Writer Wednesday | K.A. Laity

Every other Wednesday we open up Un:Bound to any writer who wants to come and talk about something. This week the awesome and lovely K.A.Laity has coem to tell us about the origin of her short Zombie story and share a little of it with us. If you'd like to take part in Writer Wednesday with a blog post, short story, flash fiction, poetry or anything else please contact Adele at unbound (@) unboundblogzine (dot) com


Linkage: http://www.pillhillpress.com/

Background: The story has a funny history, having been written at the last
minute as I headed off to Trinoc-con one year and hated everything I'd ever
written (it happens) and so started writing something just for fun. It was a
big hit, with one exception: I'd only got half the story written. People
were ready to kill me for stopping in the middle, but that's all I had. I
finished (and read the rest the following year at Trinoc-con) and sold it to
an anthology, who then proceeded to slowly reel out the days while
contributors waited, and waited, and were reassured that it was coming, it
was coming -- and then after two years, they just stopped responding. Sigh.
Unfortunately, that's the life of small publishers. I'm glad this story has
got a home at last.

Excerpt:

As another bottle went whizzing by my head I knew that I had made some
serious miscalculations. I knew too that Jim was like to kill me because of
those miscalculations, but at the moment the shambling wreck of a corpse was
a much more pressing issue. I had unloaded most of my pistol into it already
when Jim shouted that I should quit wasting bullets like they were made of
manure and throw something more substantial, but somehow guns still seemed
like a good idea. Cursing his illustrious forebears, I finally holstered my
beloved pearl-handled Colts and looked around for something heftier. The
dead guy continued his staggering plunge toward me, so I grabbed a chair and
flung it wildly across the room. It fetched up a glancing blow on his
shoulder, which spun him around to the left. Jim took advantage of this
momentary turn in events and hefted up another chair, bringing it down with
a little more venom on the old guy¹s noggin. He crashed to the floor with
the splitting wood and lay there twitching and broken, but at least no
longer mobile. Jim muttered something under his breath that could have
easily been ³stupid fucking white man,² but I tried to believe that it was
aimed at the corpse and not me.

³Well, that don¹t happen every day,² I said needlessly.

Jim just stared at me and wiped some of the blood away from his mouth. His
name wasn¹t really Jim. It was just I could never quite get my mouth around
his real name without calling up a cough and he somewhat pityingly told me
to stick with Jim. It wasn¹t that I meant any disrespect‹I¹m not the
sharpest tool in the shed, I know, as my pop always told me‹but that Navajo
is a twisty language that leaves my tongue twitching in pain whenever I try
to repeat the things he says.

³It¹s still wiggling,² Jim cautioned as I stepped forward to take a look.

³I know, I know, I ain¹t an idjit.²  Sure enough, the old man was jerking
around like a fish on the end of a line, his sightless white eyes rolling
around, but his limbs seemed to convulse uselessly now. Not like before.
³What do you suppose he¹s got?²

Jim moved warily toward the too-lively body. ³Whatever he has, we don¹t want
to catch it.²

³Damn! You don¹t suppose it¹s catching!?² I took a quick two-step back.

³Maybe it is, maybe it isn¹t,² Jim replied evenly, gazing closely at the old
man¹s face. ³Best to be careful.²

³Well, hell.²  No arguing with that. ³You ever seen anything like this?²

³No.²  Jim picked up a broken chair leg and poked at the guy¹s shoulder. He
made a sort of wheezing sound and tried to attack the chair leg. He didn¹t
have much luck because both his arms seemed to be broken, in fact the jagged
end of one bone poked up through the graying skin I could see now as he
rolled over weakly. It was a peculiar sight.

³I think we better dismember the body,² Jim said after we¹d watched the old
guy struggle aimlessly for a time.

³You mean chop it up?²

³That would be the gist of it in words of one syllable,² Jim said. If you
didn¹t know him, you might not have realized that he was being sarcastic. It
took me a couple of months of riding with him to realize that sometimes he
was being funny. Me, I tell you when I¹m making a joke. Jim just figures
you¹ll find it out somehow. Inefficient, I call it.

³Why you want to chop him up?²

³Well, he¹s dead, yes?²

³Yes.²

³But he¹s still moving, yes?²

³Yeah,² I said, ³obviously.²

³Well, if we chop him to pieces, maybe he will stop and be all dead.²

³And if he¹s not?²

³You have a better idea?²

Well, the only thing we could find was a shovel. You¹d think in a house like
this, so far from other folks, there¹d be plenty of useful things like big
butchering knives or a saw for firewood, but we sure as hell couldn¹t find
them. Guess he was a little too much on his own out here. Town looked to be
within a morning¹s ride, but it wasn¹t like he wanted neighbors. Maybe this
was why.

³You think he¹s been like this a while?² I asked Jim as I brought the
shovel¹s blade down on his neck. The neckbone was a tough thing to chop
through all right. Those thigh bones weren¹t going to be much better...