Dawn of the Living-Impaired Page 10

  “Masks!” repeated the Untergau. She ripped the sleeve off her own blouse, bandaged her savaged arm, and tied her neckerchief as a tourniquet. “Masks now, girls! Masks and weapons!”

  *

  True and pure Germans? Poles, Slavs, Jews? Mongrels?

  It no longer mattered.

  The freshly killed corpses of soldiers and settlers trudged clumsily alongside the cadaverous, rotted, or skeletal remains of villagers who’d clawed their way up from their graves.

  Jakob Stumpf, or the thing that had once been Jakob Stumpf, went with them. So did the rats from the church basement’s traps, and livestock, and stray dogs.

  Human or animal, that no longer mattered, either.

  They were united, of one nation and one heritage. Driven by their one common purpose, by their shared goal.

  Ahead, at the camp, they would feed.

  *

  If the gas got them, they died.

  They died and they came back, and then they killed.

  Like the soldier, Glaussen.

  Like the horses, and Lizbeth, and Trudi.

  And the other soldier, Erich Löwe?

  His eyes opened. Soft blue eyes, almost the same color as Gerte’s dress. They opened and he looked at Klara, though her face was hidden by heavy rubber, canvas, and leather.

  Her little hand patted him on the shoulder. She picked up the pistol that Untergau Wegener had set down in order to bandage her arm. She held it to his ear. He smiled his gratitude.

  Klara smiled back. Then she pulled the trigger.

  After that, she went to join the rest. Those that were left.

  They waited, girls aged ten to seventeen. Girls in dark blue skirts, white blouses, black neckerchiefs, and gas masks. Some armed with guns, others with farm tools or sports equipment.

  “Ready?” asked the Untergau, a Mauser M712 Schnellfeuer cradled over her wounded arm.

  “Ready,” they said.

  Ready to make a stand. To fight, and defend their country, and make their families proud. Ready to be brave.

  FAMILY LIFE

  "Kids, dinner's ready," I called.

  Grampy was already there, slouched in his usual spot at the end of the table. His teeth were beside his plate. Drool ran from his slack lips. I saw his tongue sliding over his puffy gums in anticipation. He garbled something interrogative at me.

  I hadn't been able to understand my father-in-law when he was alive. Nowadays, it was hopeless.

  "What, Grampy?"

  He rolled his eyes. They, like his teeth, were beside his plate. His spidery, bony fingers toyed with the murky orbs. They leaked a little, leaving snail-trails on the tablecloth. He made the questioning mumble again.

  Caitlin had entered the dining room in time to hear him, despite the headphones clamped to her ears. "He asked what's for dinner," she said, with the haughtiness that only a teenager could master.

  "Take those things off," I said, indicating the headphones.

  She rolled her eyes, too, but at least Caitlin's were still in their sockets. As she obeyed, I heard the perky percussive slam-bounce of the music. Life-metal. Typical. Kids had to rebel. When I was her age, the edgy your-parents-will-hate-it music was all about death and darkness and nihilism.

  Davey came in from the backyard, so filthy he might have just clawed his way out of a muddy grave. I took one look and sent him straight to the sink to wash up.

  "Aw, Mom!"

  "Don't 'aw, Mom' me, mister. Where's Tess?"

  In answer, I felt a small hand plucking at my skirt. I looked down at my youngest, my baby. Tess was dragging her stuffed rabbit by one tattered ear and had a thumb in her mouth.

  "Where did you get that?" I asked, removing it. "Is this your father's thumb?"

  Tess wrinkled up her face and started to whimper. I relented, returning it to her. If it was Stuart's thumb, he had no one to blame but himself for leaving it lying around. In almost twenty years of marriage, I hadn't been able to break him of the habit of leaving his dirty socks all over the place, let alone body parts. Tess bit down happily, gnawing at the thick ivory-yellow nail. She only had six teeth, but that still put her ahead of Grampy. I lifted her into her booster chair.

  "Okay?" asked Davey, presenting his hands for my inspection. They were grey-green, the skin peeling, the scabs on his knuckles worn away to reveal bare bone, but they were clean.

  "Good enough," I said.

  As I was dishing up the meal, Stuart arrived with his briefcase. His tie, and the loose hanging flesh of his neck and trachea, were pulled askew at the collar. He gave me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, greeted his father, sat down, and buried his nose in the newspaper. I saw that he was missing his right pinkie finger and half his index finger, but had both thumbs. Tess must have picked up her chew-toy outside. There were plenty of bits and pieces around the neighborhood, and that was just the way it was with a child as small as Tess. Anything she could pick up went right into her mouth. Marbles, pennies, bugs, dead mice … in it went.

  "Brainloaf again?" groaned Davey as I set his plate before him. "We just had brainloaf."

  "Moth-errrr!" Caitlin repeated the eye-roll. "How many times do I have to tell you? I don't eat that stuff anymore."

  "Caitlin, don't be silly," I said. "Eat your brain. It's good for you."

  "I'm a vegetarian, remember?"

  Stuart lowered his paper and peered at her. "Since when?"

  "Since I decided it's cruel and inhumane to prey upon living creatures," she said. "If you listened, if anybody in this family cared about my feelings –"

  "We could have Brain Helper," Davey suggested, poking without enthusiasm at the steaming pink-brown slab. "I like Brain Helper."

  "We're having this," I said.

  "What do you mean, cruel and inhumane?" Stuart asked Caitlin. "How do you expect to survive?"

  "We don't need to eat brains! There are alternatives!"

  "Like cauliflower?" Davey snickered. "That at least looks like a brain."

  "Shut up, Davey."

  "Make me!"

  "I've about had enough out of you, young lady," Stuart said. "First that horrible music, and the way you dress, and now this!"

  "What's wrong with the way I dress?"

  "Look at you! Susan, help me out here."

  I finished mashing Grampy's brainloaf into a lumpy paste that he could spoon up, and moved on to cutting a slice into manageable pieces for Tess. "Well, Caitlin, your father does have a point. That pink makeup …"

  "I like it. Don't I have a right to express my individuality?"

  "If all the kids are doing it, what's individual about that?" Stuart asked.

  "I knew you wouldn't understand!" She pushed back from the table so hard that the splintery white end of her ulna jabbed out through her forearm. "Oh, great! See what you made me do?"

  "You get back here and eat your dinner, young lady!" Stuart shouted after her as she stormed out.

  "Stu, let her go," I said.

  "Are you going to let her do this to herself?"

  "She'll eat when she's hungry."

  "But she's already just skin and bones."

  I shrugged. "It's not like she'll starve to death."

  The rest of us ate our dinner. I saved Caitlin's plate in the fridge for her, in case she changed her mind, but I didn't hold out much hope. Teenagers could be so stubborn. I could always send a cold brainloaf sandwich to work in Stuart's lunch, if he could be persuaded to brown-bag it instead of going out hunting downtown with his colleagues. Or, if there were enough leftovers, maybe Davey would get his way tomorrow night. I still had a box or two of Brain Helper in the cupboard.

  Some things, even after the end of the world, never did change.

  Here we were, all of us, still going about our daily domestic routines. Stuart went to the office. I took care of the house and the kids. Davey and Caitlin went to school and spent time with their friends. Tess toddled and played. Grampy mumbled about how much better it had been in the good ol
d days.

  "So, how was work?" I asked, trying to coax Tess into drinking her bile from a big-girl sippy cup instead of a bottle.

  "Mr. Harris wants me to take over Don Foster's job."

  "Really? Honey, that's wonderful. But what happened to Don?"

  "Shot in the head while walking to his car."

  "Here? In our neighborhood?"

  Stu nodded.

  I glanced at Davey, hoping he wouldn't be paying attention to boring grown-up talk. But, of course, he was listening avidly.

  "I'm sure it must have been an accident," I said. What we'll do to try and protect our children from the ugly truth …

  Of course, it wasn't like Davey hadn't seen his share of ugliness. We all had. I had been right there when one of Caitlin's teachers took a shotgun blast to the face while trying to haul someone out of a truck. Her head had blown apart in a curdled spray, spattering me with cold, sticky gobs. All three of the kids had seen Mr. Algers, the postman, stalking down our street in stiff, jittery strides after someone had buried a hatchet haft-deep in the top of his skull. He had made it as far as our driveway before collapsing.

  And then there was what had happened to Rex …

  "Hope they get the one who did it," Stuart said. "Get him and eat him up, struggling and raw, like we used to. Remember that, Davey-boy?"

  "Yeah," Davey said. "Can we go hunting this weekend, Dad? Can we?"

  "We'll see."

  "Oh, Stu, I don't know if that's a good idea," I said. "Davey's so young –"

  "You can't treat him like a child forever, Susan."

  He was wrong about that – they would be children forever – but I didn't want to argue at the dinner table.

  "I'll make a casserole for Helen Foster," I said, by way of changing the subject. "It won't be easy for her without Don."

  Shot in the head. It was the only way to really be finished, of course. The zombie's worst nightmare. I was always worried that it would happen to Stu, and I'd be left alone with the kids and Grampy to take care of.

  The ones I couldn't understand were the live ones who, when backed into a corner, put their own guns to their heads to make sure they wouldn't come back. They acted like it was a fate worse than death.

  Like it was so terrible.

  A person could get used to about anything, with enough time and a little practice.

  All right, maybe it had been a little crazy there near the beginning. Everyone had gone kind of nuts then, living or dead. Riots. Massacres. Armed survivalists. Cities in flames. Martial law. Pockets of resistance. Shambling hoards. Chasing down screaming people and tearing hot, wet chunks out of them …

  Things were better now. Almost back to normal. After all, we still had the things that mattered. We had each other. We had home, and family. Millions of others hadn't been so lucky.

  After dinner, Stuart unstrapped Grampy from his chair and carried him into the living room to watch television. Not that there was much on these days that any of us cared to watch. The reruns were all painful reminders from before, and there just wasn't a lot in terms of programming aimed at the new demographic.

  I sent Davey up to do his homework, and took Tess in for her bath. I could hear music from Caitlin's room. She was in there, sulking, with the door shut. Probably on the phone with one of her friends.

  "Who's a clean girl?" I crooned as I washed Tess. I did it gently, so as not to rub off more than I had to, but as careful as I was, the water soon became filmed with a greasy residue and shed scraps of skin.

  Tess giggled and kicked and splashed. I poured baby shampoo into my cupped palm and lathered her fine blonde hair. Some suds ran down her face and into her eyes, but she didn't cry. Just as she never cried whenever I accidentally poked her with a diaper pin.

  I dried her off and got her into a set of fuzzy yellow sleepers patterned with duckies. Combing her hair, I struck a tangle and pulled too hard without thinking. A patch of scalp the size of a quarter peeled away from her skull.

  "Oh, look at that," I said. "Sorry, sweetie. Mommy's clumsy today."

  Davey had finished his homework by the time I carried Tess into their room. He was in his pajamas and had toys spread all over the floor.

  "Mom, can I have a puppy?" he asked, looking up as I came in.

  "No, dear, you should have eaten all of your dinner."

  "I meant as a pet."

  "Oh." I sat in the rocker, Tess cradled on my lap. "I don't think so, Davey."

  "It wouldn't be like with Rex, I promise. We could get a real puppy. One like us."

  "Animals aren't like us, Davey. You know that."

  His lower lip stuck out. It was hanging by a flap and would probably fall off any day now. "Why aren't they?"

  "Nobody knows," I said, beginning to rock. "They just aren't."

  "I miss Rex. I didn't know he wouldn't come back. I was just hungry."

  "I know." I smiled at him, my soothing-mommy smile. "I know, honey. Now, go brush your teeth and get into bed. We've got a story to finish."

  "Okay." He shuffled off.

  As I rocked, I let my gaze roam the kids' bedroom. There was still a family photograph hanging on the wall. I had taken down and gotten rid of all the others, the framed pictures and the albums, but this one I kept forgetting.

  I was surprised it didn't give Davey nightmares. Those faces … faces that were almost familiar. … faces that were alive …

  To think, that used to be my family.

  Davey came back upset, with two teeth in his hand. He showed them to me as if afraid I might scold. "I was just brushing and they came out."

  "That's all right. It happens." Tess had drifted off, and I lowered her into her crib. I smoothed the blanket tight over her bloated little tummy and tucked Mr. Bun-Bun down beside her. "Into bed with you."

  Once he was in, I returned to the rocker and picked up a thick book from the bedside table. I flipped the colorful pages.

  "Do you remember where we left off?" I asked.

  "The big brain!" he said, bouncing on the mattress where he had originally died. "The big brain and the zombie godmother!"

  I began to read, editing as I went.

  *

  The zombie godmother waved her magic bone, and the brain that Zombiella had brought from the kitchen grew into a carriage, with six giant graveyard rats for horses.

  "Now you can go to the ball," she said.

  "But, Godmother!" Zombiella looked down at herself. "How can I go to the ball like this?"

  The zombie godmother waved her bone again, and something wonderful happened. Zombiella's soft pink skin turned dark with decay. Her cheeks sank in. Her glossy hair went stringy and dry. The smell of rotting meat rose around her like perfume. The ugly, raggedy clothes that Zombiella's stepsisters made her wear turned into a long white shroud, with slippers carved from skulls, and hairpins made from fingerbones.

  "But be home by midnight," the zombie godmother warned, "because at the stroke of twelve, the spell ends."

  Zombiella promised to be back in time. She climbed into the brain carriage, and off she went to the ball.

  Prince Zombing's castle was all aglow, and there was music, and a tremendous feast of fresh brains, and every zombie girl in the kingdom had come in hopes of being the one the prince chose to be his bride.

  But when Zombiella walked in, Prince Zombing's eyes popped right out of his head. Nobody recognized the beautiful green stranger in the long shroud and skull slippers. Not even Zombiella's own jealous stepsisters and cruel stepmother.

  Prince Zombing, once he put his eyes back in, would dance with no one else for the rest of the night. They were having such a wonderful time that, before Zombiella knew it, the great clock began to strike twelve. She ran for the exit, and in her hurry, she tripped on the staircase. Her anklebones snapped, and one of her feet, still clad in its skull slipper, broke off. She couldn't go back for it but had to hobble along on the stump until she got back to her brain carriage and the graveyard rats galloped awa
y.

  The last stroke of midnight echoed across the land, and the spell ended. The fine carriage turned back to a brain, the rats shrank to their normal size, and Zombiella's shroud became dismal rags. Her heart started beating. Her skin tingled. She was alive again, horribly alive. Blood poured from the stump of her ankle.

  On her one remaining foot, though, was a single skull slipper. Zombiella put it in her pocket and limped the rest of the way home.

  She was just in time; her cruel stepmother and jealous stepsisters arrived, furious at the mysterious, nameless stranger who had so enchanted the prince. Zombiella smiled to herself and kept quiet, her skull slipper hidden safely away and wrapped up her stump in a big bundle of rags, so no one would guess the truth.

  Meanwhile, at the castle, Prince Zombing had found the severed foot on the stairs and swore that he would only marry the zombie girl whose foot it was. He sent his steward from house to house, carrying the foot on a velvet pillow, searching among every girl in the kingdom for its rightful owner.

  Well, when Zombiella's stepmother and stepsisters heard about this, they made a plan. The elder stepsister declared that she should get to try first, and as soon as the steward neared their house, she lopped off one of her feet with a cleaver. When he came to the door, she met him, hopping on one leg. The steward was overjoyed to have found the prince's true love, but as soon as he tried to match the foot to the stump, he realized he had been tricked. You see, the foot on the pillow was a right foot, and the elder stepsister had foolishly cut off her left foot.

  The steward was angry, but the second stepsister quickly chopped off her foot and hobbled out. So the steward tried again … but the second stepsister was so eager and excited that she'd cut crooked, leaving most of her heel on. It was obvious that the foot wouldn't match her stump, either.

  Really furious now, the steward was about to leave when Zombiella rushed forward and begged to be allowed to try.

  "You?" her stepmother cried. "You, a living girl? Don't be ridiculous! The prince would never marry the likes of you!"