other. Each existed in their own world, a solitary realm of famine and horror, of fatality and need. Behind them, a dark mass of putrefied humanity undulated like a heavy velvet curtain.
The newly awakened thing on the ground rolled over and onto its stomach. It felt acidic bile rise in its throat. The taste was sharp and sour on its tongue. Drool slithered from between its lips in glistening strands and pooled in the dirt. The creature pushed against the soil; urine and feces soaked mud pulsed up from between its fingers. Muscles groaned out painfully and fought back as weight was put upon them. Tendons cried out like abandoned children. Cartilage grated as bone slid against bone. Pain unspooled throughout every fiber of the thing’s tortured being as if it were a murderous snake.
As the corpse finally got to its feet, it teetered like a toddler taking its first steps. Its center of balance shifted and settled only to shift once more. The ground itself seemed to heave and gimbal just to spite it. The shifting perception did its best to thwart any feeble attempts at locomotion. It lifted a leg arthritically and did its best to walk. Almost as soon as the foot left the ground, gravity pulled mightily against the thing’s bulk and nearly toppled its delicate balance. After a bit of trial and error, the thing discovered that short, shuffling steps were all it could manage.
For now.
The dead man raised his head and tried to vocalize its frustration. For reasons it couldn’t understand, a distant memory of speech seemed like a natural thing for it to try and do. Only a hoarse, croaking sound tumbled from its lips. The tone was brittle and laced in a vivid torment. Memories flitted across its fractured perception, but the images were hazy and scattered; random sensations culled from a life long gone and now half forgotten. The recollections brought nothing but more confusion and consternation. Nothing, it seemed, could calm the soul- crushing bewilderment of being unexpectedly brought back to consciousness. Any attempt at understanding was met with a slicing blade-on-bone distress.
The thing slowly ran its mud covered hands over its trunk. Its fingers traced their way up its once muscular chest as if in search of something; something of great importance. It was a sensation experienced through a numbed and inadequate anatomy. Deadened fingertips moved in spasmodic motions and stuttered their way up to the cords of the thing’s neck. There, bestial bites dug savagely into the flesh of his throat. Long, raking furrows tore deep and were then pulled backward across the shoulder and down the back. As the dead man raised his hand to his face, deep crimson painted his palm and digits.
A deep and unabiding hunger once again twisted tightly in his stomach, calling him to a dark and single- minded purpose. The thing shut its eyes and tried to comprehend what it was that it was feeling. This onslaught of sensation was insistent and refused to be denied, much less ignored. Only one thought stood paramount: hunger. The need spoke to him as a conspirator might and told him how complicity could make all of this pain and confusion go away. It spoke of its plan and a way to get back a share of the peace that had been denied by death. It whispered of a possible respite from this world of torment.
The creature continued to hold its hands in front of its face. Beyond its gnarled fingers, reanimated bodies swayed and stumbled about in a dance of the living dead. The beast looked down in disgust and his dull, listless eyes caught a glimpse of his reflection in a puddle of urine on the ground. It was an utterly altered and decimated countenance that stared back from the depths of the dark pool. The skin of his face draped from his bones like a flag on a windless day. The flesh was drawn and tired looking; its skin leeched of its hue and the complexion as bloodless as a lizard’s underbelly.
Realization of what it now was, what it had become, carved its way roughly through the haze, through the hunger, and through the pain. The epiphany pummeled its rudimentary sense of reason with a truth that was undeniable. A minute sense of what it had once been took hold and its impaired brain aggressively chewed over this new reality. A long feared consequence of its Past had become its horrifying Present. The once unthinkable had indeed come to pass.
Feeling an overwhelming sense of shame, the thing that had once been a man ran its hands over his face, coating the sallow flesh with mud and gore. Moaning plaintively, it raked its fingers through its sweat-soaked, salt- and-pepper hair. Slowly, it raised its face toward the light and cried out in an inconsolable wail of mourning.
Connubiality
Cleese stood alone on the roof of The Chest and somberly looked out over the darkness blanketing the compound. The night had grown cold around him but it retained its calm and quiet ambience. The stars spread out across the night sky like a comforting quilt. Sporadic clouds hung like cotton balls against the clear, dark sky. He took in a deep lungful of air and breathed it out in plumes of cottony vapor. With each breath he infused his lungs with frigid air; the brittle oxygen helped clear his head and allowed him to think.
He lifted the fragrant Macanudo, which barely smoldered in his fist, to his lips and rolled the soft tobacco around on the tip of his tongue. He pulled a matchstick from his front left pants pocket and struck it sharply against the stucco of the retaining wall. The match flared with a soft and somehow reassuring hissing sound. He brought the fire to the end of the cigar in order to relight it and its brilliance dimmed as he drew the hearty smoke through its bitten-off end.
'This is for you, Monk,' he said under his breath so that only the stars could hear him, 'wherever you are, you grumpy old bastard.'
He took another long pull on it, rolling the smoke across his palette where it felt silky and warm on his tongue.
'I was hoping I’d find you here,' a familiar voice came drifting in from across the vast emptiness of the roof.
Cleese looked across the flatness of the roof, over the ventilation ducts and idle air conditioning unit. At the place where he’d left the ladder propped, he saw a large shadow of a man coming over the retaining wall like a hippo over a yard fence.
Weaver.
'Cleese…' greeted the baritone voice once he’d gotten closer. 'Jesus… that ladder gets higher and harder to get up every goddamn day.'
'Is it that it gets higher or you’re getting older?'
'A little bit of both, Son…' Weaver said chuckling. 'A little bit of both.'
'I didn’t know whether you’d make it tonight. I mean, I figured seeing as it is Friday after all. I was just coming up here to burn a Mac in Monk’s honor.'
'Hell, Son, I was coming along to do that very same thing.' He pulled a cigar of his own out of his breast pocket with a sly grin and a flourish.
Cleese handed over another stick match from his pocket and returned the smile. Weaver took it from him with a nod of gratitude and raked it against the stucco. Soon, his cigar was burning as brightly as Cleese’s.
'I was beginning to worry that this tradition of ours was going to fall by the wayside now that Monk’s moved on,' Weaver said as he sat his big ass against the short wall. He adjusted himself and then spit a bit of tobacco over the side of the building. 'He and I spent far too many nights up here and I was a little sad when I thought we might not get to do it again.'
Cleese nodded and said, 'Tell you what, Old Man… I’ll take his place up here with you for as long as I’m around if it would make you feel any better.'
'It would indeed. It would indeed. And I’d be damn glad to have ya, Son.'
Cleese looked over at Weaver and grinned.
'I didn’t know if you’d be here or not, but just in case you were, I brought you something,' Cleese said as he reached into the shadows at his feet. He pulled a slender bottle into the moonlight, hefted it in his hand once, and then handed it over.
'Saaaay, now we’re talking!' Weaver exclaimed, turning the bottle over in the half light so that he could read
