Whispers in the Night Read online

  The darkness of the being swirled and receded as it changed into another form. The previously indistinguishable shape formed a long black coat, matching untucked shirt, spit-shined shoes, and coal-colored hair slicked back. Its skin was bronze, its nose hawk-like. It could’ve been Michael’s twin, with one exception. It had no eyes.

  “I have to say, it was a master stroke getting the mother to send the prophet that signed Bible. Good work. Tell Him I said so.”

  “He already knows. I will not be delivering messages from you, Lu.”

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t. I will say, I was surprised to see you working behind the scenes here. I’d have thought this type of mission beneath you.”

  “I could say the same.” Michael glared at his fallen brother, the Morning Star. He never stopped feeling sorrow for the vile creature.

  “It’s always good to get out and do a little of the old ‘go ahead, take a bite.’ Besides, it gives the minions a break. They get disgruntled, too.”

  Michael’s eyebrows arched. “Like you once did?”

  Lucifer did not answer, and said instead: “I still won. I’d say the outcome here was better than my original plan.”

  “Of course you would. You’re shortsighted.”

  “This church is destroyed. Without a leader the people will scatter, fall back into their old ways. My ways.”

  Michael shook his head, and actually chuckled. “Some will, yes. The rest will be strengthened by the pain and loss. They will learn that their faith was misplaced. They shouldn’t believe in another man, they should believe in the teachings of Him. As for Sinclair, he was misled, he’s human. But his faith is genuine. His students will return, in even greater numbers. And he’ll be a better teacher for this. You’ll see.”

  Lucifer nodded and patted Michael on the back with a hot hand. “You have it all figured out, don’t you? There’s one problem, though. . . .”

  “And that is?”

  He smiled, and a noticeable hiss escaped his throat. “Sinclair was only a secondary target.” His gazed shifted to the courtyard. “I want the prophet.”

  With that, Lucifer disappeared in an explosion of flame.

  Taken aback, a rare thing for him, Michael cast a furtive glance to the tearful woman blessed with The Sight, then unfolded his wings and shot toward the heavens to report the news, praying to the Almighty that it was not too late to protect her.

  The Love of a Zombie Is Everlasting

  Tish Jackson

  Okay, so I’m a zombie. Does that make me a bad person? Don’t answer that, reading public. The answer is no, it doesn’t. I’m just a black woman looking for male companionship like anyone else. I just happen to prefer human flesh to animal flesh. It could be argued that we’re all animals, but I have to tell you that there’s a special flavor to Bob’s Burgers that McDonald’s simply doesn’t have. Unfortunately, my palate preferences fill a lot of people with revulsion, some with outright hatred. As if vegans are any different with their radical diets! I’m still a person on the inside, for Pete’s sake! That is, before I ate him.

  My name is Talyna Wright and I wasn’t born this way; the world wasn’t born this way. Every couple of years, something new comes along on the disease front and changes the world as we know it. This new challenge polarized communities, pitted families against one another, and sent the government into a tizzy. Did I mention it was also man-made? About three years ago, in 2007, a biological agent trapped inside a rhesus monkey escaped from a weapons lab in China, attacking several people before being tranquilized and then euthanized. Those treated for bites and scratches soon returned to their doctors, complaining of serious digestive complications. The smallest fluid transfer spread the disease like wildfire through the hospitals, and sudden irritable digestion syndrome, or SIDS, soon swept the continent and spread like the Black Plague of the Dark Ages. It caused the digestive tract to reject all the usual forms of sustenance, from projectile vomiting to chronic diarrhea reminiscent of dysentery but worse. Within forty-eight hours a body that refused even intravenous fluids got too weak to support its own life systems.

  The infected usually passed away in the next forty-eight hours and SIDS had a hundred percent mortality rate. Once SIDS victims succumbed to the disease, everyone thought death was permanent, and they were interred as usual. Some were cremated and saved the horror of waking up six feet under.

  But two months after SIDS first appeared (actually, escaped would be a better word) the first victims began to appear around nearby graveyards. The original “revitalized” ones were thought to be homeless people with a bad case of rot and an insatiable appetite. However, when a delegate at the embassy recognized a French tourist, an inkling of the truth was leaked to the ever-accurate National Enquirer, assuring its absurdity. At first, authorities believed there had been a rash of misdiagnoses, and that these few lucky souls had escaped a fate worse than death. They would soon find out how untrue that was when the examining doctors were killed. So those first victims were unlucky enough to be the guinea pigs of the medical community, and were subjected to all kinds of experimentation and/or dissections; once dead they could not be killed again by conventional methods. Modern doctors refused to entertain the idea that zombies could really exist, until a former Department of Defense scientist came forward and announced that she’d been part of a secret trial that hastened the putrefaction process while creating unstoppable soldiers; their appetites were a troublesome by-product. Apparently, the Chinese were trying to beat the U.S. to the punch when the virus escaped from a secret lab in Beijing. Alas, before her story could be documented, the scientist was killed in a freak accident two days later; evidently a gun she didn’t own accidentally went off and shot her in the head. You know how it is when folks tell government secrets.

  Anyway, the U.N. doctors went to work off her statement and gave their guinea pigs a little putrid flesh, and the zombies liked it just fine. Their previously irritable digestive systems took the nourishment like ambrosia. The scientists also noticed that the buried victims tended to roam near their own grave sites. They seemed to be territorially connected to their original resting places. New victims of SIDS that hadn’t died were given bits of flesh and blood to ingest, and though they were able to digest it, it sped up the zombification process and forced them to die sooner. The bottom line—just like in all the movies, one bite condemned you to a radically altered lifestyle that included a lot of raw meat.

  Now, to be fair, not all the zombies were raving lunatics; some were lucid and simply trying to live their new lives without getting set afire on the way home from work. There was a movement going on to stop the extreme violence against the zombie population, since it was possible to bring people back with most of their faculties. If their rabid appetites were treated with processed meat, they were distinguishable from regular humans only by the faint smell of decomposing flesh. Plenty of people sympathized with the zombies’ cause (mostly relatives of the newly Revitalized, unwilling to let go of their loved one) and were petitioning the government to protect our new citizens. Before my transformation, I was an ardent supporter, signing a petition here or there from not liking to see people tortured and killed whether they were dead or alive, but I hadn’t started marching in the streets for the zombies just yet.

  Two months before my wedding date, a nonterritorial zombie attacked me in my home.

  At the time, I was engaged to a wonderful man, Ralan Johnson. A little under six feet, with solemn brown eyes and generous mouth, Ralan was the most beautiful black man I ever had the pleasure to fall in love with. He was honest and idealistic, gentle with my idiosyncrasies and as passionate about his politics as I was. We’d met at an Urban League meeting and the attraction was immediate. We were both Bay Area natives living in Vallejo with similar interests and compatible work schedules—it was destiny. After six months of serious dating and no infidelities (a feat in itself in this day and age) we moved in together and lived like that for four idyllic years
before we decided to seal the deal and get married. With AIDS and SIDS out there, we both felt safer ensconced in our little love nest off Lake Herman Road. It was isolated but we were farther away from the ruckus in town. With the zombie population holding demonstrations to fight for equal rights as former humans, walking down the street could become a life-changing ordeal. So we cooked or ordered in, and worked from home. I was an editorial columnist for DJ Dynasty, the largest black media publication on the West Coast, so I needed only my laptop to get paid. Ralan was a research assistant for Meatco, the leader in packaging recycled flesh for zombie consumption, a booming business. It may sound disgusting, but it cut down on zombie maulings considerably. Ralan worked via computer most days, analyzing the decomposition rates of new and used flesh. On the rare occasions he did have to go into the office, a car and bodyguard were sent to escort him to and fro. As Murphy’s Law would have it, though, I turned out to be the susceptible one and I never even left the house.

  A rogue zombie broke into our apartment one afternoon when Ralan was at work. An emaciated, half-eaten dead woman climbed into the bathroom window and jumped me as I was using the bathroom. Now, I’m not a small woman: at five six and a hundred seventy pounds, I will get down with an aggressor. But the circumstances were a little awkward, as I was using the bathroom at the time when she slammed through the door. I jumped up off the toilet and backed into the tub, looking for possible escape routes. I saw that she’d been buried, because her death raiment was still hanging off her body in tatters and her eyes were crazed and hungry. I was thinking about using the shower curtain to wrap her up in as I ran around her, but that only works in the movies. I attempted to pull the curtain off the rod, and of course it got stuck, and while I tried to recreate movie magic, the zombie caught me by my braids and bit a large chunk out of my neck. That little bit of sustenance occupied her enough for me to run past her then, but the damage had been done.

  The authorities came and took her away, and sent a doctor to patch me up. Ralan came home immediately after my frantic call, and the look on his face was tragic. His gaze was stuck to the bandage on my neck, and his inability to meet my eyes made my heart sink. What can you say when your lover has just received a death sentence? The doctor gave me an antibiotic that would give me an extra week before dying, the best modern science could do at the moment, and left us instructions on how to keep me as comfortable as possible during the transition. I have to give Ralan a little credit, he stayed with me as I regurgitated my very life onto the floor and held me even after I turned cold. However, he made it clear that once I died, our relationship would be over.

  “I’m going to miss you so much, Talyna,” he cried to me one evening as I crept closer to death.

  “I know, I know. But you can come see me any time you want. It doesn’t have to be over, Ralan.”

  The look on his face clearly showed how he felt about that statement. No matter what my arguments were or protestations of love, my fiancé could not see a future between us after my revitalization—the PC term. It was known by then that zombies could function in society if routed through the death process correctly, but were still considered beyond the normal range of emotions. Which I can personally tell you is not true! I was definitely feeling the pain of my lover’s loss before he was even gone as I entered the zombie state. Ralan’s family encouraged him to place me in the Revitalize Museum, a kind of apartment complex for zombies, two weeks before my scheduled demise to “help start the grieving process.” How rude is that? It was obvious to me that they were trying to set the scene for my eventual replacement and I wouldn’t be surprised if they already had someone in mind. I believed that as long as we were careful, Ralan and I could still be together; keep lots of Meatco packets around and stay away from the rogues equals smooth sailing. Okay, maybe I was a little forward in my thinking, but if my heartache then was any indication, my love for Ralan was more than strong enough to survive the grave.

  However, getting through to Ralan was one thing; convincing his parents was quite another. Near the end, I became so weak from the vomiting and diarrhea that I was immobile. As Ralan tended to me as best he could—while keeping all his appendages away from my mouth—his parents would argue their point over my inert body.

  “There is no way I’m letting my only son marry a zombie!” Pete Johnson, Ralan’s father, would say. “Can you imagine what people at the club would say?” Our happiness obviously came second to the opinion of his club cronies. Mrs. Johnson was more concerned with the possible aesthetics of future grandchildren. In her defense, the image of a half-rotten, flesh-eating infant attacking one’s tit with gusto was a little scary. But I still couldn’t stand her.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, Ralan and I could adopt children if the natural results worry you so much,” I said.

  All I got was a derisive snort in my direction, so I tried again.

  “We really believe this is not an insurmountable obstacle! As long as I die correctly, I’ll still be human and feel human, just in a different way. Why don’t you believe that?”

  Ralan’s mom said, “Ralan, tell her that zombies are not human, zombies are dead and this family does not practice necrophilia! We won’t have it.” She stopped talking to me after I got sick and would communicate with me only through a third person, as if she could catch my disease through conversation.

  “Ralan, please tell your mother that I’m not dead yet! She can speak to me directly!” I said. My anger gave me enough strength to sit up, only to see Ralan’s mother turn her back to me. Ralan’s father didn’t have any problems disparaging me face-to-face, which was about the only time he stood up to his wife in any regard. I tried to plead with him anyway to get his support.

  “Pete Johnson, this is racist rhetoric that you’re spouting and you should be ashamed of yourself. I am being discriminated against because of a disease! That I had no control over contracting! If it was my skin color or sexuality you objected to, you could be sued. I know you’re not that concerned with public opinion that you would begrudge your only son love and happiness.”

  His father looked me straight in the eye and said, “My dear, that’s exactly what I object to—because he is my only son and I do want him to be happy. From my point of view, your attempt to bind Ralan to you even after death is just selfish! How can you want to take away his chance for a normal life?” His eyes beseeched me to see his side, and I was momentarily floored. Was I being selfish by insisting we could work it out? I thought it was just everlasting love.

  “Ralan?” I lay back and looked at him, hoping for reassurance or at least acknowledgment that I wasn’t way off base. What I got was an agonized expression and lack of eye contact. Instead of a declaration of love or some willingness to at least try and work it out, I was begged for forgiveness and got a hand squeeze.

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry, please please forgive me, I want to, I really do, I want to be with you forever. God forgive me, but . . .” Yes. I got the “but.” The signal that all is not right with the world, the death knell of every relationship, the one-word way to say I don’t want you anymore. The fact that my almost husband had caved in to popular thought crashed my will and I had to squeeze my eyes shut so I didn’t have to look at his weak ass.

  The day I died, I wanted only Ralan to be present. Since he was siding with everyone else, I was still a little disgusted with him, but I couldn’t imagine not being with him. Of course, I banned his parents, who were only too glad to stay away those last couple of days. They did insist that their son wear surgical scrubs and a mask when he visited. To his credit, he took them off when he came inside. Since the day he’d finally told me we would not be together after I died, I refused to discuss my afterlife plans with him and tried to get used to the idea of being alone and craving human meat. The latter was easy to prepare for; I had a whole room of the apartment stocked with Meatco products that Ralan had gotten with his employee discount from work. I was dying in my own house, so I would be terri
torially tied to a safe place. Ralan had already moved his things back to his parents’ house and was amenable to letting me stay here—after all, as a regular human he could get any place he wanted.

  We didn’t talk much. I was almost too weak for conversation by that point. Ralan took advantage of that and rambled on about past memories and how he was going to miss me; it was obvious that he was only too glad not to be asked any hard questions. I wanted to call him a lying leading-me-on bastard, but tears pricked my eyes at the thought of never cussing him out again. The thoughts I’d had of the two of us making civil rights history, proving that zombies can be loving productive members of society and don’t have to eat their loved ones, were very hard to let go of. I wondered if I would have the strength to do those things without Ralan by my side, and I shuddered. Would I let the loss of love turn me into a monster?

  Ralan saw me shivering and responded by laying another blanket atop me. “You look cold, honey.”

  When I could feel the final veil starting to descend over my vision, I panicked a little and grabbed Ralan’s hand to get his attention. I gave him the prearranged signal and drew my finger across my throat to say it was coming, and Ralan started to sob. I sighed and asked, “Are you going to stay until it’s over?”

  “Yes, Talyna, I promise I’ll be here.”

  “Ralan, I don’t know how to live without you!”

  “Shh, you’ll be fine, I swear. You’re the strongest person I know.”

  “Can I come see you after? At least one time?” I could see his hesitation and wondered if he was thinking of me, his dying fiancée, or what his parents would say. “Just to say good-bye. I won’t hurt anyone, Ralan, you know that.”

  “I know you won’t. I’ll come by here, okay? Two weeks from today, I’ll come just to make sure you’re all right. Okay?”