Fear the Abyss: 22 Terrifying Tales of Cosmic Horror (31 page)

"What do you mean
release
?"

"We have to. Burn this place. To the ground."

"Cremation?" whispered Moe.

"That'll set their souls free."

Mr. Preston screamed like a man insane, rose from his defeated position on the ground and ran toward his combatants.

"Get in the ship," said Moe. "Grab the tanks of fuel and bring them out here!"

Wayne hobbled into the ship. Mr. Preston leapt after Moe, but he was a weak man in a fit of desperate rage, fueled by emotional distress. One right hook to the bridge of the man's nose and he was out.

Wayne returned with two cans of fuel. He was weak but determined, and without direction he began pouring the fuel over the three caskets they'd delivered, then created a trail to the house where he generously doused fuel. Moe fetched a lighter along with a half a pack of cigarettes from before he quit smoking. As soon as Wayne dragged himself back from the mission of saturating the house, Moe lit a cigarette, pulled a deep drag, and flicked it onto the fuel-soaked trio of caskets, engulfing them in flames. Following the fuel trail, fire hit the house and whooshed skyward in a huge ball of flames that grew so high the roof of the dome began to blacken.

Molly's rockets engaged, pulling Wayne from the fugue he'd slipped into as he stared into the flames. As he walked onboard he heard faintly the sweet, blissful thanks of a hundred souls.

Jeyn Roberts

Jeyn Roberts grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and started writing at an early age, having her first story published when she was
just
16. Now residing in Vancouver, BC, Jeyn is the NY
Times Bestselling YA author of
Rage Within
and
Dark Inside
.

Lake Superior never gives up its dead.

The Pacific Ocean spews them out by the dozen.

It's early morning and Tipper and I are sitting on the beach at English Bay, passing the bottle back and forth, watching the UDI as it tosses about in the morning waves.

UDI
--Undead Impaired.

The bottle is filled with whatever crap Tipper managed to scavenge from some dead guy's basement.  London Gin. Vodka. Peppermint Schnapps. There's even some expensive Scotch thrown in, not that Tipper could ever tell the difference. He passes it over to me and I take a drink, gagging on the taste. The Schnapps really gives it a minty freshness that reminds me of expired mouthwash.

"Your turn," Tipper says.

"Ain't so," I say, and I toss the bottle back again. The undead guy on the shore has somehow managed to crawl to his feet. He sways back and forth, sniffing the air, catching our scent. There's seaweed in his hair. White maggots squirm and burrow in his cheeks. He opens his mouth and his tongue is missing. Probably eaten away by all those Pacific Ocean fishies.

"I did that UDI back on Denman."

"That was two days ago. I got the fucker sniffing the flowers last night."

"That weren't no UDI. You were so messed up, I think you got a homeless man."

"Fuck that. All the homeless live in Point Grey these days."

I hold out the bottle but Tipper waves me away. He climbs to his feet and picks up his axe. He holds it lovingly in his hands, takes a few practice swings, and then kicks off his shoes.

"Too much sand," he says as if I need an explanation.

I close my eyes and enjoy the morning sun, ignoring the squelching sound as Tipper hacks the dead man's head from his neck.

*****

We live up on Prospect  Point in Stanley Park.  It didn't take a genius to figure out that the dead don't like to climb uphill. Their mechanical abilities are limited. It's too challenging for their decayed brain stems to figure these things out.  Stairs are a big no-no too. You can stand at the top of a staircase and make fun of a deader all day long. They always faceplant on the first step. It's pretty funny. We spent a lot of time testing this theory before getting bored. Of course that doesn't mean the condos are safe. People got infected and then went home to die. There are plenty of UDI's still groaning and moaning about in their million dollar penthouses.

The climb takes the longest, especially after a morning of drinking shit strong enough to pickle our stomachs. We get to the top and Ling comes out first, with Double Double trailing after her. Ling's been doing something, she's got a towel tossed over her shoulder.

"Anything good?"

I toss my backpack over and she starts rummaging through it. She pulls out the coffee first and tosses it to Double Double. He swoons in ecstasy.

Every single one of us has an
ikigai
. The French called it
raison d'être
. Something to live for. Why we get the fuck out of bed every morning.

Ikigai
--A reason for being.

Double Double's
ikigai
is coffee. And not that Starbucks shit. Within the first few months of the end, he managed to clear out almost every Tim Horton's in the downtown core.  He boils the coffee in a big pot, over a fire, every morning, afternoon, and evening. I swear, he drinks at least twenty cups a day.  He sleeps in a little storage room in the back of the Cafe. The floors are littered with empty coffee cans, sugar packets and powdered creamers.

He probably dreams of brown bean mountains and sugar cane fields.

Back before the dead started walking the earth, I'm sure people had all sorts of
ikigai
. They lived for their jobs. Their families. Their houses, cars, mistresses, and even their bloody pets. They shopped. They travelled. They ate pho soup at little dives on Kingsway.

These days people live to survive. Not much to celebrate there.

Sometimes I wonder what the dead live for.

*****

Tonight, Ling and I are on guard duty so we climb up to the roof of the cafe and sit with flashlights that we never need to turn on.  It's a good thing too. Batteries are getting scarce these days.

"Deep fried tofu," Ling says.  She's rolling a joint, her fingers pressing softly against the tissue paper. "And red bean buns from the T&T. Sticky rice wraps."

"Egg rolls," I say.

"You're so white."

I laugh and take the joint from her hand. It's perfect. She's much better at this than me. My rollies are always thick in the middle like a snake that's just eaten a rabbit. I put it to my lips and Ling sparks the match.

We smoke and listen to the quiet. A rustle in the bush is nothing but a raccoon. Ling looks towards the north but there're no lights tonight. A few weeks ago there was a fire but it's long since burned out. Two nights ago, Tipper swore that he saw lights but no one really believes him. There haven't been signs of life from the North Shore for at least nine months.  Not since the army blew up the Lions Gate Bridge.  Back when they were still trying to contain the infection.

Hell of a lot of good that did them.

"We need to head in for supplies tomorrow," Ling says after a while. "You brought back nothing today."

"Everything's gone," I say.  "Shops are ghost towns."

"We should plant a garden."

"The raccoon's will just eat everything."

"Then we eat the raccoons."

I snort smoke out my nose.  The idea both makes sense and repulses me at the same time. Those animals will eat anything. It can't be sanitary. Like picking a dead rat from out of a dumpster.

"Maybe it's time to move on," Ling says and she takes the joint from my fingers. When she inhales, her face lights up from the cherry. Her lips are thick, her nose small and flat. She looks at me and smiles. Tosses the butt over the side of the roof.

I roll over on top of her and we stay that way until morning.

*****

It wasn't safe in the beginning but these days, one can pretty much walk the streets as long as they know where to go. UDI are slow and you can easily out run them as long as there aren't too many.  It also helps to carry the right weapons. Tipper has his axe. Ling likes her Japanese katana. Shockk's into his machete. I've got a pretty handy meat cleaver but some days I prefer my aluminum baseball bat. It's a personality thing. We mix and match arsenal to suite our moods.  Weapon preference is similar to hairstyles these days. Everyone wants to have the most unique and powerful one.

Granville Street is a bad idea but Shockk is determined to go to Tom Lee. He wants a Les Paul Junior, preferably a rare one from the sixties. It's what he dreams about. His ikigai is a single cut body made of fine mahogany.  His fingers itch and stretch to form chords for an invisible neck.

We walk because there aren't a lot of functioning cars these days and no one really knows how to siphon gas or hotwire. Straight up Georgia because Robson is off limits. For some odd reason, they still like to shop. There is always a crowd by the Aldo Shoe store, bumping into one another and moaning loud enough to wake the dead. Ling thinks it's some sort of unconscious desire, something that's hardwired into our brains after centuries of bartering--the need to purchase will always be our kryptonite.

The urge to eat still runs strong. All those years of forgetting how to hunt and gather, the undead have figured out that their teeth work just fine.

"You can't even play the damn thing," Tipper says. We're at the corner, looking out across the long stretch of concrete and tightly knit buildings. Once we head in, there's not a lot of ways out. "And I ain't carting a generator up to the Point so that you can plug in an amp. Ain't carting no amp, either. Those things weigh a ton."

"I can play," Shockk says. "It's not as good but good enough."

"You can't eat guitars."

"You can't shred out on a can of soup either."

There are a few dozen UDI but if we move fast, they might not even see us in time to do anything. A woman wanders about fifty feet away before she senses us. Turning her head, she snaps her teeth together before stepping off the sidewalk. She's missing an arm but that doesn't seem to bother her. Her eyes are nothing but shriveled grapes that rattle around in her sockets. A grayish skull peeks through dirty blonde hair. Shockk walks straight out to her open arms and brings his machete down into the upper thick part of her skull. She doesn't make a sound as she drops to the ground.

We continue on.

There are decomposed bodies lying in the street. Some of them are our kills, some belong to others. A few are munched on to the point where there isn't enough left of them to reanimate. Back in the early days when we first formed as a group, we used to try and have daily kill quotas. We figured if we could kill fifty a day, then maybe eventually the city would run dry. But it never seems to work out that way. There are always two or three to replace each one that falls.

Better to get in and out quickly. Stopping to kill, it takes too much time and effort. And we lost too many people before we figured that out.

There used to be a lot more of us than five.

From down the block, the Tom Lee store is quiet. The windows are surprisingly still intact. During the first few weeks of the uprising, there were wild riots on Granville. There's not a lot left here. There's no more liquor left in the clubs. We should know. Tipper and I have been through almost all of them.

Through the smashed window of the Payless Shoe store, I find a pair of boots in Ling's size. I pick them up and put them in my backpack. Hopefully we're lucky and there's some rock band hoodies in the shop. I sniff the cuff of my own, trying to pretend that the smell isn't as repulsive as I think it is. Too many bad scents: body sweat, dope, blood, and stale vomit. It's not good.

"Could use a shower," I say to no one in particular.

"No," Tipper says. "Then you'd smell fresh and the UDI would be all over ya. Smelling like shit is good. Throws them off our scent."

"Smell like a real man," Shockk says.

I shrug.

The door to the guitar shop is unlocked. That throws us all off. 

"At least we don't have to break the glass," Tipper says. He turns and drives the axe home against a drooling UDI who'd managed to get too close. Her jaw collapses into her face, teeth and congealed blood fly in all directions.

We go inside and Tipper turns the lock behind us so we can have some privacy. 

The place is in a semi state of dusk and dust particles float in the air. And quiet. Oh so quiet.

Shockk instantly goes into mindless orgasms. An entire floor of guitars is spread out before him, relics from another time, completely untouched because the dead have no time to rock out.  He heads straight for the guitar section with Tipper right behind him. Whatever Shockk rejects, Tipper plans on destroying.  Thousands of past guitar legends can't be wrong. Snapping a guitar by the neck has to be rewarding in some way or another.

I head for the register first and am rewarded by one of those 'chocolates for charity' displays. Inside are half a dozen candy bars. I pull ten bucks out of my pocket and drop it in the bowl, it's always good to give to cancer. Those empathetic smiling kids on the picture, I wonder what they look like dead.  Are their little bald heads still shiny? Would the cancer keep eating away at their bodies even if they've gone UDI?

I toss the candy in my backpack except for one. I chew open the wrapper and notice that the chocolate's gone white. I take a tentative bite. It'll do. Chewing, I make my way to the back room where I find a fridge with a shitload of moldy food. A few dead rats. A forgotten coat that doesn't fit. A vending machine that has already been looted. There's a dented can of coke under the table. It disappears into my bag.

Back in the front, Shockk has picked out his guitar of choice and is lovingly stuffing it into a soft shelled case. Tipper has destroyed three guitars and is working on his fourth. The noise has attracted a crowd. The dead bang against the glass, groaning, demanding something juicy.

"How are we going to get out?" I say as Tipper smashes his guitar into a drum kit. Cymbals fall over, clattering to the ground. "Did you think about that?"

"Back door," Tipper grunts.

There's a cracking noise. The front window is about to give in. We head around to the back to find the loading door. There's a bag of Doritos on the landing bay. I grab them.

*****

Back at home. Shockk rocks out with no amp. Double Double eats his chocolate by dipping it into his coffee. Tipper drinks the last of his moonshine.