Zombie Drabble #394 "Remains Of The Day"

"About forty-five minutes left until sundown. Who's got the map?"

The group found tree stumps and rocks and patches of dry grass to sit on while Violet and Horace looked at the old county map.

"If we go West on 12 there's a school…"

"Too close to the middle of town. What about East?"

"Residential. Parks. Woods. The highway again."

Violet looked around: no one had laid down. "We keep going North."

"In the dark?" Horace shook his head. "That's how Maines and that little girl got bit. What was her name?"

"Becky," Violet said, evenly. "Her name was Becky."

Zombie Drabble #393 "Education"

There was a collar around its neck, and a chain from the collar to a post driven into the ground.

"Observe." Rinkmann picked up the pistol, thumbed the safety, aimed, fired three rounds into the zombie's torso; it stumbled back, hissed, spat, moaned, but did not fall. "A bullet to the body is wasted." He put one through the brainpan and the corpse dropped limp to the ground.

The kids nodded: they understood. They were the first generation that hadn't seen the movies, that didn't know the rules. Teaching them would have to be worth a few bullets every spring.

The Fixer

Amy drove the van while Colton slept against the passenger window; Morris and Jen commiserated in whispers in the middle seats. In the back…

The demon had reeked of sulfur and decay before being shot by Colton, and death had not improved its odor. It was sprawled across the convertible bed, leaking thick black blood onto a tarp they had stolen from atop a neighbor's patio grill.

"Colton."

He heard her, but didn't stir.

"Colton."

"What?"

"Where am I going?"

"Just keep driving until you don't see buildings. Do the speed limit. Signal turns and lane changes. Do not get pulled over."

"If we get pulled over we can just—"

"If we get pulled over I have to shoot a policeman and then we've got two bodies to bury."

Amy said nothing for a minute. "That's the demon talking."

"The demon's dead, Amy, that's practicality talking. There is no explanation for what's back there. If we're caught with it, we'll be lucky if we ever see the light of day again. Do you want your baby to be born in a holding cell on some secret military base?"

She didn't seem shocked that he knew, she just sighed. "Our baby, Colton."

"Oh, it's 'ours' now, is it? You've known for how long? Since before him, isn't it?"

"I was waiting for the right time, Colton. And then… and then after," she didn't bother specifying after what, "it just seemed like if I told you, you'd do something stupid."

"Too late."

He finally looked at her. She looked strong, determined, recovered, in a way that he wasn't, in a way he suspected he never would be. Of course it was a front. She glanced over at him, and they both laughed nervously.

From the back, Morris piped up. "There. Make a left." It was an access road. There was a gate, but it was open. "This used to be a private school. It's abandoned now."

"Does someone check up on it?" Jen asked.

"Only once a week, only the building. We used to come here in high school to get high." Morris grinned. "Pull around the back. We'll drag him on the tarp into the woods and then bury him."

"It. We'll bury it." Jen said, decisively. "And then a doctor for Colton."

"No." As much as he wanted one, needed one. "Then get rid of the van. I'm not sure how to do that. A cadaver dog would go apeshit if it got anywhere near this thing. Clean it, take it to a professional place and have it cleaned again, and then junk it."

Jen stopped the van on the far side of the dumpsters, where it could be seen from the road and where it might not be seen from the building, if they were lucky. "You bought shovels on your credit card. Now you're going to junk your van. Maybe you're making yourself look more suspicious by trying not to look suspicious."

"Can't be helped." It probably wouldn't matter, anyway. He was hurt worse than they thought. It wasn't just the wound itself: after twelve hours, it was clearly infected with something hellish and deadly. Just another thing to hide.

The others got out quickly, thankful to be out of the enclosed space. Colton eased himself out slowly, wincing, shaking.

Morris offered, "We'll dig. You rest."

"Thanks." He fixed Morris' eyes with his own. "It's gotta be deep, Morris."

"Got it."

He watched them dig. It took a couple hours just to get the hole deep enough. It was therapy, burying the demon's corpse. If they could have chopped it up, or burned it, they probably would have. By the time they were read to drag the tarp over and upend the body into the hole, he felt even worse, but still he had to get out, help them. It made it over. Almost over, anyway.

They stood around the lip of the hole, staring down at the corpse. Jen cried.

Colton found himself waking up with dirt in his mouth, staring up at the sky. "What happened?"

"You passed out. Colton you're bleeding again."

It had been bleeding the whole time, under the bandage: the wound in his side where the demon had clawed him after breaking out of the pentagram. Only now, the blood was dark, almost black. Amy pulled his shirt up, pulled the dressing aside. "Oh, God."

"Yeah. Help me up."

They put their shoulders under his arms and lifted him from the ground. Amy was white as a sheet. "Doctor, now."

"No. Sorry." He fished the revolver out of his pocket; they stepped back instinctively. He almost fell, but he had just enough strength to keep his feet.

"Colton!"

"I can't go to a doctor. They'll ask what happened. They'll run tests. I don't know what they'll find, but it won't be good. You'll all be arrested for murder when I die."

"Colton you're not going to—"

"It's my own fault. He… it said not to move, and I took a step back. I was going for the door." He laughed, winced in pain. "It doesn't matter: I moved, it clawed me. That's that. Just make sure to pack the dirt down tight." He moved back to the edge of the hole.

"Colton, the baby. Our—"

"I'll be dead within a day either way."

"You don't know that."

He shook his head. Amy had to know she was kidding herself: she'd had the demon in her head just as long as him. "Amy, what if it's not a toxin? What if it's how it reproduces? You know what it wanted, you saw, we all did. An army of children, just like it. And all of us slaves or food or worse."

Morris was tight-lipped, silent. Jen put her arms around Amy, who had begun sobbing uncontrollably.

"Cover us up, do what I told you to do with the van, and never come back here again. Ever." He put the pistol to his head.

SF Drabble #399 "The Added Mass"

The warpgate was old, but well-maintained. Gas and dust had been pouring through it steadily for a thousand years, giving way for decades at a time to streams of solid rock: planets having been  disassembled, sifted for useful materials, and their detritus sent here to fall into the hot, radioactive atmosphere of the brown dwarf below.

"Any minute now."

"You must be very proud."

"Why?"

"To be the Administrator when the project reaches completion."

"Nonsense. I'm just the last in a very long line of—"

The reactive glass darkened to protect their eyes; still the flash was dazzling.

"Fusion underway."

Inheritance

The trees were taller. As a youth they had seemed enormous, and even though he was fully-grown they still did not disappoint. The driveway still had ruts, the mailbox still leaned to the right, the front gate still squealed in protest as he pushed it open and then closed again.

Twice a year, from the time he was a babe-in-arms until he was ten and the Big Move; twice a year, for a week in the summer and a weekend over Christmas. He didn't knock on the front door: no one was home.

You get a letter, and you open it, and someone has died, and you're momentarily sad, even though you didn't really know the person all that well anymore if you ever had.  Family. There's an executor and then a lawyer and then a plane ticket and then you're returning to a place you never thought you'd see again, all because you were fondly remembered by someone you had nearly forgotten.

Inside, the furniture was covered with white sheets. Where had they come from? Did the lawyer do it? Do they call in a service?

Up the creaky stairs with the smooth, curved bannister that was all one piece. He had always wondered how they did it. Do trees grow in that shape? Wouldn't it break if they took a straight piece and tried to bend it in that easy arc? He still didn't know.

He opened the bedroom door. It wasn't locked, which was odd, but of course the lawyer or his people, they wouldn't have had any idea. Of course it was still empty, bare hardwood floor and bare cream walls and plain white curtains over the windows.

It was early yet; he sat on the floor facing the North-East corner, and remembered.

Picking fallen crabapples before they went mushy, and chucking them into the lake to see if you could get them to skip; running so fast that it was falling; the teenage girl up the lane and on the other side that sometimes laid out in a bikini until her mother caught him peeping through the hedge and yelled; the rusted-out truck randomly laying on its axles deep into the stand of trees out back. Summer. He relived it, sitting cross-legged in business slacks and loafers.

It got to be late enough. He turned around, and there it was, a shimmering in the South-West corner, just like always. It took shape, it firmed up, it reached out but couldn't grasp.

There was a tingling where the shimmering touched his exposed skin. "Remember me?"

The shimmering spread up the walls, crawled across the ceiling, fell across him like a blanket, he held his breath until it rolled away back to its corner.

"You're less now than you were then." He observed. "How long until you're gone entirely?

They were tearing the house down in two weeks. Should he mention it? Would he be understood if he did? Would the shimmering care?

"Did you miss me?"