Lili St Crow - Strange Angels

Tap. Taptaptaptaptap. The tattoo of skritching sounds grew stronger, almost frantic.

I stepped into the kitchen.

The back door was set to one side of the counters, Dad’s chair at the table with its back to the wall holding the pantry. When he sat down he could see the back door and the entry to the hall, keeping his back to the safest quadrant. The door itself was a prosaic little number, a latticed glass window on top and a flimsy wooden panel with a deadbolt and a chain probably stronger than the door itself on bottom.

My gorge rose hot and thick, fighting with my heart for control of my throat. I choked and almost dropped the knife. I could see it clearly through the squares of double-paned glass, darkening because the enclosed porch was getting dim and dark, light bleeding out of the sky as the snow whirled down.

There was a zombie at my back door. Its eyes swung up, and they were blue, the whites already clouding with the egg rot of death. Its jaw was a mess of meat and frozen blood; something had eaten half its face. Its fingertips, already worn down to bony nubs, scraped against the window. Flesh hung in strips from its hand, and my stomach turned over hard. Black mist rose at the corners of my vision, and the funny rushing sound in my head sounded like a jet plane taking off.

I’d know that zombie anywhere. Even if he was dead and mangled, his eyes were the same. Blue as winter ice, fringed with pale lashes.

The zombie’s gaze locked with mine. It cocked its head like it had just heard a faraway noise.

I let out a dry barking sound and my back hit the wall next to the hallway, smacking my hip against a stack of boxes.

Dad bunched up his rotting fist, the meat chewed away from fingerbones by something I didn’t want to imagine or even think about, and punched his way through the window.

I would have stoodthere forever, staring in dreamy terror at the thing that used to be my father as it battered itself against the back door—if it hadn’t been for the phone. It rang shrilly under the sound of snapping wood, and something about that garbled screech jolted me into action. I screamed, a high, girly cry of fear, and dropped the knife. The chime of it hitting linoleum was lost in the groaning noise of breakage as the zombie forced its way through the back door, staring at me. Zombies do that—if something catches their attention they turn blindly toward it and don’t stop until they’ve torn it to bits.

Unless, of course, whoever made the zombie had given it a target. Then they don’t pay much attention to anything except shambling around in the darkest corners they can find, instinctively avoiding notice as they work their way toward their objective. Not too smart, zombies—but they’re determined. Way determined.

I should know, I’d watched Dad kill more than a few. Zombies are like cockroaches—you never see them until there’s too many of them, and they hang on hard to whatever semblance of life bad contamination or dark magic’s given them.

I scrambled back into the hall and bolted for the living room. Each step took a lifetime. My boots slipped on the carpet; I banged into a box and screamed again, diving around the corner and into the living room as the zombie let out a weird bellow. They don’t talk, the reanimated. Instead, they let out a whistling groaning noise like a cow in terrible pain, air forced through dead frozen vocal cords. Usually when someone hears that sound, it’s the last thing they hear, because zombies are eerily quick when they have their next snack in sight.

That’s another thing about them. You can bring something resembling life back to a dead body once the soul’s gone, sure. But whatever you stick in there always ends up hungry .

The nine-millimeter was under the arm of Dad’s camp chair in a Velcro holster. I hit the ground hard and scrabbled for it, moving too fast to bother scrambling upright, my feet tangling over each other as I heard light shuffling footsteps and the crunch of broken glass. The zombie blundered into the hall and I heard a god-awful racket—it must have tripped over a box.

My fingers were the size of sausages and clumsy, too. I ripped the cold metal of the gun out of the holster, Velcro tearing free and the chair spinning as I shoved it away. I rolled over onto my back, hearing Dad’s voice in my head again.

Easy there, sweetheart. Don’t point that thing at anything you don’t intend to kill. Always treat a gun like it’s loaded.

I hoped it was loaded. I knew it probably was—Dad wouldn’t have a piece on his camp chair if it wasn’t. I’ve been shooting since I was nine and even Gran had a gun in her house and I knew gun safety, didn’t I? It was why I was Dad’s helper. I knew the right way to handle a firearm and the wrong way, too, and the thing blundered around the corner, fixing me with its terrible rotting eyes that were now unholy, glowing blue. A spark of red revolved far back in the pupils, and I smelled it .

Zombies smell worse than anything you can imagine if you haven’t been hunting things on the dark side of the world. It’s a ripe, gassy odor, like rotting eggs and meat gone bad, crawling blind with maggots. It’s roadkill and decayed food and body odor all rolled into one package and tied up with puke.

I screamed again, but all that came out was a whistling sound, because my throat had locked up. I pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.

Click .

Oh shit.

The safety was on. The thing lunged for me, its atonal bellow rolling free of its throat again—

—and it fell .

Take the goddamn safety off. I scrabbled with the gun as the zombie splatted onto the carpet. It was covered in snow, wet and running with rot, and it wore Dad’s favorite green Army-surplus coat. It had tripped over a box partly blocking the entrance to the living room.

My breath sounded harsh as a crow’s caw as the safety clicked off. I lay on my back and pointed the gun.

Dad’s eyes met mine. The zombie scrambled to its bare, rotting feet—his shoes were gone, where were his boots?—and stretched out its hands, bits of flesh falling and plopping on the carpet. The stink roiled through my nose, filled my head, and I retched as I pulled the trigger.

The first bullet went wide, blowing out part of the living-room wall. I was still screaming and dry-sobbing as the zombie ratcheted forward, falling toward me, its teeth snicking together as its ruined jaw ground shut again and again, practicing the chewing motion that would eat its prey alive. I kept pulling the trigger.

I didn’t even hear the shots, though they must have been deafening. All I heard was my own sobs.

It fell on me. Slime splashed and black blood splatted on my face. It burned like acid. It was cold like the snow outside, and it stank . Its jaws clicked twice, it shuddered, and a gout of something black and disgusting smashed out of its mouth.

I was still screaming. Couldn’t get enough breath, so I was making a high, whining sound. The gun clicked. I was pulling the trigger, but I’d emptied the clip.

The zombie was truly dead. There was a hole in its chest, nicely grouped shots. You have to damage the heart or the thing keeps coming. It’s something about the process of making a zombie, the meaning of the heart keeping the whole body going—or so the books say. But I hadn’t been thinking about the books. I’d been blindly following training, aiming for the bodyshot like he had taught me.

Don’t aim for the head if you’ve got a choice. Don’t pull. Squeeze the trigger, sweetheart. Dad’s voice, in my head. With the never-ending refrain repeated so many times, I could have said it in my sleep: Don’t point that thing at something you don’t intend to kill.