I smeared the tombstone with it and called Carla over. “It’s your turn now, Carla.” She stubbed out her cigarette and came to stand before me. I smeared her face and hands and told her, “You stand just behind the tombstone throughout the raising.”
She took her place without a word while I placed ointment on myself. The pine scent of rosemary for memory, cinnamon and cloves for preservation, sage for wisdom, and lemon thyme to bind it all together seemed to soak through the skin itself.
I picked the largest chicken and tucked it under my arm. Carla stood where I had left her, staring down at the grave. There was an art to beheading a chicken with only two hands.
I stood at the foot of the grave to kill the chicken. Its first artery blood splashed onto the grave. It splattered over the fading chrysanthemums, roses, and carnations. A spire of white gladioli turned dark. I walked a circle sprinkling blood as I went, tracing a circle of steel with a bloody machete. Carla shut her eyes as the blood rained upon her.
I smeared blood on myself and placed the still-twitching body upon the flower mound. Then I stood once again at the foot of the grave. We were cut off now inside the blood circle, alone with the night, and our thoughts. Carla’s eyes flashed white at me as I began the chant.
“Hear me, Arthur Fiske. I call you from the grave. By blood, magic, and steel, I call you. Arise, Arthur, come to us, come to me, Arthur Fiske.” Carla joined me as she was supposed to. “Come to us, Arthur, come to us, Arthur. Arthur, arise.” We called his name in ever-rising voices.
The flowers shuddered. The mound heaved upward, and the chicken slid to the side. A hand clawed free, ghostly pale. A second hand and Carla’s voice failed her. She began moving round the gravestone to kneel to the left of the heaving mound. There was such wonder, even awe, in her face, as I called Arthur Fiske from the grave.
The arms were free. The top of a dark-haired head was in sight, but the top was almost all there was. The mortician had done his best, but Arthur’s had been a closed-casket funeral.
The right side of his face was gone, blasted away. Clean white bone shone at jaw and skull, and silver bits of wire where the bone had been strung together. It still wasn’t a face. The nose was empty holes, bare and white. The skin was shredded and snipped short to look neater. The left eye rolled wildly in the bare socket. I could see the tongue moving between the broken teeth. Arthur Fiske struggled from the grave.
I tried to remain calm. It could be a mistake. “Is that Arthur?”
Her hoarse whisper came to me. “Yes.”
“That is not a heart attack.”
“No.” Her voice was calm now, incredibly normal. “No, I shot him at close range.”
“You killed him, and had me bring him back.”
Arthur was having some trouble freeing his legs, and I ran to Carla. I tried to help her to her feet but she wouldn’t move.
“Get up, get up, damn it, he’ll kill you!”
Her next words were very quiet. “If that’s what he wants.”
“God help me, a suicide.”
I forced her to look at me instead of the thing in the grave. “Carla, a murdered zombie always kills his murderer first, always. No forgiveness, that is a rule. I can’t control him until after he has killed you. You have to run, now.”
She saw me, understood, I think, but said, “This is the only way to be free of guilt. If he forgives me, I’ll be free.”
“You’ll be dead!”
Arthur freed himself and was sitting on the crushed, earth-strewn flowers. It would take him a little while to organize, but not too long.
“Carla, he will kill you. There will be no forgiveness.” Her eyes had wandered back to the zombie, and I slapped her twice, very hard. “Carla, you will die out here, and for what? Arthur is dead, really dead. You don’t want to die.”
Arthur slid off the flowers and stood uncertainly. His eye rolling around in its socket finally spotted us. Though he didn’t have much to show expression with, I could see joy on his shattered face. There was a twitch of a smile as he shambled toward us, and I began dragging her away. She didn’t fight me, but she was a dead, awkward weight. It is very hard to drag someone away if they don’t want to go.
I let her sink back to the ground. I looked at the clumsy but determined zombie and decided to try. I stood in front of him, blocking him from Carla. I called upon whatever power I possessed and talked to him. “Arthur Fiske, hear me, listen only to me.”
He stopped moving and stared down at me. It was working, against all the rules, it was working.
It was Carla who spoiled it. Her voice saying, “Arthur, Arthur, forgive me.”
He was distracted and tried to move toward her voice. I stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Arthur, I command you, do not move. I who raised you command you.”
She called one more time. That was all he needed. He flung me away absentmindedly. My head hit the tombstone. It wasn’t much of a blow, no blood like on television, but it took everything out of me for a minute. I lay in the flowers, and it seemed very important to hear myself breathe.
Arthur reached down for her, slowly. His face twitched, and his tongue made small sounds that might have been, “Carla.”
The clumsy hands stroked her hair. He half fell, half knelt by her. She drew back at that, afraid.
I started crawling over the flowers toward them. She was not going to commit suicide with my help.
The hands stroked her face, and she backed away, just a few inches. The thing crawled after her. She backpedaled faster, but he came on surprisingly quick. He pinned her under his body, and she started screaming.
I half-crawled, half-fell across the zombie’s back.
The hands crept up her body, touching her shoulders.
Her eyes rolled back to me. “Help me!”
I tried. I tugged at him, trying to pull him off her. Zombies do not have supernatural strength, no matter what the media would like you to think, but Arthur had been a large, muscular man. If he could have felt pain, I might have pulled him off, but there was no real way to distract him.
“Anita, please!”
The hands settled on her neck and squeezed.
I found the machete where it had dropped to the ground. It was sharp, and did damage, but he couldn’t feel it. I chopped at his head and back. He ignored me. Even decapitated, he would keep coming. His hands were the problem. I knelt and sighted at his lower arm. I didn’t dare try it any closer to her face. The blade flashed silver. I brought it down with all the strength in my back and arms, but it took five blows to break the bone.
The separated hand kept squeezing as if it were still attached. I threw the machete down and began prying one finger at a time from her neck. It was time consuming. Carla stopped struggling. I screamed my rage and helplessness at him and kept prying up the fingers. The strong hands squeezed until there was a cracking sound. Not a sharp pencil break like a leg or an arm, but a crackling as the bones crushed together. Arthur seemed satisfied. He stood up from the body. All expression left him. He was empty, waiting for a command.
I fell back into the flowers, not sure whether to cry, or scream, or just run. I just sat there and shook. But I had to do something about the zombie. I couldn’t just leave him to wander around.
I tried to tell him to stay, but my voice wouldn’t come. His eye followed me as I stumbled to the car. I came back with a handful of salt. In the other hand I scooped the fresh grave dirt. Arthur watched me without expression. I stood at the outer edge of the circle. “I give you back to the earth from which you came.”
I threw the dirt upon him. He turned to face me.
“With salt I bind you to your grave.” The salt sounded like sleet on his suit. I made the sign of a cross with the machete. “With steel I give you back.”
I realized that I had begun the ceremony without getting another chicken. I bent and retrieved the dead one and slit it open. I drew still-warm and bloody entrails free. They glistened in the moonlight. “With flesh and blood I command you, Arthur, return to your grave and walk no more.”
He lay down upon the grave. It was as if he had lain in quicksand. It just swallowed him up. With a last shifting of flowers, the grave was as before, almost.
I threw the gutted chicken to the ground and knelt beside the woman’s body. Her neck flopped at an angle just slightly wrong.
I got up and shut the trunk of my car. The sound seemed to echo, too loud. Wind seemed to roar in the tall trees. The leaves rustled and whispered. The trees all looked like flat black shadows, nothing had any depth to it. All noises were too loud. The world had become a one-dimensional cardboard thing. I was in shock. It would keep me numb and safe for a little while. Would I dream about Carla tonight? Would I try to save her again and again? I hoped not.