Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction: The Exile Book of Anthology Series, Number Eight
352
Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction: The Exile Book of Anthology Series, Number Eight
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781550963557 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Exile Editions |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2013 |
| Series: | The Exile Book of , #8 |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Dead North
Canadian Zombie Fiction
By Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Exile Editions Ltd
Copyright © 2013 Exile EditionsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55096-355-7
CHAPTER 1
THE HERD
Tyler Keevil
I can see them in the distance, moving over the tundra with that familiar, dopy stride. Aping the shapes of men and women, and still moving as if they have some purpose. I know better. Their only purpose – like mine, like anybody's in this wasteland – is to find food. It is a fulltime occupation, something that consumes you. Living to eat, and eating to live.
I'm hunched in a snowbank, my skis and sled beside me, watching through my field glasses. I count maybe two dozen of them, all relatively healthy. They are grouped in a loose cluster. Not even walking in file, which would make it easier, in the snow. And not using snowshoes, either. Every so often one of them sinks in up to his thighs, and thrashes around in confusion and frustration. Once when this happens, another goes to help, and they both end up struggling together, until they start punching and biting. It's funny, really. The intelligence of deadheads can vary, depending on the strain they've been infected with. I've seen one trying to operate a snowmobile. Unsuccessfully (the battery was dead), but still. These ones look to be about as smart as dogs.
To the south, I catch a flicker of movement. I sweep my binoculars that way. It's a wolf. Just the one. A rogue. So lean his ribs are showing through his skin. He is following the herd of deadheads, in a low crouch, padding noiselessly over the snow. It is like watching a ceremonial performance, an enactment of one of our old legends. The wolf trying so hard to play his part, to stalk quietly. He doesn't need to bother. He could be snarling and howling at them. If he did, the deadheads would probably howl back. I snicker, thinking about that: all of them howling like animals, which is what they are, now. As it stands, they just keep plodding along, the wolf picking his way after them, paddy-pawing the snow.
* * *
The deadheads are heading north. The wolf follows them, and I follow the wolf: stepping into my skis, draping the sled harness around my torso. I adopt an easy rhythm, sliding my skis back and forth, back and forth. The snow has a glittering crust, easy to traverse. I trail the herd at an angle, moving in parallel rather than directly behind them. They haven't noticed me. The wolf may have, but if so has decided – for the time being – to focus on easier prey. The prey walk and walk and walk. They have great endurance, mostly because they don't know any better. They are fully capable of hiking all day, but every few hours they take a break. There is never any discourse about this (some of the deadheads are capable of basic communication – grunts and guttural sounds) but they all seem to know instinctively when to stop. It's that pack mentality they have. They form a circle and crouch, squat, or kneel in the snow, backs turned to the wind. They're smart enough for that, at least. They rest for fifteen minutes, like automatons recharging their batteries.
Then they get up and keep moving.
It's hard to say what this group were at one time. They are all palefaced whites – except for those too stupid to cover their faces, which are now blackened by frostbite. They are outfitted well, in parkas, toques, mitts, boots. Some are in worse shape than others: their clothing torn or falling off, bits of goose down puffing from the seams like fungus. They might have been the inhabitants of some town, or outpost. Could be they ate their way through it, and have now moved on. The towns got infected first. The tribes, and my people, later. When it first started to happen, I would meet others on the tundra, in passing. The last of our kind. I'd explain to them about the sickness, the hunger, but they wouldn't believe me. They had stopped trusting me long ago. Even the ones not of my tribe had heard about me, and feared me. But of course they all learned soon enough that I was telling the truth.
Not that it did them any good.
* * *
The wolf is desperate. It will not wait long to attack – it cannot afford to get any weaker – and by mid-afternoon the opportunity presents itself. One of the deadheads is flagging, faltering, trailing behind the others. There is something wrong with his left leg. It looks to be lame – from frostbite, or gangrene, maybe – and he is limping. He is quite small, too. Not a toddler, but a child. Seeing its chance, the wolf slinks up, shoulders hunched, gaze affixed on its prey. It is so intent on its purpose that it doesn't notice me coasting closer, soft and silent on my skis, or understand that it is not hunter, but hunted.
When I am within twenty yards I stop and unsling the bow from my shoulder. I reach up and ease an arrow from my quiver, notch it to the bow, draw the shaft to my cheek. Then I whistle, soft and high – a sound only the wolf will pick out over the wind. It looks back, confused, and my arrow catches it clean: burrowing into its chest, punching out through its back. It drops, whimpering and snarling. The deadheads haven't heard; they continue trudging, oblivious. I wait until the wolf stops twitching before I approach, then jab it once with my spear to make sure it's dead. Only then do I put down my weapons, get out my tools: an ivory knife, a stone-bladed ulu, and an umiuk made out of bone.
I lay the wolf on its back, and with the knife slit it from its throat to its groin, being careful not to slice the stomach and intestines. There isn't much muscle on the wolf – it's all skin and bone – but there's enough for a decent meal. I've never been fond of wolf meat. It is tough, and sinewy, particularly in an old beast like this. But it's food, at least.
And now the competition is out of the way.
* * *
By the time I finish with the wolf, I can no longer see the herd of deadheads on the horizon, but their tracks are easy enough to follow. I start after them. My stomach is making strange burbles and groans, spasming and cramping. After weeks of nothing but stale pemmican, it's having trouble digesting wolf meat. I can feel it sitting in there, a hard ball. My stomach used to regurgitate food after long periods of fasting, but I've learned to take it slow, and control that reflex. I got tired of eating my own vomit.
I skate with my head down, pushing hard with my poles, falling into a smooth and steady rhythm. The landscape is overwhelming. The horizon flat in every direction. The sky a veil of grey. Behind it, the sun gleams like a tarnished coin, so dull you can look right at it without hurting your eyes. Those who haven't been here, and seen it, simply cannot imagine the endless expanse of white. It is stark and harsh as a blank page, or a map with no borders, no boundaries. No sense of right or wrong. In this blighted snowscape, anything is possible. Here you are free to cross over, to transgress. It is a map of madness that I negotiate alone.
The flats of my skis, waxed with fat, make satisfying hissing noises as they glide back and forth beneath me. I lose myself in that motion, feeling the terrain sliding away behind me, as if it is moving, not me. My sled is light enough right now that it isn't much of a burden. No stores of food to weigh it down, aside from a few cuts of wolf meat. At other times, when hunting is good, it gets so heavy that I feel like I'm dragging a tree behind me.
Years ago I kept a dog to pull it for me. A beautiful creature. Part husky, part wolf. Fierce, loyal, protective. And warm, too. His fur soft as ermine. We made a good team, traversing the Arctic together. He had a brilliant sense of direction, a great nose for tracking food. And he was much better at pulling this sled than me. But times grew lean, food scarce. We both shrunk, our skin tightening over us, hugging bone. Skeletal creatures. One night I woke to catch him regarding me in the darkness. He had enough wolf in him for that. The next morning, as I put him in his traces, I slit his throat with my knife. A nice, clean cut. Quick and relatively painless. For him, at least.
Now I am the one pulling the sled, but I like to think he is with me, in spirit. I wear his hide on my back, as a parka. His teeth dangle from the leather necklace around my throat. We still stalk this tundra together, seeking food.
He tasted different than wolf. There was something more wholesome about the flavour, as if the muscle was seasoned by all that love and loyalty, the bond between us. I think he would have appreciated my eating him. I took him inside myself, made him part of me.
Alliances up here are fleeting, friendships temporary.
* * *
Evening is coming on when black dots appear on the horizon. As I get closer, the dots grow into the stumbling shapes of deadheads, their figures shimmering as if in a haze of heat, or a mirage. When they stop for the night, I do too. After pitching my tent, I watch them for a time. In the fading light, I can see them getting into their huddle formation. Every so often they change positions – the ones on the outside going to the centre, the others shifting out. It's like observing a flock of penguins, each taking turns to act as the windbreak. It's interesting behaviour, and effective in fighting the cold. At times I think they might be developing, evolving. Getting smarter. I hope not. It would make life that much more difficult.
That night I sleep soundly, the flapping of the tent gentle and soothing as a lullaby. Perhaps because I have been thinking of him, my dog comes to me in my sleep. My brother, too. For a time, the three of us are traversing the landscape together. It is spring, the thaw. Food is plentiful: there are tubers lying on the ground, berries hanging from bushes, deer leaping onto our spears. My brother is laughing. It is good to have companions again, even if only in a dream.
For most of the following day, and the next, I keep pace with the herd. I am cautious, waiting. I am in no rush, and the last scraps of the wolf meat keep me going. A shift in the weather is coming. It is something you grow to feel, after years on the tundra. It is nothing tangible, just a sensation. A heaviness in the air, a change in temperature, the wind, the look of the clouds. I know it is going to snow, and it comes in the early morning, just after the herd has set out. It arrives, first, as a brief sprinkle – the flakes light and peppery. Then a lull, the air charged with a static crackle. Next, the first real flurries. Some of the deadheads stop, confused, and look up at this white confetti raining down. Soon they are overwhelmed by the snowstorm, swirling in the air like a swarm of frozen locusts.
Visibility is reduced to ten feet. I lose sight of the herd, but can hear them calling to each other, mooing and moaning in confusion. I ski forward, closing the gap, moving softly, softly. A few shadowed shapes begin to emerge again, some faint, others more substantial. I focus on one shadow, separated from the others, and move towards it. It is stumbling along, looking left and right, calling for its kin. As I glide in, I transfer both my poles to my left hand. I reach for the axe at my belt, heft it and swing it smoothly down atop the deadhead's skull. It makes a dull crumpling sound, like a watermelon being split, and he falls to the ground. I stop, kneel in the snow in a telemark position, next to my kill. I can still hear the others over the howl of the wind. One passes within a few feet of me, but notices nothing. Then he – or she? – keeps walking. The calls and moans fade away.
When I'm sure they're gone, I dig a trench for the corpse, and a snowcave for myself to weather the storm.
* * *
The deadhead is a big man, well over six feet. A white man like the others. His nose is slightly black, his beard clotted with snot and frost. He hasn't lost much weight, and is still bulky and muscular. This herd can't have been infected for long. His parka has a small red cross stitched over the heart. He must have belonged to a rescue crew of some sort. I wonder if that's what the group are doing: still wandering the wastes, dimly but diligently following their old purpose. I have seen this before. In the towns, the deadheads return to their homes and offices to putter aimlessly. They wash dishes in empty sinks, push lawnmowers through the snow, stand and hammer pieces of wood as if driving in an invisible nail. It could be that certain parts of their brain – those to do with learned reflex – are unaffected by the sickness. Reason and rationality are gone. All that remains is appetite, instinct, muscle memories.
The snowstorm has stopped, the herd has moved on. It's time to get to work. I lay him flat on his back, unzip his parka. With my knife I slice through his undergarments. The sight of his pale abdomen – still fleshy with fat – triggers a low rumble in my belly. I take my time, stripping him completely. Then, with my axe, I dismember him: hacking through the limbs, lopping off the head, then halving the legs at the knees, and the arms at the elbows. He is already stiff with rigor mortis, the blood dense and congealed.
The thick thigh muscles – gluts and quads – make the best meat. I start there. The left thigh first. With my ulu I remove the skin, which I lay aside, to be dealt with later. The layer of fat beneath the epidermis makes good lamp oil. Then I cut large strips of meat off, rectangular in shape, about the size of T-bone steaks. A big thigh will yield four of these.
I do not know if I'm the only one who has discovered this, but it is the sole reason I have survived so long. Deadhead meat is edible, if treated properly. The bacteria or virus or parasite that causes the sickness can be killed. Either with heat, by cooking, or with cold, by freezing for several hours. My people have frozen meat like this for centuries, to preserve it.
Each part of a deadhead has its uses. The bones make arrowheads, spears, needles, blades, parts to repair my sled. The intestines are perfect for stringing my longbow. The skin is useless for warmth, compared to wolf or fox or bear. But it makes good leather. My tent, once rough canvas, is now almost entirely a patchwork of deadhead skin. The top of the skull can be used as a bowl, in a pinch. The fat for lamp oil, the hair as thread. You can derive salt from the blood. The body of a deadhead is like a walking cache of practical provisions.
At the moment, however, I am well-stocked in terms of tools and equipment. Some of this will have to be buried, and returned for if and when the time comes. Right now my priority is food. It is a long and arduous task, to skin and clean and butcher an entire body. It takes me most of the day. By the time I'm done, the snow all around me is bright with blood. A large patch has formed in the shape of the dismembered corpse, like a bloody snow angel. After, I wearily set up camp, digging a snowcave and windbreak, and erecting my tent within.
Only then am I ready to eat a proper meal.
Most of the meat has been frozen long enough to be safe. It is not something to be rushed, a feast of flesh this fresh. If I gorged myself I would puke it back up immediately. So I eat slowly, as darkness falls, savouring every bite, letting it thaw and melt in my mouth so I can appreciate the texture, the flavour. The selection is rich and varied. There is the muscle meat, of course, and the sweet bits of fat – so necessary to prevent protein poisoning. The organs are even more important. The liver, in particular, is very rich in minerals, and vitamin A and D. The kidneys are a great source of iron, the brain loaded with vitamin C.
It is a good meal. After, I hunker in my tent and with my oil lamp heat a cup of frozen blood until it is steaming, simmering. I sip this slowly, savouring the salty flavour. I can feel the warmth in my belly, helping digestion, radiating outward, and the strength it infuses in my limbs. Then I douse my lamp, strap down the flap of my tent, and wrap myself up in furs. I lay there, satiated, too full to even sleep. There's nothing quite so satisfying as a deadhead feast.
* * *
The next morning I load up my sled with stacks of meat – cuts of all sorts – separated by layers of skin and packed with snow. Preservation isn't a problem. You do not need a fridge, or a freezer. Up here, in the winter, negative twenty is a mild day. The meat will keep, and feed me, for several days – a week if I eat sparingly. And there are many more deadheads to sustain me after that.
For the next few weeks, I follow the herd north. In the same way, my ancestors used to follow the herds of caribou that once roamed the tundra. Like them, these deadheads are my roving food supply. Every few days, I cull the herd by picking one off. Taking the weak, the lame, those being left behind. Or striking under the cover of night, or using the weather as I did the first time. They must be vaguely aware of me – some of them have seen me – but their memories are short, their capacity for problem solving minimal. They soon forget me, and what has become of their missing companions. They continue plodding along in stoic, blissful ignorance. I am very aware of the irony of this. It was when the whites first came that the caribou started dying out. Now the whites have become my caribou. They are far less noble, and far more stupid, but just as nourishing.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dead North by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Copyright © 2013 Exile Editions. Excerpted by permission of Exile Editions Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
INTRODUCTION by Silvia Moreno-Garcia,The Herd by Tyler Keevil,
The Sea Half-Held by Night by E. Catherine Tobler,
Kissing Carrion by Gemma Files,
And All the Fathomless Crowds by Ada Hoffmann,
Waiting for Jenny Rex by Melissa Yuan-Ines,
Stemming the Tide by Simon Strantzas,
Kezzie of Babylon by Jamie Mason,
Those Beneath the Bog by Jacques L. Condor ~ Maka Tai Meh,
On the Wings of this Prayer by Richard Van Camp,
Ground Zero: Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue by Claude Lalumière,
The Food Truck of the Zombie Apocalypse by Beth Wodzinski,
Dead Drift by Chantal Boudreau,
Hungry Ghosts by Michael Matheson,
The Adventures of Dorea Tress by Rhea Rose,
The Last Katajjaq by Carrie-Lea Côté,
Mother Down the Well by Ursula Pflug,
Rat Patrol by Kevin Cockle,
The Dead of Winter by Brian Dolton,
Escape by Tessa J. Brown,
Half Ghost by Linda DeMeulemeester,
AUTHORBIOGRAPHIES,