He trudges up the stairs, head low, spine crackling and makes his way toward the bedroom.
Easing open the door, he looks at Linda; her hands curled slightly as if to maintain their grasp on sleep, graying hair splayed out around her head in a steel corona, chest rising and falling...
Breathing.
Sam puts a frail hand over his own mouth and exhales. Perhaps a slight chill brushes his scabrous palm but nothing more. He swallows. "Linda... "
Breathing.
His eyes widen.
The sheets rise and fall in soft whispers...
A small sad smile pinches the skin of Sam"s mouth.
The car is waiting just as Wilder promised; a swollen c.o.c.kroach nestled against the curb with black eyes for windows that stare vapidly back at Sam as he descends the steps of his home with deliberate slowness. He is appalled at the lack of mobility that has suddenly overtaken his joints and muscles, almost as if rigor mortis has been waiting for just this moment to take hold of him.
It hurts, but only his pride.
The car window hums down and he looks up to see a familiar face smiling out at him. "Good morning Mr. Bradley!"
Sam nods and forces his leg down the last step. With a sigh of relief that emerges more like a croak, he approaches the car in a stoop, like a man balancing a stack of fine china on his head.
"You"re looking splendid!" Wilder proclaims and Sam summons the memory of a smile. "Thank you. I wasn"t expecting to see you here."
Wilder purses his lips. "Well I think we both know why my presence is necessary, don"t we?" His eyes drop to the fresh bloodstains on Sam"s hands.
The driver door clicks open and Sam is surprised to see a chauffeur coming around to his side of the car. With a polite nod, the young man opens the door for him. Wilder scoots over in his seat to make room. "Hop in!"
Sam"s bones click like castanets as he maneuvers himself into the vehicle. Once he is as comfortable as he can get, he looks at Wilder. "I couldn"t do it you know. I couldn"t do it alone."
Wilder smiles. "I know. You"d be surprised how often that happens. That"s why it was important that I be here. After all," he says with a wink. "I"m the man who breaks the bad news."
Sam stares for a moment. "How do you think she"ll take it?" he asks but Wilder doesn"t answer.
They both turn to look back at the house.
And wait.
Immunity.
JEFF STRAND.
Believe me, I howled when that corpseputrid meat dangling from its bonessunk its teeth into the underside of my right arm. I won"t say the pain was indescribable, since there are plenty of good descriptive words: excruciating, agonizing, unbearable, and so on. I"d seen friends, family, and strangers get bit, and even while they shrieked I"d never imagined it could hurt this much.
I pulled my arm away, leaving a strip of flesh in the zombie"s jaws, and cried out for help. Not that it was necessary; my traveling companion Allen was right there. He shot the zombie in the head and it dropped. Then he looked at me sadly. "You know what has to be done."
No. No way. I"d been on the other side many times, but I wasn"t going to let Allen murder me. I could fight off the infection. I knew I could. So before he had a chance to get over his moment of melancholy, I dove at him, tackled him to the ground and pulled the gun out of his hand. Then I blew his brains out.
Heh. You didn"t often see zombies shooting humans in the head.
Stop that. I wasn"t a zombie. I"d never be a zombie. The others were weak. They succ.u.mbed to the infection because they believed what everybody saidyou can"t fight it. Well, I could fight it. I"d fight it and be stronger for the experience. I"d be an inspiration to The Bitten. A hero.
Not dead yet, so that was a promising sign. I"d been bit twelve hours ago, according to my watch, and I was the furthest thing from a shambling, mindless creature. The average time from bite to death? Two hours. But not me. Still alive and kicking, thank you very much. I was awesome.
Twenty-four hours. I didn"t sleep during that time because that might"ve allowed the infection to overpower me, but I felt fine. My arm didn"t even hurt.
I was immune.
Immune!
I was the key to humanity"s survival! Whether it was something in my blood or my brain or whatever, I possessed the ability to withstand a bite from one of those things and not become one myself.
I needed to find people. There were scientists studying what was happening, and I could be the link to a cure. The zombies would eventually lose their spot at the top of the food chain, and life would return to normal. They"d build statues in my honor. Write songs. Name cathedrals.
I slowly walked through the forest, feeling pretty darn legendary.
The little girl screamed when she saw me. So did her mother.
I tried to tell her that I was okay, that I was immune, that I was humanity"s savior, but my voice didn"t workit was merely a soft groan.
I wanted to weep as I fed upon the little girl"s flesh, but there were no tears, just hunger.
In the Land of the Blind.
ROBERT SWARTWOOD.
Like everyone else he knew, Steven"s heart did not beat. Instead it lay dead in his chest, as docile as his brain and his lungs and his soul. So when he first heard the faint beating sound coming from outside his bedroom window, he didn"t know what to think.
He considered telling his parents. He"d been hearing the beating for almost a week now. Somewhere in the trees and bushes beyond their backyard. Its continuous thump-thumping sounded not outside of his head, but rather in.
When his friend Jimmy came over to the house one day, Steven took him out back.
"Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"Nothing."
If Jimmy couldn"t hear the beating, Steven knew his parents wouldn"t either. They"d just stare down at him with dead eyes and say, Oh Steven, don"t make things up. You know what will happen if you do.
He knew. It dealt with something only the zombies had, something called imagination. It was dangerous and evil and those who had it were hunted down and put out of their misery.
But one night the beating became too much for Steven. He snuck outside with a shovelwhy the shovel, he didn"t know, except that he would need itand followed the sound until he came to a spot beneath a willow tree. He placed his hand on the dirt where the thump-thumping was the loudest and felt the earth vibrating. He began to dig.
An hour later, his body wearing down, the shovel clinked against something solid. He glanced up and noticed an owl watching him from one of the willow tree"s branches. It stared back at him with lifeless eyes.
What Steven pulled from the earth was a strange rock. It was shaped like a perfect cube, five inches wide, five inches long, and five inches thick. Something inside the rock pulsed, causing it to shake in his hands.
A voice behind him asked, "Do you know what"s inside?"
The rock fell to the ground. Steven, his small hands shaking, quickly turned.
The thing standing there was a crime against nature. Menacingly tall, its hair dark, its eyes full of life, it was one of the zombies he"d learned to fear. A thing that shouldn"t exist. A thing that had imagination, a soul, life.
"Don"t be afraid." The zombie"s voice carried none of the roughness that Steven was accustomed to hearing. "I"m not going to hurt you."
Steven opened his mouth but could not speak.
The zombie smiled. "Though even if I were to hurt you, you wouldn"t actually feel anything."
The owl in the trees hooted twice, flew away.
"That was meant as a joke," the zombie said, his smile fading. "A poor joke, I know, but a joke nonetheless. Please, say something. I"m risking my life talking to you, the least you could do is say h.e.l.lo."
Steven didn"t want to say h.e.l.lo. He wanted to run away. But he knew that if he did the zombie would chase after him and tear him apart limb by limb, so he stayed motionless.
The zombie said, "You"re about ten years old, aren"t you."
Steven nodded.
"You came out here because you heard it calling you." The zombie motioned with his head at the rock cube on the ground just behind Steven. "Am I right?"
Steven found his voice. "Please don"t hurt me."
"Didn"t you hear what I said before? I"m not going to hurt you."
"What do you want?" Steven said, and took a step back, looked around at all the trees, searching for the quickest escape.
The zombie sighed. "I don"t even know what I want anymore. A long time ago I used to think it was possible for the living and the dead to exist side by side. But now..." He shrugged. "Now this is the land of the dead, and it will always be the land of the dead."
Steven took another step back, the heel of his sneaker b.u.mping the rock. He looked down at it, looked back up at the zombie. Hesitantly he asked, "What"s inside there?"
"What do you think? It"s your heart."
"My... heart? But that can"t be. My heart"he pointed at his chest"is right here."
"Okay," the zombie said, smiling again, "it"s not really your heart. But inside that cube is life. The thing that will make you just like me."
"I don"t want to be just like you. You... you... you"re a monster. You don"t deserve to exist."
"You really have no idea, do you? Say, how many colors are there?"
Steven hesitated again, looking every which way, wishing his parents were here with him right now, wishing Hunters would come to his rescue.
"Colors?" he said. "There are... three. Black, white, and gray."
The smile had faded completely from the zombie"s face, his expression now somber. "I really do pity your kind. You miss out on all the little things. Like actually feeling the sun when it"s shining down on you. Or the wind against your face. Smelling the honeysuckles in the spring and tasting even a pinch of sugar." The zombie shook his head. "Do you realize the rest of the earth hasn"t moved on? It"s just mankind and all the animals. You"ve all moved on, decayed, become what you are. You"ve all become blind, and those like me, the living, are one-eyed men. We"re kings."
"Please," Steven said, and this time his voice cracked even more. He wanted to cry but didn"t know how, and his lower lip trembled, his hands still shook, and without thinking he bent down and grabbed the cube-shaped rock, held it close to him as if it offered some form of protection. "Please, I just want to go home. I don"t... I don"t want to expire."
"If I were you," the zombie said, "I wouldn"t want to expire either. Not until I experienced everything this world has to offer. Because to see the true color of the sky, and the shade it takes when the sun sets... to experience that for even a second is worth all the fear of being hunted down and destroyed."
"Please," Steven said again, holding the pulsing cube in his hands, and it was at that moment the Hunters came out of the shadows.
They wore black uniforms and masks and carried broadswords. The zombie heard them comingtheir heavy boots striking the earth sounded like thunderbut he made no effort to escape. He simply stood there, staring back at Steven, and said, "Don"t accept your existence for what it is. Question it. Question everything."
One of the six Hunters stepped forward. He raised his broadsword and swung it.
Some kind of liquid splattered Steven"s face as the zombie"s head was severed from the rest of its body. He"d heard about living blood but had never known it to exist until now.
The Hunters took the zombie"s body away. Steven was taken back home, where his parents scolded him. His father said some very mean things. His mother cried but shed no tears. They sent him up to his room and told him he wasn"t to come out until they said so.
Sitting on his bed, the cube in his lap (he"d managed to hide it from the Hunters and his parents), Steven stared out his window at the rising sun. It was gray just like the sky. Just like the trees. Just like everything.
The cube-shaped rock in his lap continued to pulse. The sound was so loud it almost drowned out parents" arguing downstairs.
He placed his hands on the cube and held it tight. The cube pulsed even more. And slowly, so very slowly, the cube began to dissolve until there was nothing left at all.
Steven closed his eyes. None of it made sense. The sound was gone but still he felt the beating, which now came from within his chest.
He opened his bedroom door with caution and tiptoed the length of the hallway toward the steps. Somewhere downstairs his parents continued arguing, and though he only caught a few words, he knew their dispute involved him. They were worried not only had their son tried to run away tonight, but he had almost been expired by a zombieand they wanted to protect him but weren"t sure just how to do it.
He stood at the top of the stairs much longer than he"d intended, staring at the pictures on the walls, at the carpet, even the boarder that ran near the ceiling. Each was a different color, a different shade. Nothing like the gray he"d become accustomed to his entire existence.
Everything had changed the moment he realized his heart had started beating. His body had somehow absorbed the life inside the cube. A warm tingling in his chest had spread throughout his entire body, down his legs to his toes, down his arms to his fingertips, and when he opened his eyes again he had watched with a kind of wonder as the black and white and gray of the world began receding around him, until the floor, the walls, the ceiling, everything was painted with color.