Lou > Books: zombies‎ (16)

"And, too, a carnival of death, a grassy park near the city center, a merry-go-round that turns unceasing hour by hour, its old-time calliope breathing out dented and rusty notes while the slugs pull their own arms out of the sockets trying to climb aboard the moving platform, some disembodied limbs dragging in the dirt around and around, hands still gripping the metal poles—and the ones who succeed and climb aboard, mounting to the top of the wooden horses, joining with the endless motion of the machine, dazed to imbecility by gut memories of speed and human ingenuity. And the horde, in the blackout of the city night, illumined only by the headlights of the car, everywhere descending and roiling against one another like maggots in the belly of a dead cat, the grimmest and most degenerate manifestation this blighted humanity on this blighted earth—beasts of our lost pasts, spilling out of whatever hell we have made for them like the army of the damned, choked and gagging and rotted and crusty and eminently pathetic, yes, brutally, conspicuously, outrageously pathetic."

“Now Benny was fifteen and a half, and First Night was a million years ago.
This world was no longer that world. On First Night the old world had died. As the dead rose, the living perished. Cities were incinerated by the military in a futile attempt to stop the growing armies of the dead. The electromagnetic pulses from the nukes fired all electronics. The machines went silent, and soon, so did the whole country. Now everything east of the small town of Mountainside was the great Rot and Ruin. A few other towns littered the foothills of the Sierra Nevada north and south of Benny’s home, but the rest of the old world had been consumed.”

“Before First Night the United States Census Bureau estimated that there were 6,922,000,000 people alive on planet earth. Tom said that news reports claimed that more than two billion people died in the first two days after First Night.
By the time the internet went down, the estimates of the global death toll were at four billion and climbing.
People in town believe that following first night more than six billion people died. Most people think the whole rest of the world is dead.
We know that the total population of the nine towns here in central California is 28,261 as of last new year’s census.”

“It was like a plague, but different from the one that had destroyed the world. This was an emotional pandemic that blinded the eye and deafened the ear and darkened the mind so that there simply was no world other than what existed inside each fenced town.”


Preacher Jack shrugged. ”This world may be paradise for the Children of Lazarus, but to snot-nosed little sinners like you…this world is hell. How’s that for a cosmic paradox? Heaven and Hell coexisting out here in the Rot and Ruin, and the two of them forming a brand-new Eden. The towns-why, you might consider them limbo, where souls are just waiting for judgement. As for Gameland….now it would be God’s own truth to say that Gameland is purgatory. It’s where you have a chance to expunge your sins.”

“He took her hand, and they walked under the canopy of cool green leaves. Birds sang in the trees, and the grass beneath their feet glistened with morning dew. The first of the day’s bees buzzed softly among the flowers, going about their ancient and important work, collecting nectar and taking pollen from one flower to another. Cyclones of gnats spiralled up from the grass and swirled through the slanting sunlight. The loveliness of the forest was magical and fresh, but it was also immense. Neither of them spoke, unable to phrase their reactions to the rampant beauty and unwilling to trouble the air with the horrors that haunted their hearts.
Despite the warm reality of each other’s hands, they felt incredibly alone. Desolate. Even though they knew that Tom and Lilah and Chong were somewhere in this same forest, it was as if everyone else was on a different planet. Mountainside-home-was a million miles away. The jumbo jet could well have been on the far side of the world, or something from an old dream.”