The Rising: Selected Scenes From the End of the World Read online

  Larry knew glass. When he wasn’t running his real estate business on the side, he was a plant manager for the Gallo Winery, producing bottles for the wine. And as another crack spiraled through the Humvee’s windshield, Larry paid attention. Obviously, he didn’t know as much about automotive glass as he did glass containers, but he knew enough. He knew it wouldn’t last much longer. All glass was basically made the same way, starting with the batch process, which mixed all the ingredients for the type of glass in production. In many ways, it was like mixing a cake, only on a much larger scale; ingredients being sand, soda ash, limestone, sulfur, and cullet. After cooking in a furnace at 3,000 degrees, it was then put it into a fore-hearth, which conditioned and evened out the glass for blowing. The glass was then put into molds and shaped. After it had been formed, it was annealed, to take the stress out of the glass. Larry wished the windshield had been annealed a little bit longer, because it was all that stood between him and the things outside.

  The Humvee was upside down, its tires sticking up in the air like four dead legs. Larry didn’t know what had happened. They’d been cruising along, the soldier and he, looking for a way out of town. The zombies had barricaded the streets, turning Modesto into a giant trap. With General Dunbar dead, killed in that explosion in Corona, the troops had lost focus. The regular soldiers were drifting away, and the civilian recruits, people like Larry, drifted with them. It was either that, or wait for the zombies to kill them.

  He and the soldier, whose name was Higgins, had been barreling down the main drag, weaving through the stalled, burning cars, and running down everything that got in their way—both living and dead. Higgins had been telling Larry about a man in Fort Bragg. He and his buddy had shot both the man and his dog. In the days since then, Higgins felt guilty about the act.

  Larry was about to reply when something exploded beneath the driver’s side front tire. The Humvee shook, and then flipped. The last thing Larry remembered was screaming, and he wasn’t sure if it was Higgins or himself.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was upside down—and the zombies were all around him. Dunbar’s scattered forces and those they’d been protecting fought a running battle with the dead. So far, they hadn’t noticed him. Maybe if he kept still…

  A gunshot went off to the right. A zombie stumbled backward, its head raining down on the pavement and splattering across the passenger’s side door. Larry felt the bile rise in his throat. Higgins was dead. The barrel of his M-16 had speared the back of his neck on impact, and rammed up into his brain.

  At least he won’t be coming back, Larry thought. He shuddered.

  It began to rain.

  In the street, a pack of dead dogs brought down a fleeing Private, ripping him limb from limb as he squirmed beneath them. A red-faced, panting Sergeant stumbled by, hands clasped around his bleeding stomach, dragging his entrails behind him. Giggling, an undead child darted out from behind a newspaper box, grabbed the length of intestine, and wrapped it around a telephone pole. The injured Sergeant walked on, oblivious. The cord grew taught, then snapped. The Sergeant lurched forward a few more steps, and then fell on his face. A woman screamed; her body covered with dead birds. Incredibly, a zombie elephant charged another Humvee. The soldier on the back brought it down with his mounted fifty-caliber, before being shot himself by another zombie.

  Bullets chewed up the pavement. Chunks of cement bounced off the windshield, shattering it more. The stench wafted in through the hole: decay, cordite, burning fuel and flesh. The screams became louder.

  Slowly, carefully, Larry felt around for his pistol. He couldn’t find it, and he was afraid to turn completely and chance attracting attention. His fingers closed over the neck of a wine bottle. It hadn’t broken during the wreck, and more amazingly, there was still liquid inside. He lifted the bottle to his lips and drained it in one gulp. A child was screaming. He drowned the noise out.

  Larry turned the empty bottle over in his hands and smiled. He’d made this, in another time, another life. The first thing he noticed was the little “g” in a circle, which stood for Gallo. The knurling on the bottom was well formed, as was the pushed up bottom. He checked the baffle and verified that it wasn’t swung. There were no critical defects. His crew had done well. He wondered where they were now.In the street, a zombie horse galloped by, a screaming man hanging from the saddle. His hands beat at the creature’s flank. A homemade gasoline bomb slammed into a building, and the structure erupted into flame. Artillery whistled overhead, then crashed nearby. Larry felt the concussion before he heard the explosion. It rattled his teeth, his chest, and the windshield.

  The glass finally gave way, showering his upside down face with jagged chunks. Larry slipped his seatbelt off and sat upright.

  Ten feet away from him, an elderly corpse sliced an unconscious soldier’s penis off with a pair of tin snips. It bent its head to the spurting stump and drank, as if at a water fountain. Then, seeming to sense Larry’s presence, its head pivoted towards him.

  “Hello, Meat.”

  “Shit.” Frantic, Larry glanced around for the missing pistol.

  “Look at you,” the zombie teased. “Sitting inside that tin can just like a Vienna sausage.”

  Pulse racing, Larry scrambled backward. Shards of glass ripped into his palms. He ignored them. The zombie charged. Larry held the bottle he’d manufactured up to ward it off. He saw it coming through the glass.

  Then it was upon him and the glass grew dark.

  A MAN’S HOME IS HIS CASKET

  The Rising

  Day Twenty-Four

  Silver Bay, Minnesota

  H Michael Casper didn’t go outside anymore. Not that he had much before. Silver Bay had no cultural activities. H and his wife, Leen, went to Duluth and Two Harbors for that. They did much of their shopping via the internet, and bought groceries off a whole foods coop truck that made the weekly trek from Madison, Wisconsin.

  H firmly believed that a man’s home was his castle.

  He didn’t go outside now because everything he needed was here. Amazingly, after twenty-four days, the power was still on. He had plenty of food and water (although he longed for some spicy Asian take-out), tequila, two cases of St. Paulie Girl Dark and a six pack of Spaten Optimator), weapons (a semi-automatic .22, which he’d used to kill some feral cats that strayed onto his property and attacked his own cats, and a homemade driftwood cane that he kept next to the front door), radio and television (the satellite wasn’t sending signals—although he occasionally heard snippets of phantom broadcasts on the radio), movies (luckily, because it might be a while before Netflix delivered again), his guitar (even at age fifty-two, H still maintained his tenor and awesome falsetto), music (Rundgren, Champlin, and that ol’ albino, Edgar Winter), and his books. Lots and lots of books…

  H lived in a rambler with a tuck-under garage and huge, vaulted ceilings. His library overflowed with books and comics. He had more comics downstairs in the basement—along with Leen and the cats.He didn’t know what had killed her. She just fell asleep one night and didn’t wake up. Oh, her eyes opened again. She moved around, attacking him in bed. But it wasn’t Leen. She’d gone to sleep and something else had woken inside her. He’d wrestled away. She chased him into the library and he clubbed her with a lettered Brian Lumley edition. That bought him enough time to get the gun. H was a peaceful man. Killing his wife, even if she was no longer his wife, was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Killing Kitchi and Kito, their two black cats, had been a close second. Disposing of them all was third.

  He didn’t go down to the basement anymore. It stank.

  Besides, he had all of his comforts right here.

  The only thing he missed was going fishing at Thunderbird Lake, but it was probably full of zombie walleye now, anyway.

  The clock showed midnight. He was sitting in front of the fireplace, reading a short story collection, when he grew uneasy. It felt like somebody was watching him.

  “Leen?�
�� His own voice sounded funny to him after so long without speaking.

  H crept to the front door and peeked outside. He had a large front yard, filled with apple, maple and birch trees, and his one hundred foot long driveway was lined with trees as well. Their leafy canopy cast all in shadows. The shadows were empty. He locked the door, and crossed to the east side of the house, looking out across the backyard. Nothing moved in the darkness. He saw the old woodshed and Leen’s gardens, and beyond them, the tree line of Tettagouche State Park. That was all.

  “Quit being paranoid.”

  Nobody else knew he was here. Nobody was coming, living or otherwise.

  All he had to do was wait it out.

  There was a knock at the door.

  H nearly screamed.

  Who is that? The army? National Guard? A neighbor? Or one of them …those things?

  The knock came again.

  Quietly, H picked up the .22 and crept into the foyer. He’d blocked off the skylight to keep the birds from breaking through, and the small space was pitch black.

  A third knock—louder, longer, more insistent.

  “Who is it?” He pointed the rifle at the door.

  “Kresby? That you?”

  Nobody he knew called him Kresby. That was his internet identity. Only his online friends referred to him that way.

  The knocking changed to hammering. The door rocked on its frame.

  “Kresby, open up! There’s zombies out here. Zombie moose…”

  H racked his brain. “Michael? Michael Bland?”

  “Try again.”

  “PG?”

  The door splintered inward, and a leering skull, stripped of most of its flesh, peered through.

  “You guessed it, buddy!”

  With a cry, H squeezed the trigger. The .22 punched a small hole in the creature’s jawbone. The zombie vanished. H’s ears rang. The foyer smelled like smoke.

  “He lives in Arizona,” H whispered, peeking through the hole in the door. “What’s he doing here?”

  The door exploded inward, knocking H backward. He gritted his teeth against the pain shooting through his bad lower back.

  Paul Goblirsch’s corpse lurched into the foyer. Even as he scuttled away, H’s analytical, biologytrained mind observed the zombie’s condition. It looked like he’d been skinned alive and dropped from a great height. His ribs and pelvis were shattered, skull cracked, legs broken yet still mobile. His internal organs and one eye were missing. His nerves and veins hung like spaghetti. The zombie grabbed the heavy wooden cane H kept by the door. “Sorry I’m late. I entered this body about 14,000 feet above Minnesota. My host knew you lived here. Was jealous of your books. Thought I’d stop by so that you can join him.”

  Grimacing, H fired again. The bullet punched through the creature’s empty eye-socket. Cursing, he aimed higher.

  The zombie lashed out with the cane, knocking the barrel aside as H fired a third time. Then it smacked him on the head. Blood ran into H’s eyes.

  “Son of a bitch…”

  “No,” the thing rasped. “Son of Ob, son of Nodens.”

  The cane descended again, cracking him on the knuckles. The gun slipped from H’s grasp. Clambering to his feet, H dodged another blow and ran. His lower back was a sheet of agony, and he kept wiping blood from his eyes to see. The zombie pursued him into the library. Though H wasn’t a trained fighter, he was determined to use whatever means necessary to live.

  The zombie swung the cane. H ducked, and the driftwood bludgeon snapped on a bookshelf. H plowed into the creature, turning his face away from the stink. He clenched his fists, digging into the tissue. It felt like cottage cheese. Maggots wiggled between his fingers. Living man and dead man slammed into the wall.

  Roaring, the zombie wedged a rancid thumb into H’s eye. Screaming, H did the same. The zombie reared back, blinded.

  Eye for an eye, H thought, as his body went numb. Shock. Going into shock. Got to finish this. The zombie fumbled with outstretched hands, searching for him. H pulled away.

  “I can smell you, Kresby. Smell your blood.”

  “Come get some,” H chuckled.

  PG giggled as well, the thing inside his body immediately recognizing the movie reference in its host’s memories.

  H wobbled forward and thrust himself against a bookcase with all of his remaining strength. His back shrieked. His eye throbbed. The bookcase groaned, then toppled over onto the zombie, smashing it to the floor. Its arms stuck out beneath the pile. Gasping for breath, H stood over the destruction.

  “You wanted my books, PG? There you go!”

  He smelled smoke. Alarmed, he turned to the fireplace. One of the books had slid into it, and more lay nearby.

  Before H could act, the zombie’s hand curled around his ankle and yanked. Arms pin-wheeling in surprise, H crashed to the floor. Something inside his back snapped, and when he tried to move, he couldn’t.

  The flames grew louder.

  Man and zombie burned together, along with the book collection.

  Neither one rose again.

  * * *

  ZOMBIE WORM

  The Rising

  Day Twenty-Five

  Hellertown, Pennsylvania

  It was hard to eat people when you didn’t have a lower jaw.

  Or tongue.

  Or even teeth.

  Not that this host body’s mouth had functioned even before being shot in the face. No. This human shell was absolutely the most useless form the Siqqusim had ever inhabited. Even the human’s name was worthless—Worm. What kind of a name was that? Worms were low creatures that crawled through the dirt and shit (except for Behemoth and the Great Worms—and this human was an insult to them). The Siqqusim seethed. This body had been nothing but a nuisance, and he couldn’t wait to leave it.

  Like most of its brothers, the Siqqusim inside Worm had no name. Once, long ago, a Sumerian sorcerer had summoned him into a dead woman and commanded him to tell fortunes. The sorcerer had given him a name—Tenk. But that name had lasted only as long as the body he inhabited. When that body deteriorated, Tenk was no longer under the Sorcerer’s command. And after all of the Siqqusim were cast into the Void by the Creator, there were no more chances to get another name. He still thought of himself as Tenk, but made sure that Lord Ob new nothing of such conceit. When humanity ripped open the walls of the Labyrinth and freed the Siqqusim from the Void, Tenk’s first host body had been an old woman named Melba who lived in Puerto Rico. Then he moved on to inhabit a tiger in India, a middle-aged goat-herder in Nepal, a snake in South Carolina, and an infant in Greenland. All of these bodies were preferable to Worm. Even the baby’s corpse had been better. Tenk had been able to use its helplessness to appeal to other humans’ maternal instincts. Then, when they’d pick it up, he attacked. But this new body? This… Worm?

  Completely useless.

  When Tenk had first taken possession of Worm, he’d searched through the body’s memories, cataloguing his experiences and finding any information that might be useful. There wasn’t much. Worm was a deaf-mute. Worse, he’d been sheltered and protected. His entire life consisted of playing checkers with his father, cooking with his mother, and taking long walks with his dog. No strife or hardships. He’d been home-schooled, so there were no taunts from other kids. He’d been happy, living a life of luxury until undead mice ate his parents. Then he’d struck out on the run. His dog died next, shot by a farmer who’d mistaken Worm and the mutt for zombies. Worm had taken shelter in an interstate rest stop. There, he met a man named Baker, and the two had traveled together until they were captured by a group of renegade National Guardsmen. Tenk probed deeper, seeing Worm pushed from the back of a speeding military vehicle and then killed by a group of zombies from an orphanage. And that was when Tenk had entered him, while his corpse lay bleeding in the middle of the road.

  Since then, he’d been pushed down a hill (breaking one of his host’s legs), run over by a speeding Humvee (breaking the other leg, alo
ng with several ribs), shot in the arm (resulting in a shattered elbow), and then shot in the face (disintegrating the lower jaw). He was a joke. The rest of his brethren continued with the worldwide slaughter, but Tenk could only crawl along behind them, pulling himself with one good arm. He wanted this body to die—again. He wanted to be free. Wanted to find another host and join in the extinction of mankind.

  Tenk thought about all of this as he lay face down in a roadside puddle of muddy water. He was playing dead, waiting for some unsuspecting human to come along and mistake him for a lifeless corpse. Then, as they neared him, he’d lurch to his feet and try to appear menacing. With any luck, they’d destroy Worm’s brain once and for all, and he would be free of this shell.

  At sundown, he was still waiting.

  He would have cursed, if he’d had the ability to speak.

  Eventually, Worm’s one remaining ear twitched. The sound of a motor rumbled towards him. Slowly, ponderously, Tenk clawed at the asphalt with Worm’s good hand and dragged himself out into the road. Headlights appeared in the distance. He stumbled to his feet, wobbling on broken legs. The bones protruded from the flesh. Insects spilled from his wounds, landing in piles at his feet. The vehicle slowed as it drew closer. It was hard for Tenk to see with Worm’s eyes; they were infested with maggots. The vehicle drew closer—a truck. A human leaned out of the passenger-side window, and then ducked back inside. Tenk shuffled forward, thrusting his good arm out and trying to look menacing. The passenger slid something long and metallic through the open window. A rifle barrel, maybe? It was hard to tell. The truck picked up speed and swerved towards him.

  Yes, Tenk thought. This is it. Destroy me. Destroy this brain so that I might be free. The truck barreled down on him. The headlights grew blinding. His vision blurred. Then the truck raced past him, continuing down the highway. Tenk caught a glimpse of the passenger pulling the object back inside. It was a sword.

  Something was wrong. Everything was tilted, as if the world had been turned on its side. Tenk tried to move Worm’s arm and found that he couldn’t.