Zombie Pulp Read online

  Still, there were fun games to play.

  Mother told Emily that if someone came to the door, she was to go hide down in the cellar. Emily had never liked the cellar. Especially the old coal bin with its dirt floor and dank smell and stone walls threaded with spider webs. But the new Emily liked it just fine. She spent a lot of time in the coal bin. The door was big and heavy and it creaked when you opened it. Just like a crypt. Emily liked to play down there. She liked to pretend that it was her tomb. She would lay on the dirt floor and cross her arms over her chest just like dead people on TV. She dug herself a grave and sometimes she laid in it. She took her old dolls down there and buried them too.

  It was great fun.

  Those first few days people came and went. Emily’s funeral had been ten days before, but still the people came. They still brought cards and casseroles, plates of ham and pies. So much that Mother started throwing it away. She rarely ever ate and then only when her head was spinning and she couldn’t stand up. She told Emily that she had no appetite.

  So sometimes Emily would hide in her tomb in the cellar-a place Mother would not go, which was good because Emily had buried some parts of George down there which were getting green and delicious-smelling-or sometimes in the spare room upstairs when people came to visit. Then she would watch them leave through the parted curtains. Mother told her not to do that, but Emily liked to. One time, when Aunt Doris stopped by, Emily had been watching her leave through the curtains and Doris had looked up and saw her. At least, Emily thought so. Doris took one look and ran to her car and did not come back.

  But Emily did not tell Mother about that.

  And she didn’t tell her about the kids in the neighborhood. She liked to watch them through the curtains, too. Mother would not let her go out and play with them. She said Emily was sick. Maybe another day. But Mother was lying and Emily knew it. So she just watched the kids. She knew all of them, used to play with them. Sometimes Missy Johnson from down the street, Emily’s old best friend, would ride her bike past the house and look up at it. A couple times she stopped out front and just stared. Then she rode away fast. Emily knew Missy was crying. Missy was sad because Emily was dead. Emily thought that was funny.

  But Emily was getting sick of staying in the house.

  She wanted to go out. She wanted to see her friends and tell them all the secrets she knew. They would like that.

  But Mother made her stay inside, so she played alone and listened to the people passing by on the walks. The mailman and the neighbors, her friends riding their bikes and rollerblading and skipping and singing songs. She wanted to skip and sing with them. Next door, she could hear a baby crying. It was Mrs. Lee’s new baby that had been born just a couple weeks before Emily’s funeral. Emily liked to listen to it cry. She had always liked babies. She still liked them…but for other reasons.

  She wished she had a baby of her own.

  A fat, squealing, pink little baby to play with.

  Maybe one night, Emily would go over there and play with it.

  *

  Nearly two weeks after Emily had been out of her grave, the house was filled with flies. They were attracted by Emily’s special smell and despite all the sponge baths and perfuming Mother did, that smell remained. Finally, when some of Emily’s skin came off in the tub, Mother stopped doing that. She just got used to the flies. Emily didn’t mind them. They liked to cover her like a blanket, always buzzing and nipping. Sometimes when she opened her mouth, flies flew out. There were things burrowing under Emily’s skin, too. Some were in too deep for her to get at, but others were close to the skin and she could dig them out with her nails. There had been a big swollen spot at the side of Emily’s neck and when she scratched it open, dozens of fat white worms came squirming out. Emily kept them in a jar, but they died.

  Mother spent a lot of time out of the house.

  Usually when she came back she was drunk. She was worried about George, she said, because people were starting to ask questions about him and there might be trouble if they didn’t stop.

  But Emily didn’t care about that.

  There wasn’t much of George left now. Just some bones and scraps and Emily was getting hungry again.

  When Mother was gone, sometimes Emily would put on dress-up clothes and look at herself in the mirror. Feather boas and tiaras, wedding gowns and long evening coats that did not fit very well. Emily was no longer just white, she was gray now. There were patches of furry stuff growing up her cheeks and around her neck. It itched something terrible. Sometimes when she combed her hair, locks of it would come out. There were lots of white squirmy things in her scalp.

  One afternoon, while Emily was alone, there was a knock at the door.

  She hid upstairs. Whoever it was just wouldn’t go away. They finally opened the door and came in. It was Aunt Doris. “Liz? Liz, are you here?” she called out. She waited for an answer but didn’t get one. But she didn’t leave. She just walked around and Emily could hear her saying things about the smell in the house, the flies, and the mess.

  Emily hid at the top of the stairs, watching her.

  But Aunt Doris must have heard her, because she turned around and said, “Liz? Liz, is that you?” No answer again. Emily giggled, even though she did not mean to. Doris just stood there. “Is someone there? Who’s up there?”

  Emily ran off to hide.

  Doris came up the steps and Emily could smell the fear on her. It was getting so that she liked that odor. It made her hungry. It was like good odors coming out of the kitchen when supper was cooking in the old days. Emily remembered that she had never really liked Aunt Doris. She was always pinching Emily’s cheeks and kissing her and her breath always smelled like garlic and her perfume was just awful. It would linger in the house for hours. Mother sometimes called Aunt Doris a “no-good nosey Nelly.” Emily had thought that was funny.

  But now she understood.

  Aunt Doris was being nosey. She had no business here, but she came anyway. So Emily waited in the hall closet for her. She tried not to giggle, but it was not easy. Aunt Doris was walking back and forth, looking in rooms. Emily could still smell the fear on her. It was a thick, sour yellow odor that Doris was not even aware of. She walked around, muttering things to herself. Emily hid in the darkness. It was like playing hide-and-seek. She wondered if Aunt Doris liked hide-and-seek. Smiling, Emily rattled her fingers on the inside of the closet door.

  And that got Aunt Doris’ attention.

  She stood outside the door. “Is someone…is someone in there?”

  Emily giggled.

  Aunt Doris opened the door. She opened it very slowly, breathing very hard now, then threw it open all the way.

  “You’re it,” Emily told her.

  Aunt Doris screamed and fell down, clutching her chest and writhing on the floor. Emily could hear her heart struggling to find its beat, but it was skipping, speeding up and slowing down. And she kept screaming, of course.

  So Emily jumped on top of her and banged her head on the floor until she stopped moving. Then she dragged her down to the cellar and buried her in the coal bin.

  Mother would never know a thing.

  *

  The night after Emily knocked Aunt Doris unconscious, then tore out her throat in the cellar, Mother started acting very peculiar. More peculiar than normal, that was, because Mother was always very peculiar. Mother used to work very hard to keep the house clean. She’d scrub and wash and wax, make big dinners like roast beef and flank steak, but these days she never cooked or cleaned. She liked to drink whiskey, smoke cigarettes, and take pills. She was very thin and shaky, sometimes she cried and sometimes she held a pillow over her mouth and screamed into it.

  But that night when she came home, she started asking questions about Aunt Doris.

  “Emily…did she come over today?”

  Emily just smiled. “She might have, but I hid just like you told me.”

  “You…you didn’t hurt her?”


  Emily shook her head. “I never hurt anyone. But sometimes I make them be quiet.”

  “Oh, Emily…did you?”

  “Did I what, Mother?”

  But Mother could not ask the question. She needed to drink and smoke and talk to herself for awhile. She liked to do that. Sometimes she would curl up on the floor for hours, mumbling and staring off into space. Those were the times that Emily went down into the cellar for a snack. She would disinter all her dolls and they would have a little tea party. Emily would pretend they were eating, too.

  Emily waited until Mother passed out and then she went and sat in her room. She could hear the Lee’s baby crying next door. It sure liked to cry a lot. When it was dark, Emily went out her window and over to the Lee’s house. She saw Mr. and Mrs. Lee watching TV through the window. They were very nice people. The baby had the room in the back of the house. Emily stood outside its window. Everything was done in blue so she knew it was a boy.

  “Hello, baby,” she said through the window screen.

  But the baby was sleeping and Emily knew that babies needed a lot of sleep. Carefully, she pulled the screen out of the window and went inside. She was very quiet. She did not want to disturb Mr. and Mrs. Lee. The baby was sleeping in a little blue onesie and diaper. He had a teddy bear in his crib and a Winnie the Poo mobile that spun round and round.

  “Hello, baby,” Emily said.

  She picked him up and he began to squirm. She held baby close to her and he squirmed even more. Then he began to cry and cry. As much as Emily cooed to him and sang songs under breath, baby would not stop struggling and crying. That was not good. If Mr. and Mrs. Lee came, they would not let her play with baby. They would take him from her and she did not want that. Baby was so soft and warm and chubby. Emily wanted to kiss him and touch him and suck the breath from his little mouth.

  “Stop, baby,” Emily told him. “Stop making noise.”

  But baby wouldn’t, so Emily made him be quiet. His little fat neck broke beneath the caress of her gray, flaking hands. Carrying baby by the feet, she slipped out the window. Long before Mr. and Mrs. Lee came into the nursery and the screaming and commotion began, Emily had baby down in the coal bin. She showed him to Aunt Doris.

  And then she began to play with him.

  *

  Mother was gone the next morning and the phone kept ringing and ringing while Emily was playing dress-up. Mother did not want Emily answering the phone, but it kept ringing and ringing and Emily could not stand it anymore. Her hearing was very acute since she left the grave. She liked things to be quiet now. She liked things cold and damp and silent.

  But the phone kept ringing.

  Finally, she pulled it off its cradle.

  A voice on the end said, “Liz? Liz? Liz, are you there?”

  It was a voice that Emily had not heard in a long time. A very sweet, patient voice that belonged to Grandma Reese, Mother’s mother. Emily had always liked grandma whenever she came to town which was only a few times a year. Usually at Christmas and sometimes in the summer. She would always bring Emily gifts.

  Emily liked to hear her voice, yet that emptiness inside herself would not let her feel happy or sad, just coldly indifferent.

  “Liz? Liz, are you there.”

  “Hello, Grandma,” Emily said.

  And on the other end there was a gasping and a great commotion as the phone was dropped and grandma began to wail in a high, unnerving voice.

  Emily hung up.

  She did not like those kind of sounds.

  Afterwards, Emily went back to playing dress up. She put on a white sparkling lace gown that looked very much like her burial dress. She wore a floppy straw hat with a big flower on it like rich ladies sometimes did at Kentucky Derby. Pearls and bracelets and long white gloves. In the mirror, she thought she looked very nice even though she was all swollen-up and blackening, worms crawling under her skin and flies covering her face. Her left eye had fallen out of the socket the day before and she could not find it. A great flap of skin hung from cheek now and you could see the skull beneath. When she grinned, her smile was all yellow teeth and gray gums, her lips shriveled away.

  It was Saturday and on Saturday afternoons, Emily and Missy Johnson used to go play in the vacant lot across the alley. There were stands of trees to every side and it was like their very own kingdom. They liked to play very dramatic games as all little girls did. Usually, they would pretend they were sisters and their parents had died in a plane crash and they were hiding from the bad people who wanted to kill them. Or they would pretend one of them was dying from an incurable disease and the other was a doctor or a nurse trying to save them. But in the end, the sick one always died. And that was funny, because now one of them had really died.

  Out the window, Emily saw Missy riding her bike down the alley. She had her plastic Barbie case with her. You opened it up and it was a little salon with mirrors and a wardrobe, lots of little dresses and shoes. She was going over to the vacant lot.

  Mother had warned Emily that she was never to leave the house, but since she was all dressed up, she decided it would be okay. She went out into the backyard and right away Mr. Miller’s beagle down the alley began to howl. Emily walked over towards the vacant lot, her high heels clicking on the concrete. She saw Missy there. Missy had her back to her. She had her Barbie case open and was singing as she dressed Skipper and Stacey.

  Emily came up behind her like she always had. “Boo,” she said.

  Missy turned and screamed like Emily had never heard her scream before. She scrawled away on all fours and ran, screaming the whole while. Emily called out to her, but she wouldn’t stop.

  Emily went back home.

  On the way, Mr. Miller drove down the alley in his car and she waved to him. He just kept staring…staring so much, in fact, that he drove his car right through his own fence.

  *

  The neighborhood was busy after that.

  Cars drove up and down the street and a lot of them were police cars. Lots of people gathered outside the house with Mr. Miller. Missy’s mom and dad were there, too. By the time Mother came home, there were people everywhere and lots of policemen in uniforms. They tried to stop Mother, but she ran from them and came inside.

  “What did you do?” she said to Emily. “What did you do?”

  “I went outside,” Emily said.

  Mother locked the doors as fists pounded on them, wanting to be let in. There was a lot of shouting and yelling as night came.

  “We have to get out of here,” Mother said. “We have to go somewhere safe.”

  “The cemetery,” Emily said.

  “Yes, that’s where we’ll go.”

  But then there was more pounding at the door and finally something kept ramming it until it came off its hinges. Then the police came charging in and Mother ran right at them, screaming and fighting.

  “Run, Emily!” she called out. “Run!”

  So Emily did.

  She ran out the back way and almost made it to the vacant lot when she heard the barking of big dogs. Men were running through the neighborhood with flashlights. Emily went into the vacant lot and hid in the grass. She dug up Mrs. Lee’s baby where she had hidden it in the dirt under the big rock, brushed the crawly things off it. Then the men came and put flashlights on her, blinding her.

  “Dear God in heaven,” one of the policemen said.

  Emily shook her headless baby at them and hissed, showing her long teeth.

  The dogs that were with them were howling and baying and snapping at their handlers. The men let them go. The dogs came right at Emily, sinking their teeth into her, tearing open her dress-up clothes and biting free flaps of flesh and crunching bones. Lots of people cried out, but they didn’t come any closer. The dogs chewed and rent and split Emily, yanking off her limbs which kicked and clawed in the grass, fingers looking for something to grab. The dogs did not stop. They were mad and frothing and snapping and biting.

  Emily kept scr
eaming until there was nothing left to scream with.

  Then there was just silence and the growling of dogs and people whimpering.

  So fifteen days after Emily came out of her grave, what was left of her was shoveled back in there again.

  DIS-JOINTED

  It was raining when they murdered Pauly Zaber.

  And it was coming down in buckets and pails when they dragged his corpse from the trunk of Specks’ Buick. Zaber had been a big man and he made a big corpse. Wrapped in sackcloth, a lot of it, he was roped up like a steer. Getting him in the trunk was tough business and getting him out was something else again.

  “Just grab hold,” Specks said. “He’s dead for godsake, he won’t bite you.”

  But maybe Weams and Lyon didn’t quite believe that. Sure, they’d helped Specks murder Zaber and their hands were just as red as his, but now handling the body after it had been cooling an hour…there was just something obscene about that.

  Lyon reached in there, taking hold of the ropes, started yanking along with Specks, drawing the dead man up. “I’m doing my bit,” he said, raindrops beading on his face. “Tell Weams to do his.”

  Weams was going to tell him to go to hell, maybe tell both of them that, but instead he reached into the blackness of the trunk, started pulling, feeling that awful weight shifting under the tarp. He kept his lips pressed in a white line and he wasn’t sure if that was because of what he might say or to keep himself from screaming.

  Because that was a real possibility.

  “On the count of three, girls,” Specks said. “Up…and…out…”

  It was nasty work.

  The rain hammering down, the ground gone to sluicing gray mud. The trees rising up around them black and gnarled, ribboned with crawling shadows that were viscid and horribly alive.