James Roy Daley by Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy

Author:Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy [Trilogy, Best New Zombie Tales]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Books of the Dead
Published: 2012-06-01T13:08:47+00:00

La Sequia

T. F. DAVENPORT

Contrary to promises made in church, death does not give her the use of her legs back. Nor does it give her a respite from pain, although this too was promised. What it gives her is a keening thirst deeper than anything she felt while living, deeper even than what she felt while dying: sprawled next to her wheelchair, croaking her breath out in a prayer for water. What death gives her––no small thing––is enough pain to overcome the shame of her infirmity. She picks herself up, crawls arm over elbow into the desert.

She leaves the ranch house behind. She leaves the cistern with its cover screwed shut against los secos––the dry ones––who shambled out of the desert to pry at it with feeble hands. Now that she’s one herself, the sweetness of the water tugs at her. She could stay forever, caressing the iron lid, never dying. Instead she crawls west, across the desert and into Los Angeles.

She finds a dead city of concrete and brown lawns, where secos lurch from one car to the next, twist without hope at the air conditioning knobs, and move on. She finds a city where if you fall into a dry swimming pool you’ll never find the strength to climb out. The paint bubbles on road signs. Withered faces lift to the sun in anger. Everyone who could has long since traveled north.

Just like her death, the city has something to give her. One rippling afternoon, as she huddles in the shade of a jeans boutique, she encounters a male seco. He wears a farmer’s shirt so faded and soiled its original color is anyone’s guess. His eyeballs are raisins, shriveled back in their sockets. But beggars can’t be choosers, and aren’t they here because at the onset of the drought they were beggars?

She feels his arm. It’s dry and wrinkled like jerky. Back in her water-fat days, she saw the secos as less than animals. Like the dying they had no strength, no words; they pawed at her latches with the husks of their hands. She shivered and hid, not comprehending that they meant her no harm. Now it’s obvious. They came for the air conditioning in her house. They came for the steam in her shower, for the water beads evaporating in the tub of her sink. The man takes her hand in his. Neither of them speak.

This drought is never going to end. It will sweep over the earth, sucking the rivers dry, and what it takes it will make into more of itself. Wherever the secos go, they’ll carry the drought with them.

She helps her companion to his feet. He touches her back as she crawls.

There’s nowhere to go but north.

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