A FEAST OF FLESH: STORIES OF ZOMBIES, MONSTERS, and DEMONS

by

AARON POLSON

* * * * *

A FEAST OF FLESH

Published by Aaron Polson on Smashwords

Copyright 2011 by Aaron Polson

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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Table of Conents

Cargo

Tesoro’s Magic Bullet

The Way of Things in Fly-Over Country

Former Vocations (a poem)

The Distillery

In the Primal Library

Familiar Faces

Sea of Green, Sea of Gold

Bona Fide King of His Realm

Down There

Acknowledgements

Cargo

Start with the remnants of a desert town, a little girl, a man with a truck.

The town consists of shacks and ruined shells of larger buildings, rolls of barbed wire and sharpened lumber surrounding it on all sides like a great, prickly tortoise slumbering in the heat. The girl is too thin, like the rest of the survivors, with naps of sun-bleached hair in long, disordered strands. Her large eyes call from an impish face, blue and clear like the sky on good days, the days without dust storms. Both the man and the truck wear layers of grime like armor.

He only works after a moonless night, the ones survivors call “nameless.”

The Ruined Ones come with secret, padding feet to the edge of the wire. They learn the hard lesson of sharpened lumber and rolls of razor wire after scores of their brothers and sisters—should they even consider the word—thrust themselves into the teeth of the village’s defense. On nameless nights, their hot, angry cries scald the sky. In the morning, the man starts his truck, a rusted, grumbling thing, and rides it toward the gates. The men at the gates collect the dead—humans wrapped in burial shrouds and those grim-grey husks impaled on the fortifications—and heave body upon body until the bed of the truck hunches under the load.

On most days, no one watches him drive through the broken remnants of city streets.

No one expects anything from the man but to be rid of the bodies. For this, they keep him fed from their gardens. For this, no one expects more. On the days with cargo, the man and his truck chug across the dusty flats to the pit. He earns his food and shelter on the days with cargo.

Since Red shot himself in the mouth, he does the job alone.

He carries dozens of dirty pseudonyms, glares, and hateful, whispered rumors so the rest of the survivors can pretend they are safe and different and far away from the rotten, dying world. After the nameless nights, the others shut themselves in. They live without the burden of the dead. For nearly a month, they pretend the world can be good again and they all love one another.

Everyone but the man and his truck.

No one knows his proper name.

After one “nameless” night, the girl stands by the side of the road and waits as the truck rumbles past. The man hardly offers a glance, but the girl’s bone-thin hand reaches out. Dust blows in her face. She squints through the cloud of brown ash, studying as the men piled bodies onto the bed. She watches until the truck fades from the gate into a dark speck in the desert.

The man wears one long scar across his left cheek and nose. Red’s face had been scarred too many times to count, his skin a latticework of pockmarks and lines. Before the end of everything, Red raced dirt bikes, and half the scars dated from that far back. The survivors chose Red because of fear, because no one else had enough courage to leave the wire barricades even during daylight. Red chose the man because he could drive the truck, and the man wasn’t afraid, either. Handling corpses, tossing them into the pit like garbage, meant nothing to either of them. At the pit, the smell lingered, always lingered. Death and decay and ruin in one, cloying stew.

Red claimed he lost his sense of smell in a bike crash.

The man never said much at all.

On the night after she watches the truck, the Ruined Ones grow bold and attack again despite the sliver of moon. Howls of pain and hunger break through the whispering, desert winds. Behind walls and under roofs, children huddle with the elderly, clutching at each other to fight away the real boogiemen that probe the edges of their fortified oasis.

In the center of the village, the man sits on the cab of his truck and watches. He sees waves of Ruined Ones fall upon the defenses in the dim moonlight, and then those behind scramble over the bodies of their dead to get into the compound. The man smiles when defenders push forward carrying sharpened timbers, scrap lumber fashioned into pikes to impale the coming monsters. Bullets are precious, and the Ruined Ones are legion. Nights are cold in the desert.

He climbs down, ducks inside his shelter, and goes to sleep despite the shrieks in the distance. Tomorrow will be a busy day, and he needs his rest.

In the morning, she waits again, standing in the same spot. The man downshifts, and the truck protests with a shuddering stop. Already, volunteers pile the dead near the gates, but the rest of the city is silent.

“You got a pickup?” he asks through the window.

The girl hesitates, kicks and the ground with the toe of her shoe, and shakes her head. “Just wondered what you looked like,” she says, lifting her eyes to his. “Grandpa calls you the Grim Reaper. I’ve never seen the Grim Reaper.”

The man scratches his stubble, grunts, and drives away. Spouts of dust kick into the air, swirling like brown ghosts as he passes. The girl starts to run. Her mouth opens and shuts like she has something else to say, something she wants the man to hear, but his eyes aim forward. When he glances behind, she’s stopped running, just a shape behind a tan cloud.