“Look, babe—I know what this thing needs. I’ll make sure there ain’t nothin left this time.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?” Barb had regained enough of her equilibrium to peek at herself in the bureau mirror to ensure she didn’t look too messed up.
Renny lifted the interloper by its broken pinky. He could feel himself piling up jungle smarts by the minute.
“You got any charcoal starter out back?”
It stank. Truly. It sizzled when it burned, a roundly unappetizing spectacle that Barb forced herself to witness. They both watched it cook down and Renny periodically batted the chunks apart with barbecue tongs until it was reduced to black goo and bone ash.
Barb plodded back inside to take her third shower in twenty-four hours. There was just no washing Victor off her life.
Renny watched the goo smolder and bubble on the coals. Kind of like pork, the smell.
He rubbed the smoke from his reddened eyes and finished up, not really wanting to enter the house again. He no longer wanted to play bed games with Barb. He just wanted to get some sleep.
By the time Barb towelled off, she discovered Renny deep in slumberland. Igg, she’d have to change the sheets despite her shower. A job for tomorrow. She sat on what was, de facto, “her” side of her own bed, successfully not waking her partner in crime.
Renny was different, she knew. Their relationship had turned. Flow-ers decay. Banquets spoil. Water evaporates. And their sneaky victory had soured. At first it had been a delicious, shared secret; now it had become a horrid quickmire that bonded them like a pair of panicked dogs struggling to uncouple.
She felt, well, dead inside, to hammer a phrase. Blown out, wasted, spent, scorching at the edges. She did not want to feel anything so much as she wanted to feel nothing.
Renny was sleeping with his mouth unhinged, as usual, just begin-ning to snore. That snore would tell her that she was far, far away from his thoughts. She gently grabbed his nose and tilted his head so he no longer faced her. The incipient snore died with a gurgle.
She felt unusually sensitized, to the point where the dust on the sheets and comforter bothered her. Grit was in her eyes and she fancied more dust layered upon her soul, like wet snow. The thought that it might be the powder of dead bones made her start crying, and she never stopped.
Caught up in her own grief, she missed seeing the tenacious little gob of charred protoplasm as it wormed past Renny’s slack lips, to slide easily down his esophageal tract. Soon it would renew its work deep inside of him, where the heart was.
Good People
By David Wellington
David Wellington is the author of the zombie novels Monster Island, Monster Nation, and Monster Planet, and the vampire novels 13 Bullets, 99 Coffins, Vampire Zero, and 23 Hours. A werewolf novel, Frostbite, came out last October. Another zombie novel, Plague Zone, was serialized on his website, davidwellington.net, but is not yet in print. Wellington’s short fiction has appeared in the zombie anthologies The Undead, The Undead 2: Skin and Bones, and The New Dead, and he also has a story in my vampire anthology By Blood We Live. He recently made his comic book writing debut with Marvel Zombies Return.
George Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead established our modern image of zombies—mindless corpses with pale flesh, wild hair, and dark-ringed eyes who stumble clumsily about, hungering after the flesh of the living. Since then we’ve seen a vast proliferation of zombie stories and a corresponding increase in their variety. We’ve seen zombies who aren’t technically dead (28 Days Later), zombies who sprint after their victims (Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead), zombie dogs (Resident Evil), zombie Nazis (Dead Snow), zombie superheroes (Marvel Zombies), even zombie strippers (Zombie Strippers). We’ve also seen zombie comedy (Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland), zombie romance (Amelia Beamer’s The Loving Dead), and even zombies invading classic nineteenth-century literature (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). And of course we’ve seen David Wellington’s gonzo Monster trilogy, which features smart zombies, superpowers, mummies, and an epic battle for the future of humanity.
But sometimes all you’re in the mood for are some good old-fashioned moaning, shambling zombies, which our next story delivers—in spades. Here David Wellington takes the zombie story back to its roots—a bunch of regular folks just trying to survive, figuring out what they’re willing to do to make it, and the horrible things they have to do after the end of the world. After all the variations, parodies, and mashups, the classic Romero-style zombie is still alive and well (so to speak) and still, after all these years, coming to get you.