21st Century Dead Read online

  Fleur didn’t move. All at once she felt uncertain, a little overwhelmed by the situation. Unable to tear her eyes from the motionless figure, she was only half aware of her mum stepping across to the grille and thumbing the button.

  “Andy.” Jacqui’s amplified voice made Fleur jump. “There’s someone here to see you.”

  To Fleur’s consternation, the figure on the bed stirred. Her father’s leg twitched slightly; his fingers moved like worms probing blindly for the light. He looked like Frankenstein’s monster coming alive in some of the old movies she’d seen.

  “Say hello to your dad, Fleur,” Jacqui said softly. “Don’t be shy.”

  Fleur licked her lips. She put down Andrew’s crib and moved across to stand beside her mum. She felt as if she were floating, drifting. Jacqui, her thumb still on the Talk button, smiled encouragingly.

  Fleur bent her head toward the grille. Her mouth was dry. She licked her lips again. Finally, she croaked, “Hello, Dad. It’s me. It’s Fleur.”

  Slowly, like an old man waking from a deep sleep, her father rose from the bed. First of all he sat up, and then he turned, his legs swinging clumsily over the side of the mattress, his feet brushing the floor.

  Fleur stepped back, unable to stifle a small, involuntary bleat of distress. Viewing her dad full-on for the first time, she saw that his face was slack, expressionless, his mouth hanging open, his eyes blank and staring. There seemed to be nothing at all of the father she remembered in there. No life, no personality. He seemed nothing but a walking lump of dead flesh, a receptacle for the virus that animated him. He dropped his weight forward onto his feet, swayed for a moment, and then clumped heavily toward them.

  Fleur took another step back and then felt a hand—her mum’s—in the small of her back.

  “It’s all right,” Jacqui said soothingly. “Don’t be scared.”

  Fleur braced herself, then stepped forward. Her dad shuffled right up to the Perspex wall, so close that if he had been breathing, a mist of condensation would have formed on its transparent surface.

  “Talk to him,” Jacqui whispered. “Go on.”

  Fleur didn’t know what to say. Then, hesitantly, she muttered, “I know you didn’t want me to come here, Dad, but it isn’t Mum’s fault, so don’t blame her. I kind of found out about you by accident, and I made her bring me. I’m thirteen now and … and I’ve missed you, Dad. I’ve missed you a lot.” Suddenly she felt emotion welling inside her and did her best to swallow it down. After a few seconds she continued. “I know you’re sick, but it isn’t your fault, and you shouldn’t be ashamed. The people here are trying to make you better. They say you’re doing really well.”

  She wasn’t sure her words were getting through. Certainly there was no change of expression on her dad’s face. But suddenly his eyes flickered and slid to the left, making Jacqui gasp.

  “He’s looking at the baby,” she hissed. “Show it to him.”

  Fleur turned, to find that Dr. Beesley had already picked up the crib and was handing it to her. She took it from him and turned with it in her arms, presenting it to her dad like an offering.

  “He’s not mine,” she said. “I’m looking after him for a week, as part of a school project. He’s sick like you, Dad, but everyone’s working really hard to come up with a cure to make you both better.”

  Her dad continued to stare at the baby. He seemed mesmerized by it. Then, slowly, his gaze shifted. His pale, bloodshot eyes rolled up and all at once he was staring at Fleur. Staring right at her.

  Behind her, Fleur heard Jacqui whisper, “I don’t believe it. He’s looking at you. Oh, Fleur, he knows who you are.”

  Fleur continued to stare into her father’s eyes, their faces—separated by the Perspex wall—less than a meter apart. She smiled. “Hello, Dad,” she said softly. “Remember me?”

  Moving as if in slow motion, Andy raised his right hand and pressed it, palm forward, against the transparent wall. Lowering the crib to the ground, Fleur echoed his action, raising her left hand and placing it against his, so that they were separated by nothing more than the thickness of the barrier between them.

  Suddenly Jacqui let out a gasp, and Dr. Beesley, his voice hushed with wonder, said, “Oh my God. Would you look at that.”

  Fleur was looking at it. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from it, in fact. As the single tear brimmed from her father’s eye and trickled slowly down his mottled cheek, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  WHY MOTHERS LET THEIR BABIES WATCH TELEVISION

  A JUST-SO HORROR STORY

  Chelsea Cain

  THIS, O MY BEST BELOVED, is a story—a new story, a terrible, terrible story, of a mother’s love for her baby.

  This baby was cruel, O my Best Beloved, always hungry, always crying. Back when the world was wild, in 2001, in a house in Spokane, Washington, the mother, kind, tired mother, wanted some peace and quiet.

  “Please go to sleep, baby,” the mother said.

  “I will not!” shouted the baby—always hungry, always pooping—and then the baby began to scream. The scream was so loud that it frightened the salmon, who all swam back to the ocean, and startled the eagles, who fell from the sky. So the mother—always giving, always changing diapers—shook the baby, she shook and shook her until the baby’s head was loose—her bad baby—always hungry, always yelling.

  And after ever so many shakes, the baby was dead.

  Off ran Mother, kind, frantic mother—always giving, always making dinner—she buried the baby in the backyard under the apple tree.

  She had to!

  Then the mother slept. She was so tired she slept for three days and three nights. And the salmon returned and the eagles flew in the sky.

  But after three days and nights, that baby—that bad baby, always hungry, always spitting up—was hungrier still.

  Up jumped Baby from her shallow grave, her skin pearly and bruised, sloughing off, revealing rotting muscle meat underneath, maggots and beetles in her eyes. Fast ran Baby—still hungry, still crying—into the house, flies following her. She ran to her mother’s room.

  “Feed me!” the baby howled.

  The baby was already gnawing at the cat, holding it by the neck, its throat torn open, blood and cat hair around the baby’s mouth.

  O my Best Beloved, imagine the mother’s surprise.

  Up jumped Mother—always anxious, always vacuuming—from the bed. She caught the baby and wrapped her in a garbage bag and tied the garbage bag with rope and then she drove down the cul-de-sac, down the highway, past the big-box stores, to the bridge, and she tossed that bad baby overboard into the river.

  She had to!

  Off drove Mother—kind, loving mother—over the bridge, past the big-box stores, down the highway, up the cul-de-sac, all the way home, where she took a Valium and turned on daytime television until her head stopped pounding.

  Then she rested.

  Law & Order was on.

  She watched ever so many episodes.

  Night came.

  Up jumped Baby—hungrier still, always with a diaper rash, never satisfied, never happy—from her watery grave. Her flesh half eaten by fish, eels in her eyes, she ran up the riverbank, over the bridge, past the big-box stores, down the highway, up the cul-de-sac, flies following her.

  “Feed me!” she yelled. She had no manners then, and she has no manners now, and she never will have any manners.

  Up jumped Mother, halfway to the kitchen, halfway to the butcher knife, but then she paused.

  Something was different.

  Baby was quiet. Baby—hungry baby, always kicking, always clawing—was still. Baby was watching the television set. Baby was good.

  Mother—always singing, always reading Goodnight Moon, never complaining—patted Baby’s slimy fontanelle.

  The house was quiet.

  And that, O my Best Beloved, is why mothers let their babies watch television to this day.

  CAROUSEL

  Orson S
cott Card

  CYRIL’S RELATIONSHIP with his wife really went downhill after she died. Though, if he was honest with himself—something he generally tried, with some success, to avoid—things hadn’t been going all that well while Alice was alive. Everything he did seemed to irritate her, and when he didn’t do anything at all, that irritated her, too.

  “It’s not your fault,” Alice explained to him. “You try, I can see that you try, but you just … you’re just wrong about everything. Not very wrong. Not oblivious or negligent or unconcerned. Just a little bit mistaken.”

  “About what? Tell me and I’ll get better.”

  “About what people want, who they are, what they need.”

  “What do you need?” Cyril asked.

  “I need you to stop asking what I need,” she said. “I need you to know. The children need you to know. You never know.”

  “Because you won’t tell me.”

  “See?” she said. “You have to make it my fault. Why should people always have to tell you, Cyril? It’s like you go through life in a well-meaning fog. You can’t help it. Nobody blames you.”

  But she blamed him. He knew that. He tried to get better, to notice more. To remember. But there was that note of impatience—in her voice, the children’s voices, his boss’s voice. As if they were thinking, I’m having to explain this to you?

  Then Alice was hit by a car driven by a resurrected Han Dynasty Chinese man who had no business behind the wheel—he plowed into a crowd on a bustling sidewalk and then got out and walked away as nonchalantly as if he had successfully parallel parked a large car in a small space. It was the most annoying thing about the dead—how they thought killing total strangers was no big deal, as long as they didn’t mean to do it. And since the crowd had only two living people in it, the number of deaths was actually quite low. Alice’s death barely rose to the level of a statistic, in the greater scheme of things.

  She was thoughtful enough to clean up and change clothes before she came home that night—resurrection restored every body part to where it should be at the peak of mature health, but it did nothing for the wardrobe. Still, the change in her attitude was immediate. She didn’t even try to start dinner.

  “What’s for dinner, Mom?” asked Delia.

  “Whatever your father fixes,” said Alice.

  “Am I fixing dinner?” asked Cyril. He liked to cook, but it usually took some planning and he wasn’t sure what Alice would let him use to put together a meal.

  “Go out to eat, have cold cereal, I really don’t care,” said Alice.

  This was not like her. Alice controlled everybody’s diet scrupulously, which was why she almost never allowed Cyril to cook. He realized at once what it meant, and the kids weren’t far behind.

  “Oh, Mom,” said Roland softly. “You’re not dead, are you?”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “But don’t worry, it only hurt for about a minute while I bled out.”

  “Did the resurrection feel good?” asked Delia, always curious.

  “The angel was right there, breathed in my mouth—very sweet. A bit of a tingle everywhere. But really not such a great feeling that it’s worth dying for, so you shouldn’t be in a hurry to join me, dear.”

  “So you won’t be eating with us,” said Cyril.

  She shook her head a little, eyes closed. “‘Dead’ means I don’t eat, Cyril. Everyone knows that the dead don’t eat. We don’t breathe except so we can talk. We don’t drink, and if we do, it’s just to keep company with the living, and the liquids all evaporate from our skins so we also don’t pee. We also don’t want sex anymore, Cyril. Not with each other and not with you.”

  She had never mentioned sex in front of the children before, except for the talk with Delia when she turned ten, and that was all about time-of-the-month things. If Delia had any idea what sex was, Cyril didn’t think she got it from her mother. So the children blanched and recoiled when she mentioned it.

  “Oh, don’t be such big babies, you know your father and I had sex or you wouldn’t look so much like him. Which is fine for you, Roland, your father’s a good-looking man, in his way. But a bit of a drag for you, Delia, with that jaw. And the resurrection won’t fix that. Resurrection isn’t cosmetic surgery. Which is really unfair, when you think about it. People who are genetically retarded or crippled or sick have their DNA repaired to some optimum state, but girls with overly mannish features or tiny breasts, or huge ones, for that matter, their DNA is left completely alone, they’re stuck like that for eternity.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” said Delia. “I love having my confidence destroyed once again, and I haven’t even begun doing my homework yet.”

  “So you aren’t going to eat with us?” asked Roland.

  “Oh, of course I’ll sit at the table with you,” said Alice. “For the company.”

  In the event, Cyril got out everything in the fridge that looked like it might go on a sandwich and everybody made their own. Except Alice, of course. She just sat at the table and made comments, without even a pause to take a bite or chew.

  “The way I see it,” said Alice, “is that it’s all poop. Nothing you’re putting on sandwiches even looks appetizing anymore, because I see that poopiness of it all. You’re going to eat it and digest it and poop it out. The nutrients will decay and eventually end up in some farmer’s field where it will become more future poop, which he’ll harvest and it’ll get processed into a more poopable state, so you can heat it or freeze it or thaw it or whatever, chew it up or drink it, and then turn it into poop again. Life is poop.”

  “Mom,” said Delia. “It’s usually Roland who makes us sick while we’re eating.”

  “I thought you’d want to hear my new perspective as a postliving person.” She sounded miffed.

  “Please speak more respectfully to your mother,” said Cyril to Delia.

  “Cyril, really,” said Alice. “I don’t need you to protect me from Delia’s snippy comments. It’s not going to kill me to hear her judgmentalness directed at the woman who gave birth to her.”

  “Feel free to criticize your mother’s defecatory comments,” said Cyril. “Or ignore them, as you choose.”

  “I know, Dad,” said Delia. There was that familiar hint of eye rolling in her tone of voice. Once again, Cyril must have guessed wrong about what to say, or to leave unsaid. He had never really gotten it right when Alice was alive, and now that she was dead and resurrected, he’d have no chance, because he was no longer dealing with a wife, or even, strictly speaking, a woman. She was a visitor with a key to the house.

  Within a few weeks, Cyril had found himself remembering the awful night of Alice’s death as a particularly lovely time, because she actually sat with them during dinner and wasn’t trying to lead the children off into some kind of utterly bizarre activity.

  She showed up at any hour of the day and expected to be able to take Delia or Roland with her on whatever adventure she’d gotten into her head to try with them.

  “No, Alice, you may not take Roland out of school so he can go scuba diving with you.”

  “It’s really not your place to say what I can or cannot do,” said Alice.

  “The law is clear, Alice—when you die you become, in a word, deceased. You no longer have any custody over the children. Thousands of years of legal precedent make that clear. Not to mention tons of recent case law in which the resurrected are found to be unfit parents in every case.”

  “Aren’t you lucky that the dead can’t get angry,” said Alice.

  “I suppose that I am,” said Cyril. “But I’m not dead, and I was furious when I found you practically forcing Roland to walk along the top of a very high fence.”

  “It’s exhilarating,” said Alice.

  “He was terrified.”

  “Oh, Cyril, are you really going to let a child’s fears—”

  “He was right to be terrified. He could have broken his neck.”

  “And would it have been such a tragedy if he did?” aske
d Alice. “I was run over by a car and I turned out okay.”

  “You think you’re okay?” asked Cyril.

  Alice held up her hands and twisted her wrists as if to prove that her parts worked.

  “Here’s how I know you’re not okay, Alice,” said Cyril. “You keep trying to put the kids in high-risk situations. You’re trying to kill them, Alice.”

  “Don’t think of it as death. I’m not dead. How is it death?”

  “How can I put this kindly?” said Cyril—who by this point had actually stopped trying to be kind. “You’re dead to me.”

  “Just because I’m no longer available for empty reproductive gestures does not mean I’m not here for you, Cyril.”

  “I’m going to get a restraining order if you don’t stop taking the kids on dangerous activities. You don’t have any guardianship rights over these children.”

  “My fingerprints say I’m still their mother!”

  “Alice, when you were their mother, you wanted them to relish every stage of their life. Now you’re trying to get them to skip all the rest of the stages.”

  “You can’t manipulate me with guilt,” said Alice. “I’m beyond human emotions and needs.”

  “Then why do you still need the children with you?”

  “I’m their mother.”

  “You were their mother,” said Cyril.

  “I was and I am,” said Alice.

  “Alice, I may have been a disappointment as a husband.”

  “And as a father, Cyril. The children are often disappointed in you.”

  “But I meet a basic minimum, Alice. I’m alive. I’m human. Of their species. I want them to be alive. I’d like them to live to adulthood, to marry, to have children.”

  Alice shook her head incredulously. “Go outside and look at the street, Cyril. Hundreds of people lie down and sleep in the streets or on the lawns every night, because the world has no shortage of people.”

  “Just because you’ve lost all your biological imperatives doesn’t mean that the rest of us don’t have them.”