Chapter Two: Cellar Door
On the other side of the island, in the kitchen of a house that looked like any other on its street, Norman Winslow complained that the sudden lack of wine was ruining the after-dinner conversation.
“Well I can’t get any more,” his father said. “It hurts me old knee going up them stairs.”
“Then you shouldn’t have put your wines in the cellar,” Norm said.
“You want me to lug heavy boxes, at my age?” Samuel asked.
“Fine, I’ll get the wine!”
Norm yanked open the cellar’s steel door and flicked on the overhead bulb. After steadying himself on the doorframe, he started down the wooden steps into cool air that smelled of earth and mould. Samuel had dug the cellar himself with a candle and a shovel. It had started out as an emergency shelter, but over the years the wines had overtaken the rations.
The cave under his house had seemed exciting when Norm had been a boy. Now it was just a smelly, damp inconvenience. Why was something always going wrong in his life? If it wasn’t his boss on his back, it was the girls at the office laughing at him, or it was looking in the mirror and seeing that he was nearly fifty, nearly bald, and tubbier by the day.
The wines at the bottom of the stairs rested in racks that reached to the house’s foundations above. Norm plucked a bottle from the shelf, but it was a Church of Tipote Shiraz; too good for his father to waste on him.
Something scuttled behind the wine rack and Norm sighed. As paranoid as Samuel was about security, he let enough pests live in his house. “Shoo, ratty.” Norm replaced the wine bottle noisily. The answering scrape was… heavy. Bigger than a rat. A cat?
A figure dragged itself along behind the wine rack, sandwiched against the wall. Definitely a person. What was someone doing hiding in his father’s cellar?
Norm swallowed. “Who’s that?”
The figure reached the rack’s end and stumbled into the light. The stink of rotting meat and dirt knocked Norm back a step. His dinner burned out of his throat and onto his shoes. When he could look up, the woman was inches away, scabby arms stretched out for him. Her thin hair was matted with – was that blood? – her face was covered in sores, and her eyes were completely white, colourless.
“Blarg!” she snarled.
“Aargh!” Norm retorted. Her corpsish hands closed on his neck and yanked him close. Norm pushed her away, but skin slid off her arms and stuck to his hand like a pizza toppings. Her skin! On his hand! How could he get it off! Get it o—
Broken teeth pierced his throat.
Norm screamed as loud as he could.
“What’sa bloody holdup on that wine?”
His father was a glorious silhouette atop the stairs. A colossus. A saviour with bowed legs.
Norm ran for the stairs. The woman took a piece of his neck as he pulled away. “Help!” Norm mounted the stairs, his eyes on Samuel. He was so desperately hungry.
Samuel disappeared and Norm realised his neck hurt. He clamped his palm over the wound to slow the bleeding. Why had his father left him? Then the woman grabbed his head with rough, cold hands. Her mouth came dow—
The world exploded, leaving a high-pitched whine in its wake. What was left of the woman dropped to the dirt with wet smacks.
At the top of the stairs, Samuel lowered the smoking shotgun. “You all right?”
Norm couldn’t answer. The sight of his father had triggered a deep hunger. He had to get up there, had to. Nothing else mattered. Not the wound on his neck, or the raining dead woman, nothing. He scrambled up the steps three at a time and Samuel slammed the door in Norm’s face. Too slow! As Norm beat his hands against it, his hunger gave way to fright and shock.
His father had locked him in here with a dead woman!
“Let me out!” he shouted.
“I’m sorry son,” Samuel said through the door. “You know the rule. No zombies in the house.”
Stunned, Norm realised he did know it. As a kid, whenever he asked if a friend could come over, his father would ask, “Is he a zombie?” Only once Norm said no would Samuel acquiesce. Norm had passed it off as Samuel’s awful sense of humour.
It wasn’t funny now.
“What?” Norm yelled. “I’m not a zombie! You said the zombies were mindless corpses and I’m not dead! Or mindless!” he added. “It’s just a bite; I’ll be fine! Dad! I need a doctor!”
Norm thought he heard crying on the other side of the reinforced steel door. “Just a bite…” Samuel said. There was a sniff, then Samuel spoke clearly and loudly. “No zombies in the house.”
Norm pounded and shouted, but Samuel didn’t respond again. Eventually Norm descended the stairs and crouched beside the corpse. “What happened to you?” he asked. Her pallid skin was covered in bruises. Too much of her face was gone for Norm to recognise her. She’d been tall. Well, until his father had removed the top eight inches of her.
This was just typical. Why did he have to become a zombie? Why not Samuel, who didn’t have long to live anyway?
No, that wasn’t the way to think. Maybe he could turn this around. Turn a negative into a positive. If he really was becoming a zombie, then he should document the experience. He’d become rich and famous. But what would a zombie do with riches and fame?
Apart from buy brains, of course.
Norm stopped laughing. Obviously his father was wrong, but it was important to keep his mind occupied. Norm selected a blank page in Samuel’s wine ledger and started writing. After a moment, the tingling in his neck disappeared and prodding it produced no sensation at all. What else was there to document?
“Arh.” Norm’s hand sprang open, hurling the pen away. As he stooped to pick it up, his legs stiffened and he collapsed headfirst. Was this what awaited him? Lying in the dirt, unable to control himself? Maybe death would be like sleep.
But, if his father was right, death wouldn’t be the end.
Lifting his head, Norm spoke his name. The word echoed back to him, proof that he wasn’t mindless. Good. He forced himself up and – squeezing the pen with both hands and fighting spasms – he wrote. Each word was ten seconds of concentrated effort. Soon the page drifted out of focus as the world became blobs with blurred edges.
Norm shouted his name again, louder, trying to imbue the cellar with hope and purpose. It echoed despair. There was no point pretending life could continue as it had.
So Norm decided to give up on his life and embrace his death. If he were to become a zombie, fine. He’d become a new person: a rotting person, perhaps, but a new person nonetheless. For starters, no more complaining. He’d leave that behind.
A band of light appeared on the cellar’s dirt. Norm looked up to a fuzzy figure at the top of the stairs; probably his father, but it was impossible to even be sure it was human. The old man closed the steel door and stepped down. As Norm approached, he saw the smudge’s mouth open and close, but no sound reached him. Why couldn’t he hear what Samuel was saying? And were those tears on his father’s cheeks? Norm’s eyes travelled the wrinkled features and settled on the forehead.
There was a brain in there…
Images flashed, crisp and vibrant. Sounds, more beautiful than the finest concerto. Smells bore him forward, irresistible. Succulent, juicy brain. Pink, tender, fresh off the skull. The sensation of that first bite, of pure bliss.
Norm shook his head. He couldn’t hurt his father. Besides, Samuel needed his brain.
Brain… Brain… Slowly roasting over a spit.
Or raw!
So close, so tantalisingly close.
His feet brought him forward and his arms reached out automatically. His father didn’t need his brain half as much as Norm needed to taste Samuel’s long, full, delicious life. It was murder but Norm didn’t care. He’d never truly lived, never tasted, never loved… but with just one bite he would be complete, fulfilled.
It would be ecstasy.