Thin Them Out by Kim Paffenroth, R. J. Sevin, & Julia Sevin
Kim Paffenroth is the author of the zombie novels Dying to Live and Dying to Live: Life Sentence. A third volume in the series is due out later this year. Paffenroth is also the editor of the anthologies History Is Dead and The World Is Dead. A new novel, Valley of the Dead is due to come out around the same time as this anthology.
Julia and R. J. Sevin are the proprietors of Creeping Hemlock Press, which launched its own line of zombie novels this summer with Kealan Patrick Burke’s The Living. Together, they are the editors of the Stoker-nominated anthology Corpse Blossoms, and individually they have each published fiction in Fishnet, Postcards from Hell, War of the Worlds: Frontlines, Cemetery Dance, and the anthology Bits of the Dead.
All of George Romero’s zombie films-Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, etc.-feature at least one character who spends the entire movie being shrill and obnoxious and totally impervious to reason. In Night it’s Harry Cooper, who is crassly possessive of the presumed safety of the cellar. In Day it’s Captain Rhodes, the unreasoningly aggressive military commander.
When author Carrie Ryan-whose story you just read if you’re reading the book in order-saw Night of the Living Dead for the first time, she thought it was stupid: The characters are in so much danger, but rather than working together they spend the whole movie bickering with each other in a pointless way. But then someone explained to her that that was the whole point: Romero was saying that this is what humanity is-that we’re doomed by our inability to just get along with each other even in the face of life-or-death challenges. After that, she completely changed her mind about the movie. “This made the film absolutely brilliant to me,” she said.
In the face of current calamities-global warming, economic collapse, AIDS, overpopulation-to which humanity’s response has been mostly just a lot of pointless political sniping, Romero’s warning seems more pressing than ever, and our next story is another that plays with the idea that interpersonal drama can be an even bigger problem than zombies.
He was on his back, looking up at the sky.
He felt a little cold, but overall not too bad. Hearing sounds to his left, he turned his head. Another person stood nearby, eyeing him. Her face, hands, and arms glistened red, and she held something pink in her hands, which she raised to her mouth. Slurping sounds followed, then she wiped her hands on her dress.
He sat up and examined himself. He too was covered with red. He tried to say something, but all that came out was something between a roar and a moan. The red lady returned the greeting, so he thought she might be friendly after all.
He pulled aside the tatters of his shirt, and found a large hole in the middle of him. That must be where the cold was coming from. He reached into the hole and felt around. Mostly it was squishy, but nearer the back, there were hard parts, too. He thought the hole looked nice, all colorful and mysterious, and he thought it might be useful, as a place to put things. But he couldn’t think of anything he had to put there.
He stood up and took a step toward the red lady. The stuff on her neck wasn’t shiny and wet, like the stuff on her mouth and hands, but all caked and dark. Even so, she looked very pretty. The sun made her blond hair shine, where it wasn’t matted with the red stuff. He tried to touch her hair, but she growled and pulled away.
After a while, they both sat down on the pavement. She still wouldn’t let him touch her hair, but she did let him hold her hand. There was a big, shiny metal band around her wrist. That looked nice, too.
He looked around. A large blue sign nearby read WELCOME TO LOUISIANA. Another sign, not far from that one read, simply, I-55. He didn’t know what either sign meant, but somehow he did.
There was a roar, and a metal thing on wheels stopped near them. The people who got out of the wheeled thing didn’t have red stains on them. They weren’t missing any parts. They were whole, but he didn’t like the way they looked. They looked ugly and plain. They also had ugly, dull metal things in their hands. The ugly people smiled and laughed and pointed, then the dull metal things roared louder than the wheeled thing had. He fell on top of the red lady, laying there till he heard the wheeled thing roar off.
Sitting up, he found she no longer pushed his hand away, but she also didn’t move. This made him sad. He took the metal band off her wrist. Now he had something to keep in the hole in him.
The other people had seemed much happier and more satisfied by what they did, and he wondered if he could ever be whole like they were. He doubted it. But sitting there in the fading light, running his dead fingers through such luminous blond hair, he didn’t feel completely empty, either.
“Okay.” Zach brought the Jeep to a halt. “We’re on foot from here.”
To his right, Ted grunted something and the two men hopped out. In the back seat, Wayne looked at his gun and wondered if he should have shot them both as soon as Zach threw the vehicle into park.
The opportunity passed, Wayne stepped from the Jeep and into the early morning light. Not even nine o’clock, and already the Louisiana air was cloying. The interstate sliced through a dense pine forest. They’d stick to the shade for as long as they could.
At the rear of the Jeep, they suited up: backpacks stuffed with supplies (in case they got separated and were unable to return to the Jeep), gloves, hinged face-shields, filtered dust masks, and wooden baseball bats. There was also a furniture dolly, for boxes. Wayne grabbed it.
“Cars are tight here,” Zach said, real low. “Keep quiet and watch your asses. If you get bit, I’m calling the Doctor.” He patted the.357 Magnum on his right hip. The bastard had actually painted it white. There was a small red cross on the grip. A.40 Taurus rested beneath each arm.
“What if you get bit?” Wayne asked, grabbing a bat.
“Then I’ll see the Doctor.”
“That one is mine,” Ted said, pulling the bat from Wayne’s hand. His dark eyes, darting leftrightleftright, resembled empty zoetropes. There was more than a little crazy there.
“Oh-kay.”
“It’s the marks right here.” Ted pointed at some deep gouges in the business end of the bat. “That’s how I can tell. This is the one I always use, it has the marks.” He turned and trotted off.
Wayne looked at Zach, who nodded once and walked away. Wayne grabbed another bat, slipped it through a loop on his belt and, pushing the dolly, followed them onto the interstate. Since their little community of survivors had come together four months ago outside of Baton Rouge, they’d searched over forty miles of I-12. They now moved along the choked northbound lanes of I-55, and were less than fifty miles away from the Mississippi border.
Zach and Ted walked shoulder-to-shoulder two paces ahead of him, chuckling over stories they’d told each other several times before. They’d been buddies before the outbreaks, and it didn’t seem fair.
Wayne didn’t have any real friends among the three-dozen men in the warehouse. Ian was trustworthy enough but pretty unpleasant to be around, always talking about needing pussy, always picking at his ears and nose and fingernails and scalp. You’d think with a perpetual hygiene jones like that, he’d smell a little better than he did. Then there was Sue, who he hardly knew, really. It was hard to talk about things now in any normal way, but he guessed he wasn’t really interested in her religion or her favorite music, anyway.