Book of the Dead (2 page)

Not long ago I was talking with two friends of mine, John Skipp and Craig Spector, who suggested that while the dead were walking in Pittsburgh, they were probably walking in other places as well. After all, whoever… or whatever… causes the dead to walk, isn’t going to go to all that trouble just to terrorize Pittsburghers. These things tend to be more than just localized phenomena. “Maybe we can find some first-hand stories from other parts of the world,” they said. “If we can collect enough stories we might be able to publish a book. A… Book of the Dead.”

I remembered that conversation back in 1968. “They walk any damn place they feel like walkin’.” Was that me that spoke those words so boldly? God. I was so young, then, so naïve. Willing to admit that I knew about the dead. Willing to ignore the recriminations, the denunciations of society. I even found pride in what I was doing, in what I was saying. Times were different then. Ah, the sixties.

But these are the eighties. The self-centered, get-rich-and-look-good-at-all-costs eighties. Sure, I thought to myself. There are stories out there, alright. There have to be. But trying to find them… that’s gonna be next to impossible. I said to my friends, “Go ahead. If you can find somebody who knows about the walking dead… somebody who’s willing to admit it, that is… I’ll eat my hat.”

I didn’t think John and Craig would come up with anything. I figured there were few out there who knew the movements of the dead and that those few, fearing ridicule, would probably clam up when approached. I’m amazed at the list of necrophiles who were willing to appear in this volume. I regret the derision these brave souls have subjected themselves to by admitting their knowledge of matters beyond the grave. I know, from experience, that there are those out there who will judge them to be either mad or in league with the Devil. I offer my thanks to all the contributors here. They have renewed my faith and made me feel… much less alone.

I’ve selected a knit stocking cap, black and gold, with a Steeler emblem on the side. Is it okay if I put some spaghetti sauce on it?

INTRODUCTION

ON GOING TOO FAR

OR

FLESH-EATING FICTION:

NEW HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

“What’s going to come out of those people who think that
Night of the Living Dead
isn’t enough?”

Robert Bloch

There is always, as they say, the next frontier.

The function of the pioneer is to penetrate the unknown: to delve into those culturally uncharted places and report back on what they’ve found. All progress is based on the willingness of a few to venture into uncharted territory, check it out, come to terms with it, and make it a place where we all can dwell.

It’s not the most enviable position in the world. There’s an old adage, culled from our own nation’s vainglorious past:
the pioneer is the guy with the arrows in his back
. It’s a dangerous job, scoping out the frontier; most people are more than happy to follow in the pioneer’s footsteps. Once the road is paved, and it’s safe to come in, you’re one heartbeat away from the chain stores and the franchises, all frantically hawking the hitherto unheard-of, rendering the frontier a frontier no longer.

Making it accessible.

Making it safe.

And when the last pioneer stops dead in his tracks, pitches camp, and settles in for the rest of his days, you can bet your coonskin cap that somebody else will soon be there to push it just a little bit farther. Despite the public outcry that it’s time to stop, we’ve gone far enough, thank you—or perhaps, ironically,
because
of it—another handful of intrepid souls will feel the itch to probe a little deeper.

To expand the horizon.

To go too far.

“Horror is that which we have not yet come to terms with.”

Ramsey Campbell

This is a book of zombie stories. Not only that, it’s the god-damndest book of zombie stories you’ve ever seen. We would even go so far as to venture that this may be the most
overt
anthology of original horror fiction ever assembled.

Does this sound like we’re pleased?

Sorry. We just can’t help ourselves, for several very good reasons. First, because of the uniformly inspired and intimately visionary quality of the work herein. Second, because of the seemingly endless stream of mind-blowing spike points that the authors have graced us with: flaming frozen moments of dread and wonder that you will never in a million years forget.

Third, because it allowed all involved to pay homage to the films of George A. Romero, a wild frontiersman in the grandest tradition. By running the heart of his brazen cosmology through their distinctive filters, they have breathed
even more fire
into his already vibrant archetypal landscape. No tiny task, that.

And fourth, because we The Editors had a hand in goosing this glorious sucker into existence, thereby doing our part to stretch the boundaries of modern horror fiction just a little bit further.

Because, have ye no doubt, until fairly recently it seemed as though the body of traditional horror fiction had reached the coast and settled there. It was more than happy to homestead the territories, tilling the fertile soil opened up by Lovecraft, Machen, Poe and James, not to mention Bloch and Matheson and Serling and Blatty and yes, even Stephen King.

This is not, in itself, a bad thing. The world could do worse than to suffer a surfeit of such vision. But still, the call which came to all of them keeps right on calling. Extending the invitation.

This book is but one response: a vicious backhand serve into the beyond, a missile unleashed and beyond calling back, a fleet of cerebral ships in the time-honored tradition of all challengers of the flat earth and the legend “here there be dragons”.

This is a book that goes too far, and invites you along for the ride.

“Zombies are the liberal nightmare. Here you have the masses, whom you would love to love, appearing at your front door with their faces falling off; and you’re trying to be as humane as you possibly can, but they are, after all, eating the cat. And the fear of mass activity, of mindlessness on a national scale, underlies my fear of zombies.”

Clive Barker

In 1968,
Night of the Living Dead
first appeared on America’s silver screens. Shot in jarringly mundane, schizo-
verite
black and white, this stunning tale of The Day That Hell Met Earth was a virtual Pandora’s Box of cinematic firsts. While Sam Peckinpah was doing his part to usher in the age of explicitness by blasting Ernest Borgnine into teensy little bits in
The Wild Bunch
, Romero dared to give us a pair of darling young lovers and send them heroically off into danger, only to blow them to flaming smithereens, then let the camera hang around while a gaggle of rotting guys and gals next door devoured their crispy innards.

Night
was daring in other ways, as well: it featured a strong black male as its pivotal character.
And
did an end run around the tidy horror convention of
good vs. evil
, subbing the far more morally ambiguous and provocative equation of
living vs. dead
.

But perhaps most significantly,
Night
was the first horror film to give shape to the dawning fear that the American Dream, such as we knew it, was dead.

Now, of course,
Night
is a legend in its own right, with a permanent seat in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and a warm spot all its own in the hearts of those who trip the dark fantastic. Not satisfied with that, Romero went on to create 1979’s
Dawn of the Dead
, the film that successfully encoded his worldview forevermore on the cultural nervous system. From that moment on, his vision of a world overrun by the living dead was more than just a nifty plot device: it was a legitimate modern
mythos
every bit the equal to Lovecraft’s own, if not that of the eternally-squabbling Greeks.

Dawn
was also the first major film to defy the dreaded MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) by refusing to dilute into an R-rated version while simultaneously refusing to accept an X, the skull-and-crossbones which would have placed it on the marquee right next to
Deep Throat
and
Debbie Does Dallas
. It went out, instead, unrated, in flat-out refusal to play the censorship game.

This unwillingness to compromise would have doomed a lesser film. But there had never been anything like the nonstop cavalcade of technicolor sploosh that Romero unleashed with
Dawn
. When audiences the world over went nuts for the thing, the age of splatter had truly arrived.

And with it, the battle over how much is
too
much pitched into predictable overdrive.

George Romero, God bless him, had gone too far.

“Overexposure to violent images is desensitizing us to violence. Because it now takes more and more violence to make us feel shock and revulsion, media violence has to become more and more graphic to be profitable. We are addicted—and we’re about to overdose.”

Tipper Gore

“My position is simple: I detest the Vomit Bag School of Horror, whether on screen or on the printed page— books and stories and films featuring gore for gore’s sake, designed strictly for the purpose of grossing out an audience. Swill in a bucket. Sewer slime as ‘entertainment’.”

William F. Nolan

“You know you’re successful when you’ve pissed off your parents.”

David J. Schow

There was no question that
Dawn of the Dead
was desensitizing. After two hours and however many minutes (depending on which cut you saw) of exploding heads and rippling viscera, it got awfully hard to give a damn about the no-longer-humans and their violent
au revoirs
. In certain respects, it is the ultimate dehumanization flick, because you can no longer afford to think of these blueish-green people as
people
. They’re not people anymore: they are shambling dead things that want to eat you. To regard them as more is potentially fatal. The sense of dehumanization is pointedly not by accident.

But there are also moments of intense, perverse and profoundly disturbing
rehumanization
. One vivid example of this can be found in Romero’s third (and last, to date) foray into zombieland: 1985’s
Day of the Dead
. Specifically, the sequence where the scientist, Sarah, is forced to amputate her lover’s zombie-bitten arm, in a desperate attempt to stop the infection before it claims his life.

At this point, the levels of horror are many; you can take your pick as to which hurts the worst. Is it the moment when the machete cleaves into Miguel’s arm, then takes several meticulously unbearable seconds to saw through the bone? Is it the moment when the limb finally severs, then flops in gruelingly authentic deadpan to the floor? Or perhaps the moment comes seconds later, when she brings the torch up to his dripping stump, setting off a bio-frenzy of sizzling, blackening cauterization?

All of that takes place on the first level, the ground floor of being. It’s fear as a matter of simple biology: the flesh, surrendering to the laws of physics. By itself, it’s most certainly horrifying, and it plays from the understanding that you can flinch if you want to… the camera simply won’t do your flinching for you.

But, as critics of the overt mode are quick to point out, simple carnography is easy. Just train your gaze on the icky thing in motion, and you need go no further. Lord knows that the cinescape is redolent with empty goo and spew, loveless as your average quickee porn loop and meaningless as popping a zit.

But this brings us to the second level, which takes place on the stripped-naked faces of the people to whom this horror is occurring. There is Miguel’s terrible shriek of realization, of a pain and loss far beyond the physicality of the moment; there is the near-lethal voltage of tension in the Mexican standoff between Rhodes’ men, who want to destroy him, and Sarah, who are fighting to save his life. And then there is the unspeakable anguish on Sarah’s face in the aftermath, as her rigorously maintained composure unravels.