The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online Page B

us, entirely naked. Johnny Boy looked like it’d been killed in some sort of accident: its torso was all messed up, not exactly scarred, but exposed and purpled in places. Its belly was distended, its flesh swollen, its penis and testicles so shriveled as to be almost invisible. Charlie’s guests raised their drinks and toasted it.
     
    ‘Johnny Boy,’ Charlie cried, ‘be so good as to hold out your arms.’
     
    Johnny Boy held out its arms.
     
    Now another reanimate arrived with what looked like an old stained butcher’s apron, which he handed to Charlie. After putting it on, Charlie lifted an axe he’d clearly had nearby, though I had not seen it until this moment.
     
    Charlie turned to the crowd, brandishing the axe. ‘You boys ready to send Johnny Boy off in style?’
     
    The guests made it known that they were ready. I took a step back. I understood now what was happening, the weird grotesqueness of it all. What did it mean? Was it a crime? Was it even cruel? I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to see. Yet I knew it would be a mistake to leave or even to show my feelings, to make these guys feel like I thought I was better than they were - which I did, by the way. I stood there and made myself watch.
     
    Charlie, after taking a moment to flash a wolfish grin at his guests, brought the axe up and then swung it down on one of Johnny Boy’s outstretched arms. The limb tumbled down to the plastic sheet, continuing to move, and the stump remained outstretched, oozing a slow and steady flow of black, watery liquid. Johnny Boy began to scream. It did not move its legs. It barely moved its head, but it screamed and shrieked and wailed. The guests cheered. People hooted and clapped and drank to its suffering.
     
    ‘My brakes!’ Johnny Boy cried out. ‘Oh, my God, the truck, the fucking truck!’
     
    The crowd cheered again.
     
    Charlie handed the axe to Ryan, and he cut off the other arm in a quick, clean stroke. Johnny Boy still screamed, sometimes just noise, sometimes about the impending head-on collision with the truck. Its stumps continued to produce their black blood, like a kitchen faucet left running just a little. Then the axe was handed to another friend, and he cut off one leg. The body tumbled over, but this didn’t slow the screaming. It seemed not to know or care what was happening now, but the past, its death, was vivid and real and immediate. The crowd loved it.
     
    I stood there feeling nauseated and horrified while the last leg was cut off and the crowd gathered around to laugh and point and cheer on the dismembered torso. I could not have held my breath all that time, but if anyone had asked, I would have sworn I didn’t breathe between the time they started hacking up the reanimate until the time they finally put the pieces on the fire and burned them into stillness and silence.
     

     
    The party began to clear out after that, but it was still too early and I was too shaken to go home. I wanted to make sure Tori was asleep when I got there, so I wouldn’t have to deal with her. I went to a bar and drank too much, but I’d learned my lesson. Even though I now drove a car with headlights that went on automatically, I still checked them before driving home at almost 1:00 A.M.
     
    The lights were out, so I thought I was safe, but when I walked through the door, she was waiting for me, sitting in the dark.
     
    ‘What is going on, Walter?’
     
    ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said. ‘I wanted to hang out with some friends. Christ, you are the only wife in America that doesn’t want to let her husband out of the house once in a while.’
     
    ‘You got a call while you were out,’ she said.
     
    ‘A call! Oh, my God, a fucking call! No wonder you are so upset.’ I stumbled past her.
     
    ‘I don’t know who it was. It was a woman. She sounded, I don’t know, retarded or something. I think she was saying your name, but I couldn’t understand the