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
Guy Belleranti
Guy Belleranti
Adam and Eve Versus the Human Race
Alexander Zelenyj
Josh Benton
Jeff Brown
Shawn Westmoreland
Brian Jaime
Patricia A. Collins
Lee Pletzers
E.P. Spader
Arthur Sanchez
Jennifer Schoonover
Emily M.Z. Carlyle
Garth Wright
Dave Bartlett
Aurelio Rico Lopez III
Michael A. Kechula
Brian Rosenberger
Brian Rosenberger
G. W. Thomas
Tristan T. Tenorio
Penelope Allen
Donna Taylor Burgess
Tanya Nehmelman
Dilman Dila
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.