wide and full of terror. His face shone whiter than the walls. He spoke without breathing. "Did you kill him?" He shook Greg by the collars.

"I didn't!" Greg shouted back. "Why would I? He was my best friend, forgodsake!"

Lou shoved Greg hard and the latter fell against a desk. Lou turned his madness on Jack.

"Jack!" He drooped over the supine man, shaking a fist, yelling. "Jack!" He gave the picture of a coach urging a boxer to get back on his feet after a KO. "Did you kill Billy?"

"Billy's coming," Jack said. "Did you put that knife in his back?"

"You did it!" Lou screamed. "You killed Billy!" I feared he'd kick Jack, but he didn't. "That's why you've fainted at the thought of him coming back! You killed him and you know you did it!" Lou raved. He paced about like a pendulum gone crazy.

The cops had questioned Jack, Greg and Lou for hours. According to what I heard, they each had a motive.

Jack planned to marry Billy's ex-wife, Ginny. She, as caretaker of Billy's son, would inherit the fortune Billy had in turn inherited from an aunt. With Billy dead, Jack and Ginny would become rich.

Greg, Billy's best friend, was deep in gambling debts and Billy had mentioned him in his will. Billy was more valuable to him dead than alive.

Lou hated Billy. They say Billy blew the whistle about Lou dozing on duty, and that killed Lou's bid to become Security Manager.

"Hi folks?" Billy said, still using Eagle Two's radio. "I'm at the door. Open up."

Jack leapt out of his swoon and Lou stopped his pacing. We scrambled for the window. We couldn't get out. We pressed against the windowsill and kept our eyes on the door. Billy's voice was human, that scared us more than the half rotting creature we'd seen outside, the man with worms for eyes. If he had a demonic voice, probably we'd have understood, but a human voice... I sweated and it stunk like urine. I couldn't go pale unlike my three friends, so probably there was no sign of fear on my face.

The camera's still couldn't pick him out. We stared hard as though that would make him appear on the screen. If we didn't open, he wouldn't get in. The alarms meant cops would soon be here, and probably they'd save us from this terror.

"I can open this door," Billy said. "I have my key." The key was an electronic card. It could open only the door to Control, a door that remained locked at all times. Probably it was a design of fate that Billy forgot his key at home the night he died. "They didn't clean out my apartment. I found it in the coat where I'd forgotten it. But I give you all a chance. If you didn't kill me, open the door and I won't hurt you. If you did, say so and I'll be merciful."

"Who killed him?" Lou whispered. "We can't pay for one man's crime. Was it you Jack?" Jack tried to speak. He failed. His throat made a horrible, swallowing sound.

"I'm going to open," Lou said. He started to stagger towards the door. "Don't!" I hissed. "He could be bluffing about the key!"

"What if he's not? I didn't kill him. I'm going to open the door." He stopped half way across the room, uncertain.

"Jack?" Billy said. "Did Ginny put you up to it?" We looked at Jack. "She won't inherit my dough unless the cops are certain you didn't kill me. So if you didn't, open." Persuasive. We stared at Jack. His hands trembled. He looked at a panel of buttons on his desk. If he pressed the green one, it would open the door.

Later, I learnt that he opened the door the night Billy died. Billy had forgotten his key at home. He wanted to take a leak. He asked Jack to open the door, and Jack did.

They'd watched Billy in the screen until he reached the toilets. They claimed they always turned off the toilet screen -- not the camera, just the TV -- each time one of them visited the Gents. It wasn't different that night, but when they turned the TV on again, all cameras weren't working.

Cops learnt that someone had hacked into the CCTV server and disabled all cameras except the one watching Control. The cops asked, Why? It gave evidence that Jack, Greg and Lou were inside Control at the time of the murder, and the cops never stopped asking, why did the hacker leave this camera running?

The hacker erased several files from the server, for the cameras had captured them as they entered the building and they couldn't leave such evidence behind. The deleted videos left a track. The assassins (the police though it was a duo) entered KP's office block at 7:00 pm, probably disguised as cleaning staff. One went to the server room and the other to the Finance Office neighboring the murder scene. Each hid in his room all night. The one in the Finance Office did the killing.

The police believed the killers had insider help. Of all KP Pharmaceutical's staff, only Greg, Jack and Lou had a motive, and one of them must have seen something at 7:00 pm when the assassins sneaked in, or at 4:00 am after the murder. KP's management however refused to cooperate with the cops. Mr. Pemprey argued that the inquiry would make KP vulnerable to spies. That's why the cops had failed to get the murderer.

"Was it you, Greg?" Billy said. "You knew I mentioned you in my will. Is that why you killed me?"

We turned to Greg, who sunk to a sitting positing. I think he wished he could keep sinking and vanish into the floor.

"Lou," Billy said. "My old friend Lou. You didn't like me. Tell me the truth and I won't hurt you. I promise. I only want to know the truth so I can rest in peace. Don't let me find out. Tell me what happened after I walked out of the room."

"I didn't do it," Lou said.

"Okay," Billy said. "Here I come."

The doors opened. Billy walked in. The doors automatically closed behind him. A suffocating stench filled the room. I suddenly couldn't breath in the solid air. Billy grinned. I don't know why I thought it was a grin on his face. He exposed all his teeth and stuck out his black, rotting tongue, which looked like a giant maggot. Worms crawled out of his mouth. His eyes were most terrifying. They looked like worms squirming inside balls of glass, giving the illusion of light and life.

I think that's when my bowels burst and warm liquid soaked my pants. Jack passed out. Greg broke down and wept. Lou collapsed to his knees, screaming, "Denis! He planned it! I swear I didn't want to do it but he threatened me and he hired the assassin and he rigged the system and he gave the cops limited access to the server an -- "

"Shut up!" Billy howled. This time his voice was terrifying. It thundered in the room and I thought the noise would break all the TVs and blow out the window. Lou fell silent. Greg stopped weeping. "Was it about Vep?"

Lou nodded. He'd lost his voice. He kept his eyes on the floor. He couldn't stand looking at the zombie. I too couldn't look at the horror. I kept my eyes on Lou's neck.

"Vep Industries," Billy said. "Our biggest rivals. I started to suspect he was selling secrets to them about an hour before I came on duty that night. He acted very fast to eliminate me, too quick for me to think of it as the motive. I'd have visited him before I came here. Sorry for the trouble, Greg and Jack." He paused. I looked up. His eyes were on Greg and Jack. "Okay, Lou," he continued. "Let's pay Pemprey a visit."

Lou didn't think of resisting. He walked out ahead of Billy, after Billy had punched a button and opened all doors. They went down to the parking lot. I watched them on the TVs, not believing what had happened. They got into a Security Van in the parking lot. I think Lou drove. As the white van had sped out of the gates, I heard police sirens in the distance. That's when I collapsed in shock. For several days, I could see and hear, but I couldn't eat, move, or talk.

Since then, nobody has ever seen or heard of Lou and Mr. Pemprey. The latter's neighbor, wakened by a scream, said he looked out of the window at about 3:00 am and saw the white van parked at Mr. Pemprey's drive. At 5:00 am, cops found the van abandoned near Wittle's Cemetery, where they'd buried Billy.

About the contributors:

Penelope Allen is a gainfully employed, internationally published Canadian poet who enjoys travel, photography, museums and exercising her vocabulary daily. While she discovered her penchant for poetry late in life it didn't curtail her enthusiasm one iota. Penelope is positive that without the wonderful writers, who frequent the web, she'd still be wallowing in rhyming couplets. Currently, she's a moderator on two Internet sites and, by invitation, a poetry editor for a newly established publication.

David Bartlett is a print journalism major attending Emerson College in Boston, MA. He has long harbored an interest in horrific and supernatural fiction, and his favorite literary works include: "It" by Stephen King, "The Haunting Of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson, "The Descent" by Jeff Long and "The Girl Next Door" by Jack Ketchum.

Guy Belleranti creates fiction, poetry and puzzles from the hell heat of southern Arizona. His work has appeared in many publications including The Eternal Night, AlienSkin, Futures Mysterious Anthology, and Nocturnal Ooze. His homepage on the web is: http://www.authorsden.com/guybelleranti

John Benton is a freelance writer and game designer. He has worked with Alea Publishing Group and Dog Soul Publishing. His homepage is http://badwrongfun.50webs.com/

Donna Taylor Burgess's has appeared in genre publications like The Book of Dark Wisdom and Bare Bone. She is also the editor of the Naked Snake Chapbooks and NSP Paperbacks. http://www.nakedsnakepress.com/

Emily M. Z. Carlyle's previous credits include "He Tastes Like the Sea," published in THIRTEEN magazine. She resides in Maryland.

Originally from Wayne, Indiana, Patricia A. Collins currently resides in Texas with her husband.

Debra Colvin is a freelance artist who lives in Riverside, CA. More examples of her art can be found at http://www.llothcat.com/.

Dilman Dila lives in Uganda.  Dilman has published several short stories, in ezines, print magazines and anthologies, and has worked with Kenyan filmmaker Kinyanjui Wanjiru on a couple of screenplays.

Brian Jaime is a freelance writer and English Major in West Covina, CA where he writes a wide range of creative, editorial and business pieces. In addition to being a writer, he has also been an accountant, human resource manager, English tutor and entrepreneur. He believes that, when it comes to writing, any response is better than no response. His

latest work can be found in the newly released anthology Embark to Madness. In addition, his writing has also been seen in FlashShot and The San Gabriel Valley Tribune. More information can be found on his website, www.brianjaime.com.

Michael A. Kechula is a retired technical writer. Switching to fiction in 2003, his works have won first prize in 6 writing contests, second place in 1, and honorable mention in 2.   His stories have appeared in 43 online and print magazines and 12 anthologies in Australia, Canada, England, and the US.  He's authored 6 books of flash fiction tales, and a self-study book that teaches beginners how to write flash fiction. He is the editor of Flash Tales Magazine (www.flash-tales.com).

Aurelio Rico Lopez III is a devoted fan of the macabre and a scribble junkie from Iloilo City, Philippines. Over the years, his fiction has been featured in various anthologies such as COLD FLESH (Hellbound Books), TRIP THE LIGHT HORRIFIC (Rage  m a c h i n e  Books), SHADOW BOX (Brimstone Press), STAR-SPANGLED ZOMBIE (Maniac Press), and THE BLACKEST DEATH I & II (Black Death Books).  More of his dark tales are scheduled to appear in RAW MEAT (Carnival of Wicked Writers), MIND SCRAPS (Rage  m a c h i n e  Books), THE BLACKEST DEATH III (Black Death Books), and MIND GAMES (Maniac Press).

Mark Henry Medina resides in the Philippines, where he is working on his Bachelor's degree in information technology. He can be reached via his website at http://marcs-day.deviantart.com

Benjamin A. Nendza is a freelance artist living in Florida.

Tanya Nehmelman lives in Northern Illinois. She enjoys writing short stories, children's stories, poetry, and my favorite horror stories. Her work has appeared in various electronic publications.

Lee Pletzers is the author of Blood of the Wolf, Nightmare, A Season of Darkness and also the SF/Horror Crossover for which a sequel is currently being written. His novel Re-Entry of Evil was released in August 2004, published by SPX Press. His personal page is www.leepletzers.com

Ognjen Popovic currently works mostly as a freelance artist. He has always been inspired by cover artworks and illustrations for computer games, books and heavy metal. During his lifetime so far, he focused on fantasy art, with his portfolio including work for computer games, movies, music bands and role-playing companies. Being also the student of informatics, his intensions in the future are to work on the graphics for computer games, or even engulf into some coding as well. His style leans to achieve realistic images with lots of shading, though he doesn't mind using Illustrator for vector images (tools of trade are Photoshop and Maya 3D). He has been a computer magazine writer for many years, and was the contestant of the World Karate Championship in Osaka, Japan.

Banned from the indie wrestling circuit where he terrorized both fans and opponents as the King Kong Kid, the world's tallest midget wrestler, Brian Rosenberger now scares the literate. His writing can be found numerous places. Just look. He hails from Parts Unknown but perfects submission holds in Cincinnati. The choke's on you.

http://home.earthlink.net/~brosenberger/

Jennifer Schoonover was born a couple of generations ago to fairly normal parents. She worked at West End Games from 1996 to 1998. Since then she has worked as a freelance editor, writer, and advertising copywriter for such companies as The Mountaineers Books, Haworth Press, EN Publishing, Æthereal Forge, Tabletop Adventures, and JAGS. Jennifer currently resides in Pennsylvania with her husband, her daughter, three cats, two parents, and a brother. She recently launched her own RPG company. http://kumapageworks.org/FireWater/

E.P. Spader is a systems analyst and freelance author. He lives in his birthplace of southern New Jersey with his loving wife, Kayce and his three beautiful children: Justin, Dakota and Sydney. Like so many others, he aspires to write the Great American Novel.

Tristan T. Tenorio resides in the Philippines and graduated with a degree in political science. He is also an aspiring freelance writer.

G. W. Thomas is Editor/Publisher of RAGE m a c h i n e Books. He sells POD paperbacks through Lulu.com and ebooks through Renebooks.com. Check out his hub site at http://ragemachinemag.tripod.com

Shawn Westmoreland can be reached via his personal website at http://www.charmingbastard.org/

Garth Wright's first short story was published in the magazine short fiction anthology The Reaper #1 in 1999. He operates and writes for Khan's Press with books published from 2002 to 2005, and has been published by Sword & Sorcery in Strange Lands: Lost Tribes of the Scarred Lands, and by Vanishing Goblin in Rooms with a View, both in 2004. He is also a line developer for ENPublishing's ENGuilds book line.

Alexander Zelenyj's previous work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Front & Centre Magazine, Revelation Magazine, Cerebral Catalyst, Jupiter, Whispers of Wickedness, Freefall Magazine, Crossroads Magic, The Lightning Journal, Worlds of Wonder, Simulacrum Magazine, Double Dare Press, The Rose & Thorn, Upfront Magazine, Amazing Journeys Magazine, Death Bus, and Nth Degree. Mr. Zelenyj has received multiple grants from the Ontario Arts Council under recommendation of Coach House Books, Descant Magazine, and Kiss Machine Magazine towards two separate novels-in-progress.  He is the author of a children's book entitled Marco Polo: Overland to China, published by Crabtree Books. His fiction has been nominated for the 2006 Pushcart Literary Prize.  Mr Zelenyj's most recent achievement is having his speculative fiction short novel, Black Sunshine, published by Fourth Horseman Press.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Awkward Silence

Part 2: The False Knot

Part 3: The Urge

Part Four: The Willing Feast

About the contributors: