a chance to save my child, who would most assuredly die without my delivery of the packets taped to my body. It cried out for a second chance to be human.
But the rest of me that had already died ignored my entreaty and cared only for its unholy appetite. No longer was my fuel the need to save my son. No longer was I to be Aldo Ray, the hero of the movies. Now I was a monster—hungry beyond hunger, and eager to sink my teeth into this woman with whom I had shared a conversation before all this had all started.
“Do you really think we can make it?” she had asked.
“Piece of cake,” I had said. “Being dead is the easiest thing. It’s being alive that’s hard.”
We had laughed at the joke, then covered ourselves in pig’s blood and waited for the herd to cross over us. At the time it all seemed like no big deal.
I pushed through the last few of my fellow muertos and staggered up beside her. She turned her head minutely, recognizing me out of the corner of her eye. But I was not what she expected. Her gaze widened as she realized what I had become. I could see the terror in her understanding that she would never make it back to her family.
She tried to back away as I leaned towards her. The hunger was overpowering. I was close enough to take away her face, but instead I lightly kissed her cheek.
That surprised us both, and soon she was swept away in the press of bodies. For a brief moment humanity sparked again inside me. The last thing I remembered about myself was who I was—my name, and who my mother had wanted me to be.
Aldo Ray.
And then the hunger took me over until I exploded in a shower of light and heat. And as I rained down over the desert, I finally knew where the Black Sand came from. I knew from what it was born. It was from a hunger far older and far deeper than any of us. And it was growing. And it would soon take over us all. And I became one with the land, and was greeted by fellow muertos as they too rained down and joined me in the arroyo—a monsoon of the dead, and us flowing nowhere, forever.
***
Story Notes: When Steve Jones asked me to submit to his upcoming zombie anthology I was psyched. Although Steve and I had a legendary tussle over grooming standards, Elvis clothes, and cross-dressing, which came to the forefront at the Bram Stoker Ceremony in Toronto in 2007, I’d never worked with him. For that matter, I hadn’t written a zombie story either. Thus was born this story. Living on the Border, I have a definite perspective about the wall and the events as they transpire down here. Taking a serious issue and bending it with genre was difficult, but by using the synecdoche of Aldo Ray, I think I pulled it off. This was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award.
NOW SHOWING ON SCREEN 13
The Smell of Leaves
Burning in Winter
Starring a pile of leaves, a man with a rake, and
the smell of burning flesh
“With all the beer bongs, the parades, the flashing tits and the free beads, it’s easy to forget what Mardi Gras is all about. I didn’t even know what Shrive Tuesday was until this. Now I’ll pay attention.”
–Chuck Taylor, High Times Magazine
Filmed on Location
I saw him hassling the other customers of the coffee shop before he ever came to me. Like an Egyptian beggar, he leaned in with supplicated hands, his clothes frayed, skin coated with a mosaic of dust and grime. Try as he may, he wasn’t able to persuade the patrons to pause drinking their coffee, or turn away from staring at the gathering throngs of people outside the large window. The man was background for the larger show, nothing more.
My head was throbbing from yesterday’s Lundi Gras celebration. Along with thousands of others, I had danced and cheered as Zulu and Rex arrived marking the official start of the Lenten Carnivale. Like a middle-aged Rave, we gyrated and consumed as if the spirit of Pan himself was within us. It had been too easy to lose myself in the large crowd. Too easy to forget my own demons and become an appendage of a greater namelessness.
But now, I was paying the price. Lightning cascaded and thunder shook my bones as my hangover