The Living Dead

'It's going to be a great picture, Mr. Romero,' Bobby said. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, making small talk, waiting for Savini to finish wiring Harriet with her squib—a condom partially filled with cane syrup and food coloring that would explode to look like a bullet hit. Bobby was already wired . . . in more than one sense of the word. 'Someday everyone in Pittsburgh is going to claim they walked dead in this movie.'

'You kiss ass like a pro,' Romero said. 'Do you have a show-biz background?'

'Six years off-Broadway,' Bobby said. 'Plus I played most of the comedy clubs.'

'Ah, but now you're back in greater Pittsburgh. Good career move, kid. Stick around here, you'll be a star in no time.'

Harriet skipped over to Bobby, her hair flouncing. 'I'm going to get my tit blown off!'

'Magnificent,' Bobby said. 'People just have to keep on going, because you never know when something wonderful is going to happen.'

George Romero led them to their marks, and walked them through what he wanted from them. Lights pointed into silver spangly umbrellas, casting an even white glow, and a dry heat, over a ten-foot stretch of floor. A lumpy striped mattress rested on the tiles, just to one side of a square pillar.

Harriet would get hit first, in the chest. She was supposed to jerk back, then keep coming forward, showing as little reaction to the shot as she could muster. Bobby would take the next bullet in the head and it would bring him down. The squib was hidden under one Latex fold of his scalp wound. The wires that would cause the Trojan to explode were threaded through his hair.

'You can slump first, and slide down and to the side,' George Romero said. 'Drop to one knee if you want, and then spill yourself out of the frame. If you're feeling a bit more acrobatic you can fall straight back, just be sure you hit the mattress. No one needs to get hurt.'

It was just Bobby and Harriet in the shot, which would picture them from the waist up. The other extras lined the walls of the shopping mall corridor, watching them. Their stares, their steady murmuring, induced in Bobby a pleasurable burst of adrenaline. Tom Savini knelt on the floor, just outside the framed shot, with a hand-held metal box in hand, wires snaking across the floor toward Bobby and Harriet. Little Bob sat next to him, his hands cupped under his chin, squeezing the spleen, his eyes shiny with anticipation. Savini had told little Bob all about what was going to happen, preparing the kid for the sight of blood bursting from his mother's chest, but little Bob wasn't worried. 'I've been seeing gross stuff all day. It isn't scary. I like it.' Savini was letting him keep the spleen as a souvenir.

'Roll,' Romero said. Bobby twitched—what, they were rolling? Already? He only just gave them their marks! Christ, Romero was still standing in front of the camera!—and for an instant Bobby grabbed Harriet's hand. She squeezed his fingers, let go. Romero eased himself out of the shot. 'Action.'

Bobby rolled his eyes back in his head, rolled them back so far he couldn't see where he was going. He let his face hang slack. He took a plodding step forward.

'Shoot the girl,' Romero said.

Bobby didn't see her squib go off, because he was a step ahead of her. But he heard it, a loud, ringing crack that echoed; and he smelled it, a sudden pungent whiff of gunpowder. Harriet grunted softly.

'Annnd,' Romero said. 'Now the other one.'

It was like a gunshot going off next to his head. The bang of the blasting cap was so loud, it immediately deafened his eardrums. He snapped backward, spinning on his heel. His shoulder slammed into something just behind him, he didn't see what. He caught a blurred glimpse of the square pillar next to the mattress, and in that instant was seized with a jolt of inspiration. He smashed his forehead into it on his way down, and as he reeled away, saw he had left a crimson flower on the white plaster.

He hit the mattress, the cushion springy enough to provide a little bounce. He blinked. His eyes were watering, creating a visual distortion, a subtle warping of things. The air above him was filled with blue smoke. The center of his head stung. His face was splattered with cool, sticky fluid. As the ringing in his ears faded, he simultaneously became aware of two things. The first was the sound, a low, subterranean bellow, a distant, steady rumble of applause. The sound filled him like breath. George Romero was moving toward them, also clapping, smiling in that way that made dimples in his beard. The second thing he noticed was Harriet curled against him, her hand on his chest.

'Did I knock you down?' he asked.

''Fraid so,' she said.

'I knew it was only a matter of time before I got you in bed with me,' he said.

Harried smiled, an easy contented smile like he hadn't seen at any other time, the whole day. Her blood- drenched bosom rose and fell against his side.

Little Bob ran to the edge of the mattress and leaped onto it with them. Harriet got an arm underneath him, scooped him up, and rolled him into the narrow space between her and Bobby. Little Bob grinned and put his thumb in his mouth. His face was close to the boy's head, and suddenly he was aware of the smell of little Bob's shampoo, a melon-flavored scent.

Harriet watched him steadily across her son, still with that same smile on her face. His gaze drifted toward the ceiling, the banks of skylights, the crisp, blue sky beyond. Nothing in him wanted to get up, wanted to move past the next few moments. He wondered what Harriet did with herself when Dean was at work and little Bobby was at school. Tomorrow was a Monday; he didn't know if he would be teaching or free. He hoped free. The work week stretched ahead of him, empty of responsibilities or concerns, limitless in its possibilities. The three of them, Bobby, and the boy, and Harriet, lay on the mattress, their bodies pressed close together and there was no movement but for their breathing.

George Romero turned back to them, shaking his head. 'That was great, when you hit the pillar, and you left that big streak of gore. We should do it again, just the same way. This time you could leave some brains behind. What do you two kids say? Either one of you feel like a do-over?'

'Me,' Bobby said.

'Me,' said Harriet. 'Me.'

'Yes please,' said little Bobby, around the thumb in his mouth.

'I guess it's unanimous,' Bobby said. 'Everyone wants a do-over.'

Those Who Seek

Forgiveness

by Laurell K. HamiltonLaurell K. Hamilton is the best-selling author of the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, which began with Guilty Pleasures and was continued most recently with Blood Noir. Another popular series of Hamilton's is the Meredith Gentry series, which began with A Kiss of Shadows and will continue with Swallowing Darkness later this year. Hamilton has written a number of other novels as well, such as her first, Nightseer, an epic fantasy, as well as the media tie-in novels Ravenloft: Death of a Darklord and Star Trek: The Next Generation: Nightshade. Her short work has appeared in magazines such as Dragon and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, and in the Sword and Sorceress series of anthologies.

'Those Who Seek Forgiveness' is the first story Hamilton wrote about her iconic character Anita Blake. In her collection, Strange Candy, Hamilton says that the cemetery in this story is based on the cemetery where her mother is buried. 'It was a place I knew very well, because my grandmother, who raised me, took me often,' she says. 'I guess it was inevitable that I would write about the dead; my childhood was haunted by death. Not real ghosts, but the ghosts of memory and loss.'

'Death is a very serious matter, Mrs. Fiske. People who go through it are never the same.'