"Food Chain"

by

Caitlin R. Kiernan

Author's note: "Two Worlds, and In Between" was written in February and March of 1993, shortly after John Skipp requested a story from me for BOOK OF THE DEAD 4. So, the story was originally intended to be read as an extension of (and tribute to) the zombie cataclysms of George A. Romero's trilogy of LIVING DEAD films. Unfortunately, by early 1996, it had become clear that the third and forth volumes of BOOK OF THE DEAD would probably never see print and I withdrew the story from the anthology, not wishing to see it become further entangled in the publishing and legal quagmire that the project had become. I thank Skipp for the opportunity to put my spin on Romero's nightmare.

On the crumbly edge of the pit, and it seems like she's been standing there forever, when the fever breaks and Twila opens her sleepgummy eyes. She has to blink three or four times before they even begin to focus, and they still burn and water from the greasy corpse smoke and the faintest sharpness of disappointment, dissolving with the dream. Across the little room, her Salvation Army dressing table and from the cracked mirror, Peter Murphy pouts and his lips are the bruisey color of eggplant. On the floor, the candlelight is drowning itself in a cranberry pool of liquid wax.

She lies very still, listening for the sound that woke her, remembering where she is and that apocalypse has come and gone and she's still here. The bedroom stinks of old puke and shit and something gone over.

Blondie is asleep in the ratty armchair pulled up beside their bed, head drooping down so his chin rests on his bare chest. He isn't wearing a shirt, just a pair of black panties and a garter and black fishnets with the feet cut out. Snoring softly, his breath whistling in and out. And down on the street, dead guys growl and thump along the sidewalk.

Nothing else, and nothing any different than before.

She's still alive or she's dead.

"Blondie?" she means to whisper, but her throat feels like she's been knocking back Drano shooters and it comes out a strangled, zombiefied sound.

"Blondie ," and this time his eyelashes flutter and his head snaps back, dark eyes clogged with interrupted sleep and confusion and fear.

"Twila?" and he sounds lost and far away. "Jesus, Twila. Are you..." but there's no sense in asking and instead he fumbles for her wrist, presses his thumb to botched suicide scar tissue and the blue-green intersection of veins and arteries.

She can feel the faint throb of her pulse pressed beneath her brother's touch. And so she knows even before the relief in his eyes and the ghost of a smile.

Blondie wipes at her forehead with a sponge cut in the shape of a pink flamingo, pushes aside her ink black bangs. She tries to sit up, but he makes her lie right back down on the tangle of sweatdamp sheets. Her pillow is crusty stiff with dried snot and blood; she doesn't have to look to know that she's shit all over herself.

"I feel better," she says, shaky, but almost her own voice this time, and then there is no strength left to say anything else. Blondie is crying and he hugs her tight, shit stains and all, strokes her matted hair, and holds her till dawn.

Her head feels empty, scooped clean by the dream and the fever and filled with angry, buzzing hornets. A stingy breeze whips at the curtains, rearranging the heat.

She sits on the floor, in cool shadows where the late morning sun doesn't reach, and begins to unwrap her hand, winding away the goresticky mummy gauze, pus-yellowed and it still hurts like a motherfucker. Blondie has gone to get her a glass of water and see if there's any booze left. The last layer is scab-fused to her skin, big magenta blotches and when she pulls it free there's only a little blood and a faint whiff of ammonia.

(buzzbuzzbuzz)

And the perfect crescent of Arlene's kiss underneath; she turns her hand over and there it is again, incisor and canine and bicuspid punctures tattooed into her palm. Life line and heart line and soul line severed. Twila tries to make a fist and the swollen flesh cracks, drains about her wrist like an amber bracelet and trickles to the floor.

She feels dizzy again and has to brace herself against the wall. Her hand looks like a picture she once saw of a brown recluse spider bite and she remembers a word, necrosis.

Down the hall, Arlene slams herself against the bathroom door. There are split places in the wood and the paint's peeling away from the blows, but Blondie's dragged the sofa and a table and all kinds of shit to barricade her in.

"Go right ahead, bitch," Twila mutters at the door. "Knock yourself fuckin' goofy."

Arlene moans and gurgles and hits the door again.

(buzzbuzzzz)

Then Blondie comes out of the kitchen with Twila's Catwoman tumbler and an almost empty bottle of Papov, trying not to notice the sounds from the bathroom. He sits down next to his sister, pours the vodka into the cup and mixes with an index finger.

"I don't think she can get out," he says uncertainly.

Twila sips her drink and glances toward the door.

"Find me a hammer and I'll fuckin' nail the bitch in," she says and takes a bigger swallow. Lukewarm, and the alcohol burns going down.

"I was so scared, Twila," he says, and now he's staring at anything but her eyes. "I thought you were dying, that you were gonna wind up like her. Hear her? She gets worse and worse, and then the power went out last night and..."

If I open my mouth, they'll all fly out , and she saw the wriggling black and yellow bodies clinging to Blondie's face, digging their stinger-tipped asses into his pale cheeks and clenched eyelids, trying to crawl inside his nose.

"...there wasn't anything left on television anyway. Just fucking snow and test patterns."

And Arlene throws herself extra hard against the bathroom door. Twila closes her eyes and listens to her brother and the hornets and the wail of a siren far away.

The end of the world rave had been Twila's idea.

And the twins played host and hostess for the grannybitch of all wakes, mourning the late and great and the soon to be sinking fast in their finest blacks, in silk and lace and lips so red that eyes would bleed in sympathy.

Thirty or forty people wedged into the little apartment like sardines canned alive, writhing to goth and techno and industrial remix. No AC because their wheezy-ass window unit hadn't survived last August; sweat and b.o. and the freshly-turned dirt reek of patchouli. Tea rose and clove cigarettes.

Sometime after midnight, Twila realized how bad she had to piss, had entirely lost track of the tequila and cans of someone else's beer, and threaded her way through the dancers to the john. And really, she'd thought that Arlene had just passed out, had speedballed herself a first-class, round-trip ticket to see Mr. Sandman; leave her alone, she'll be fine in the morning.

"Lookin' a little green, Arlene," and she rolled Arlene away from the toilet bowl, flushed and watched the dark vomit turn its Charybdis trick. Arlene lay slumped against the tub, eyes rolled back to whites, lips the slightest touch of blue. Twila, drunk and off-balance, wrestled her leather mini-skirt up and pantyhose down around knee-high Doc Martens, was sitting on the crapper before she noticed the urine pool covering half the bathroom floor. Through the piss-sheen, the powder blue linoleum looked turquoise.

She'd left the door standing wide open and someone looked in, Dougie and his spiky orange buzzcut. He held his nose and made gagging sounds until she gave him the finger. A moment later, she heard him laughing, cracking golden shower jokes, and sure, he said, just get in line.

Then Arlene opened her mouth and belched, an ugly rattling sound, and her whole body shuddered like maybe a possum had walked across her grave.

"Hey bitch, you pissed on my floor."

Arlene blinked, reptile slow. Milky irises washed almost gray, watery blind girl stare but the barest hint of recognition and then that shudder again.

"Arlene, if you're gonna puke, be a dear and do it in the tub, pretty please ," and Twila tore off a big wad of their cheapo scratchy toilet paper and wiped herself.

Then Arlene lurched forward, marionette jerky spasms and her teeth clack-clacking together like some idiot Halloween toy. Sprawled face down into Twila's lap, nuzzling her way between thighs, and for a heartbeat Twila was too astounded to move. And then Arlene snarled, Christ, snarled , and the ripping that she heard and felt was the mouthful of blonde pubic hair clenched between the girl's cigarette-yellowed teeth.

The clouded eyes sparked and sputtered, all pupil, barely the slimmest iris rind, and the light they swallowed was just fucking gone.

Twila screamed, never in her life had she filled her lungs and screamed, screeched like some slasher bait bimbo. She tried to push the girl away, twined her fingers in hennaed tangle, but Arlene wrapped her long arms tight around the porcelain bowl and hung on.

And Dougie was back at the door, stupid grin and stoned glaze, right hand gripping a beer bottle like it was his dick.

"Jesus, Dougie! Get her off me!" And no way had that been her voice, not that frightened, brittle thing leapfrogging octaves.

Arlene strained against the hair leash, snapping and spittle-flecking Twila's exposed legs.

"You girls are some mighty sick puppies," Dougie said and swigged at his beer.

Arlene lunged, velcro shrrrip as she tore herself free, and Twila was left with a useless fistful of hair. Arlene's head whirled, lips stretched so far back the teeth seemed to reach out as her mouth closed around Twila's hand. Teeth punching through skin and muscle. Crushing teeth, grinding bones like twigs wrapped in meat and the pain was something almost alive, dragging itself up her arm like fire or a stranded jellyfish or when they were eight and Blondie had closed her hand in the car door.

She released Arlene's hair, hammered at her face and finally Dougie moved, but only because Blondie was behind him, shoving him aside. Blondie, yelling things she couldn't understand, could hardly even hear through the red haze settling into her head. The wet slap of her hand against Arlene's face, her nose already squashed to pulp and blood, and the chewing sounds.

Something catching light at the end of his arm, arcing down through the 25-watt incandescence, and the force of each and every blow passed along to her secondhand through Arlene's grip.

"Stop it, man! Stop it! " Dougie screamed, reached for Blondie. "You're gonna fucking kill her, man!"

And Blondie, those weren't words, far too perfect an expression of her own confusion and pain and anger for words. One last time the handle of the blow dryer connected with Arlene's face and the plastic shattered and bone snapped and Twila's hand slid from slack and broken jaws.

Twila crawled, scrambled, slinging crimson and skidding on piss-sticky linoleum past Dougie, into the hall and the murmuring press of bodies gathering for the show.

When the twins gave a party, everybody came.

Past noon, and the day drifts into mid-summer scorch and the water-lie shimmer of blacktop mirage. The syrupy scent of kudzu through the window isn't all that different from the zombie rot that seems to get stronger whenever Arlene starts flinging herself against the bathroom door.

The twins are on the floor where it's a little cooler, Twila's head resting in her brother's bony lap. Running down the batteries in their portable CD player, This Mortal Coil and Enya and The Cocteau Twins, nothing harder because her head still thrums, the buzzing at the base of her skull spreading slowly as the hornets honeycomb her brain. Her stomach's churning from the pointless bout with lunch, hardly three bites of the cheddar cheese and stale bagel sandwich before she threw it right back up. She wants to doze, wants to dream back down to the dead pit where the hornets and the sounds from the bathroom can't find her.

Blondie's brushing her hair, working out the tangles and rat-nest snarls, and Twila know he's singing with the boom box so she won't see how freaked out he is. If she avoids his face, it might work. She closes her eyes, focusing on the voices and the melody and the pleasant prick of the brush's teeth on her scalp.

"Listen," he says, "There . Did you hear it?"

Twila opens her eyes and stares up at the three rosaries hung around his neck, onyx black beads and three perfect crucifixions, listening.

And somewhere down the street, gunshots and the hot squeal of tires. Men shouting and one more shot that sounds somehow very final. But no sirens, no sirens for hours now, and she wonders if all the cops are finally dead, or if they're just hiding somewhere.

"That was close," Blondie says, and the fear edging back into his voice makes the hornets wriggle and buzz.

"Hey, Abbott," she says, straining for her own voice through the gravel rasp. "Which is easier to unload, a truckload of bowling balls or a truckload of dead babies?"

But he's still watching the open window and the simmering chrome sky and doesn't even seem to notice. And fuck, she feels way too shitty to joke, but the pinched desperation around his mouth and his pecan shell eyes is worse.

"Dead babies," when he finally answers, "You can use a pitchfork."

"And what's worse than a truckload of dead babies?"

"A live one at the bottom," he says, "eating its way to the top."

"And what's even worse than that ?"

He misses his cue. Down the street, brakes shriek before the crash.

"Blondie?"

"It makes it," he says.

Under a sallow, pigbelly sky, the dead pit yawns and breathes out charcoal smoke and the gentle gray sift of ashes. Twila steps closer to the edge and broken shale crunches beneath her boots.

Behind her, the sleepless dead shuffle and grunt, a zombie halo that winds sloppy single file along the rim of the pit, clockwise march of leaden feet. Occasionally, something tears and drops loose and is kicked and stomped to paste. Any pretense at difference in the faces is merely hollow variation on a single, sloughing theme.

No sound from the pit but the pop and crackle of burning. Like rain, she thinks, the sizzle of a thundershower and above her the gray-green-yellow sky rumbles smugly to itself. Lightning as black and flat as a dead girl's eyes needles down at the smoldering world and is instantly sucked back into the roil and tumble of the clouds.

And when it starts, the rain does not fall but seeps slo-mo from the wounded sky in oily, pus-sludgy drops.

Twila turns her face up to the storm, flinches when the first lukewarm drops strike her cheeks, her forehead. Another thunderclap rattles the hive behind her eyes and jointed legs skitter and tickle their way from her sinuses down the back of her throat. She gags, coughs out a phlegmy clot of hornets, and already there are that many more filling her mouth, whirring wings and restless barbs. They crawl across the threshold of her lips, climb from her nostrils and ears.

The rain becomes a downpour, sheeting corruption, pelting her, soaking her until her hair is slick and her clothes cling to her skin. Behind her, zombie feet suck and slap mud and wet stone.

The tease of a thousand ribbon tongues as the insects take the nectar rot from her face, and clambering over one another, carry full bellies back inside her. Twila waits, patient, until they've all finished and her jaw aches and the rain is barely a sour mist.

Was it that easy for Eve, she thinks, and the fading thunder is the steel clang of gates swinging shut and locks clasped against her; No goin' back, chickie, and she thinks, Now that's a fuckin' laugh.

Down in the dead pit, steam rises from charred bones and the shapeless burning things.

The sound is the creak of timbers deep in the hold of a movie-set pirate ship, grating wood rhythm swing to the list and reel of a tireless ocean. For the time that it takes for late afternoon to fade to twilight and then the first smudges of night, Twila lies very still, keeps her back to the sound. There are no street lights anymore, no tangerine glow from the neon bar sign across the street. No phantom wash of headlights from the viaduct.

But she has the hornets' rustling instruction, ten thousand small voices in hushed and honeyed chorus, to play over and over in her mind.

This finalmost catechism, these obvious do's and don't's for a new order of one. Miss Manners for the shiny thing sprung from its chrysalis of fever and dreams.

So she doesn't have to see anything until she's ready.

Arlene begins the gentlest assault on the bathroom door, irregular thuds and raw knuckled raps.

Twila rolls over and there's no surprise in the dangling limpness of her brother's body, nothing past mute fact. For a while, she sits on the floor and watches the short arc and sway of his bare feet, toes pointed gracelessly down, meat pendulum skimming inches above the fallen kitchen chair. The breeze smells like rain and ozone and the day's heat bleeding off into space. The leather belt noose creaks and strains, tied snug around exposed plumbing painted the same latex oyster white as the ceiling.

She finds a knife and cuts him down, stands on the same chair he stood on and saws through black leather and between studs and spikes. Halfway through and his weight does the rest. She tries to catch him under the arms but it's too much and Blondie drops loudly to the floor. His head smacks the floorboards, and she just stands there, holding the big knife, looking down on this pale, boy-shaped puddle.

He'd had his razor blades out again and his belly and thighs and the palms of his hands are sliced like fish gills. When she squats down on the chair she sees the single word carved small into his hip. SORRY.

Twila sits in the chair, jumping off point, she thinks and raises the knife above her head, drives it to the hilt into the soft place below his breastbone. Through skin and muscle and soft, dead organs. Yanks it free, and now her hands are stained slippery black and the blood makes the air stink like a jar of old pennies.

The wailing starts way down inside her, core shatter, swelling and looping on itself, feedbacking into something that has sickle claws and shreds the still darkness as the blade plunges in again and again and again.

After, she watches to be sure. Crouches in the chair and rests her head on knees drawn close, hums Hendrix, hey joe, hey joe, and the knife hangs slack in her left hand. To be sure she understands the hornets, that she's read between all the lines and has the whole skinny. That whatever brought her through the fever will keep her brother down. But Blondie's a good dead boy; there'll be no Lazarus games tonight.

buzzbuzzbuzZBUZZBUZZ, the hornets babble and an emptiness as wide as the gangrene sky above the dead pit opens up inside her; perfect pretty nothing ballooning from her guts like a suckling universe, devouring regret and fear and loss. Shitting out crystal certainty and the black and keening appetite.

"Arlene?" she whispers. Twila has pushed away the sofa and the table and all the other shit, presses her face and palms to the tortured door. The silence on the other side is solid and cold.

"Hey, Arlene. You pissed on my floor, you stupid zombie bitch." And she thinks that that's the first time since it began that she's said the z-word out loud.

The stench is dizzying and she knows that when she turns the brass knob and pushes the door the trapped air will roll out like an invisible, septic fog. She opens her mouth to say something else and the words drown in the thick spill of saliva. Twila wipes her chin dry with the back of her hand, wipes her hand on her t-shirt. And the door scrapes softly across age-buckled linoleum and the hinges murmur.

And nothing could have ever prepared her for this, this tangible thing that floods her head in waves of smothering acid sweetness, air soupy fermentation of rancid pork and wormripe windfall peaches and cheesy musk. This is not simple scent or taste or anything else hemmed in by mere sensation. The hornets are a howling locust wind and Twila gasps, reaches through the blackness for support. Blinks back vertigo and squints.

A single rectangle of weaker darkness, night filtered dim through filthy curtains high above the tub.

"Arlene?"

Somewhere ahead, a liquid whimper and weight hauled by broken hands; glistening fear stitched against the murk in shades of colors she's never seen before. Another step and Twila's foot brushes soft and leaking Arlene, and the dead girl moans and pulls herself thunk into the bathtub. A fading part of Twila's mind, sealed deep inside the maze of waxy hexagons, bothers to wonder how much got left behind on the floor, because whatever she touched is still there.

Twila's stomach growls as she bends over the tub and it's almost as ugly as the fear sounds rattling up from the zombie's ruined throat.

In the final gunmetal velvet moments before dawn, she walks alone through the silent streets of the city, past smoking tenement embers and abandoned cars and a hundred other clichŽ spectacles of spent apocalypse. The dead know her, smell the discrepant blend of warm meat and the green-black decay that stains her face and hands and clothing. They are never more than hesitant shadows, cowering shamblers, fleeting butcheries. And the living are only a rumor on the drowsy lips of the night.

Behind her eyes, the hornets have gone, and her mind is as still and silent as the morning. Her nose drips honey.

She reaches the crest of a hill, dead end street and a rust and bond-o Corvette shell is slewed crazily across the yellow dividing line. The driver's side door is open and the threadbare upholstery is soaked maroon. Twila sits down on the hood, and already, where the trees and rooftops touch the eastern sky, the light is making promises she knows it can't keep.

Copyright (c) 1997 by Caitlin R. Kiernan. First published in DARK OF THE NIGHT, ed. Stephen Jones (Pumpkin Books, UK).
Reprinted by permission of the author.
All rights reserved.