Nights of the Living Dead

Some people called Owen a “profiteer.” But there was a much better word for it. “Survivor.”

This destabilization of society—this sudden outburst of wandering dead, eating friends and neighbors—was an opportunity for a consummate survivor who could play his cards right.

He’d been a carnie for years before the outbreak. Aside from selling rubes on sucker games, society had no place for him: he wasn’t wanted. He was expected to move on when the carnival did, and he obliged. He didn’t like the rubes any more than they liked him. But when the hungry dead took to the streets, he knew this could be his chance to win the big prize. They called the summer of 1967 the summer of love. 1968 had brought the summer of death.

When it had first happened, he’d just finished setting up the circus tent in Savannah, Georgia. That’s when they came wandering in. He’d watched men he’d worked with for five years getting eaten alive by the incoming assault—and the carnies with enough connective tissue intact after being bitten joined the forces of the dead with a passion. On that day he saved five people, and the legend about him began to grow.

He’d killed hundreds of them in the streets and neighborhoods of Savannah over the next few weeks. He went from dirty townie to town hero. A son of the pacification. That’s what they called it. “The pacification.” After six months, the living dead were under control, or so the official reports said. People were advised to travel in groups, always have a weapon, and stay away from dark deserted places. A common-sense practice when your rotting mother might just show up to eat you. We could go back to worrying about the Commies, who, people agreed, were far more of a threat than zombies.

And through it all, the big top still stood. Silent. Waiting. Owen knew it was waiting for him. There would be a new show now. And Owen would be the ringmaster.

* * *

“Careful with that truck! And keep your hands away from the windows!” Owen was amazed that he had to warn his workers to be careful with the cargo. He had thought all the people without common sense had been obliterated by this new form of natural selection. But idiots were as resilient as cockroaches.

“We got seventeen,” Cristoph, his lead hunter, told him. “Five fit the profile you asked for. One of them you ain’t gonna believe.”

But after the things he’d seen, Owen could believe anything. The hunter told him who they had. Owen believed it—but only barely.

“A grand each for the normals, five grand for the specials, and twenty for your headliner.” The hunter reminded him that there had been ten men on his team when they set out. Now there were seven. “The rest got bit and had to be put down. So you’ll give me ten grand each to give to their families.”

Owen doubted the money would go to the families of the dead men, but that wasn’t his business. He and his investors were willing to pay far more for this delivery than Cristoph was asking—so he only haggled him down a little before shaking hands.

“But you and your men will stay on,” Owen insisted as part of the deal. “We’ll need sharpshooters. Security. We’ll work out a good wage.”

Owen had a team of his roughies move the truck to the back of the circus camp. Everyone else gave it a wide berth. Owen looked to the rest of his employees. Their faces didn’t look as excited as he’d imagined.

“Don’t worry, y’all,” he said loudly. “Hell, the lions are more dangerous than what we got in there.”

“You’re barbaric, Owen.”

Owen turned to see Clara, the tightrope walker, watching the whole scene with a look of disgust that could have shriveled Owen in an earlier day. Clara was the best at what she did. Everyone in his show was. The Savannah Post-Apocalyptum was truly the greatest show on earth—so great that it didn’t have to move. The world came to him—not just for the acts but to see Owen himself. Such was his legend. He was a zombie-killing Buffalo Bill. The new-world P. T. Barnum. People longed to rub elbows with the man who saved Savannah. He didn’t rub elbows much, but he was happy to take their money.

“Clara, this is the business,” he reminded her.

“It’s barbaric is what it is. I’ve never seen anything so inhuman in my whole life.”

“What about when they were banging at your door, threatening your life?” said Harry, one of the show’s clowns. He’d already gotten his makeup on for the evening’s show, and it had already begun to melt off. Owen would have to make a point of scolding him for that. But for now, he was just glad the old rodeo clown had his back. He’d hired him from Texas, and he knew the man had lost a sister and an uncle to the beasts.

“You really want to treat them like us?” said Harry, with a laugh. “Lady, they ain’t us.”

“They were like us once,” muttered Clara. “This is a circus, not a … not a…”

“Circus?” suggested one of the barkers, and everyone laughed.

“Hey, if people will pay to see it, it’s fair game,” said the show’s juggler—a young man from Philadelphia named Ronnie, who had actually helped Owen take down more than a dozen dead in the first attack. He walked over, juggling half a dozen balls at an ever increasing frequency. Then he gave Clara a seductive grin. “You like my balls? People liked my balls. Said I had great balls. Then I switched to pins.” He let the balls fall and pulled out a set of pins, producing them from behind him. All part of his act. “Pins got me a bigger crowd on the midway. Flaming pins got me better tips. Then when the dead rose up, I switched to chainsaws. This is the natural progression. Don’t try to fight it.” Although he didn’t juggle chainsaws to make his point. That was reserved for the show.

Owen could tell Clara understood but wasn’t ready to accept. “It’s the devil’s money, then,” she said.

“This is the circus,” said Harry. “It’s all the devil’s money. Just look what you’re wearing.”

This got a laugh out of a few of the performers, and Owen took this opportunity to change the subject.

“We’ve got less than an hour till showtime. Business as usual tonight—but tomorrow we go dark for a month. We’ll create a whole new show the likes of which has never been seen.”

There were grumbles at the prospect of going dark, until everyone found out that they’d still get paid. The group split up—everyone went their separate ways except for Clara, who still looked at the truck. Even closed you could hear the ghastly groans from within. She turned to Owen, and rather than an insult or accusation, she softly said, “I don’t think you’ll be able to control them.”

The simplicity of her statement, and her sincerity, gave Owen a moment’s pause.

“Honey, I know them better than I know myself,” he told her. “You leave it to me.”

The two turned to see Cristoph and a few of his men—all with sidearms like gunslingers, rifles at the ready. They were already talking about taking shifts watching the truck of the living dead.

Clara took a deep breath. “All I know is that you don’t take away the net until you’re sure you’re not going to fall.”

Then she stormed off with the perfect gait of a tightrope walker.

* * *

Owen brought in professional makeup artists and costumers from Hollywood. “They’re terrifying up close,” Owen told them. “It’s your job to make them look just as terrifying from a distance.”

He paid the makeup artists the highest salary in the show. Although the dead were chained and shackled, when your hands are that close to such lethal mouths, it was worth quite a lot of combat pay. Owen wasn’t going to begrudge them that.

One of the makeup artists—a young woman whose own perfectly designed face was testimony to her skill—burst out in tears when she saw their headliner. “I can’t do this,” she told Owen. “I just can’t.”

“She can’t hurt you,” Owen reminded the girl. “We have her secured so tightly, she can’t even move her head.”

But the girl quit anyway.

Owen brought in the best lighting and set designers. He hired special-effects coordinators.

“I want the audience to be three seconds from pissing their pants,” he told them. “We want them to forget that there’s a fence between them and the dead.”

Within just a few short weeks, they had the ultimate act. Word got out and the Post-Apocalyptum, which was already wildly successful, became insanely so. Ticket sales were through the roof, even with prices jacked up beyond anything anyone ought to pay.

Owen’s investors—dark-suited men who were either too fat or too gaunt, and looked a bit like the living dead themselves, were both optimistic and nervous. “This act of yours had better deliver,” they told Owen.

He despised that he had to answer to them, but his confidence did not falter. “This is more than a gold mine,” he told them. “It’s a mint. After opening night, it’ll be like printing our own money.”

Cristoph, although a standoffish and unpleasant man, turned out to be quite a wrangler of the dead. Yes, he had hunted them up, but more than that, he took care of them. He got rancid meat from the market—because it was the only thing they’d eat other than human flesh. He made sure their chains were loose when they were in the truck, and broke the nose of one of the carnies who was getting his kicks tormenting them. Cristoph had worked as a zookeeper before the outbreak, specializing in venomous snakes, but he was well acquainted with the particular hazards of circus animals. What were the living dead but another deadly animal to control?

“I would like very much for you to be a part of the act,” Owen told Cristoph.

“Me? What would I do? I’m not like you; I’m not a showman.”

“You wrangle the dead better than anyone. Every animal act needs its tamer. Who better than you?”

Although Cristoph’s agreement was reluctant, within days he was owning it like it had been his idea. The man actually cracked a smile as afternoon faded to twilight on opening night.

“You may actually pull this off,” he told Owen.

Although Cristoph didn’t know it, that vote of confidence changed everything. It gave Owen the nerve he needed to really take the show to the next level.

* * *

An hour before the audience was to be let in, he gathered everyone in the back room, and informed his performers that he was having the safety fence between the audience and the ring taken down.

“Owen, are you sure?” asked Harry, his painted clown smile obscuring his true face, masking the depth of his concern. “I’ve seen those things … how they … operate … up close.”

“The danger has to seem real,” Owen said. “You’ve seen Cristoph working with them. He can handle them—and if it starts to go south in any way, he’ll have six sharpshooters in plain view, with clear shots.”

Owen looked to the back of the room and met Clara’s eyes. The volcanic look on her face made him quickly look away.

“This is lunacy!” she shouted. “Doesn’t anyone else here see how wrong this is? Hasn’t anyone else lost someone to them? Or seen a relative become one?”

“I saw my sister get bitten, and my mother,” said Horace, an old clown Owen had hired from a circus in Ohio. “Then they both came after me. It was my neighbor what put ’em down.”

“I killed eighteen of ’em,” said a young clown named Ralphy. “Used my dad’s old truck. Ran ’em right over. These things ain’t fast and they ain’t smart. But still … one bite … For my dad it was barely a knick on his finger, but that’s all it took. It wasn’t long till he was one of them. In the end, I runt him over, too.”

The testimonies were sobering, and left everyone in silence, suddenly transported back to their first encounters with the epidemic.

“Yeah, I lost people,” said Gloria, an old showgirl who had become a sort of mentor to the newer girls. “I’ll never forget that. But I’m not gonna let that cheat me out of good money. These things nearly ended us. I say we put ’em onstage and prove to the world that the show must go on.”

A few “here, here’s” and claps were given, and Owen breathed a sigh of relief. No one seemed to agree with Clara, who threw her hands up, in far too much shock at her fellow performers to say anything.

“There are always frightful acts in a circus,” said Ronnie, the juggler, as he tossed a few balls in one hand. “Always been that way. A circus is about the shock, and the awe. What’s more shocking than the things we most fear, forced to perform for our amusement?”

* * *

Standing room only.

The audience couldn’t get in fast enough when the doors were opened. They practically crawled over each other to get in, just like the dead. People need this, thought Owen. This is a necessary public service.

Each performer did their part to make it the best show they’d ever had. The clowns, led by Harry, made the audience laugh louder than Owen had ever heard them laugh. The trapeze acrobats were in perfect form, leaving the crowd with stars in their eyes. The only glitch was the tightrope act. Which was a no-show. Clara had up and left without even as much as a note. Her loss. The girl had walked away from a million-dollar career.

It was all going wonderfully as the evening inched ever closer to Owen’s big reveal. It was as though he could hear the electric buzz through the audience, the anticipation of what was to come. And he, being the ringmaster, kept everything in line.

When Ronnie’s juggling act had finished, Owen raced out into the ring.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen! The moment you’ve all been waiting for! We bring you something terrifying that may shock the younger viewers of the audience. Can you hear them? Scrape scrape scraping at your door? Can you smell them? Mouths dripping with the unthinkable? Behold! The most terrifying of all acts ever brought to you on any stage … the living dead!”

The crowd gasped in shock as two great doors opened in the back of the tent. The dead shambled out of the darkness, with Larry and Carl, two of the troop’s strongmen, holding them at bay with chains. A light came up on Cristoph, whip in one hand. Pistol in the other.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, don’t be alarmed,” Owen bellowed to the gasping crowds. “Those chains are tempered steel. And as you can see, they are happy to make your acquaintance!”

The crowd’s terror quickly turned into laughter, as they saw that the living dead had been done up to look like clowns; faces painted, costumed. As sinister as they were hysterical. Then the second wave was sent out, held by two more strongmen. These were not dressed as clowns. Their outfits were tattered, of course, but they wore replicas of what they had worn in life.

“In fact,” continued Owen. “Some of them you might already be acquainted with.”

Now the spotlight began to single out five of the “special” subjects that Cristoph’s team had been so lucky to catch. The first subject was hit by the spotlight. The audience began to murmur their both gleeful and horrified surprise even before Owen announced the name of the former senator from South Carolina.

The dead senator put up his limp hands to shield his glazed eyes from the bright light. Then he fixed his attention on a pretty young thing in the audience, and stalked toward her, bent on feasting. The strongmen holding him pretended to drop the chains. The audience screamed. Cristoph snapped his whip and the dead senator fell back away, subdued. All part of the show.

“And to the left—you knew him as the king of late-night talk shows. But he’s not doing much talking now!”

The dead talk show host wandered to the left and right. Uttered a moan that eerily sounded like the voice America knew all too well.

Then came the TV housewife who used to share her favorite recipes on TV, but was no longer quite the picky eater she once was.

And the comedian famous for his goofy roles, but none goofier than his final one. They were subdued by Cristoph, and forced to do tricks to the delighted disbelief of the audience. The living dead might be mindless—but they were trainable!

Then the lights dimmed, and a hush fell over the big top.

“And now,” Owen said. “I give you the star of our show. The headliner of headliners. A woman who needs no introduction…”

The spotlight came on, and there, in a pool of light, wearing a tattered replica of the gold gown she wore to last year’s Oscars, was the movie star whose gorgeous face was once the subject of countless billboards. Whose violet eyes captivated millions. Who was Helen of Troy and Cleopatra combined. Now her jaw was slack, and her cheeks sunken. Her once-beautiful face now held the pallor of the grave without a grave to go with it. The audience gasped and groaned and wailed. What was it the juggler had said? Shock and Awe? This crowd was certainly getting their money’s worth.

This was Owen’s shining moment. In his youth, he had always dreamed of meeting her. What he might say if he did. How he might win her heart. Now he had her. Not in a way he ever expected, but she was here. It’s true that all things come to those who wait.

For the other subjects, it was simple tricks, but not for the star of stars. She was better than that. She deserved something special. The men holding her let her chains go slack. Cristoph backed away, and Owen stepped forward.

“Dance for us, Miss Taylor,” Owen said. “Dance for us!”

The dead movie star began to move her feet. She shuffled to the left. To the right. Her shoulders rolled. Her arms stayed limp. She was dancing the dance of the dead. And the audience slowly began to applaud, getting louder and louder until it rose into a fever pitch.

“Do you hear that, Miss Taylor? Do you hear it? You are still a star!”

Then she lurched forward with a throaty snarl, only to have one of the strongmen pull back on her chains.

As the cheers rose, Owen lifted his hands in triumph.

Then a sudden groan from behind him caught his attention. At first he thought it was one of the dead, but when he turned, he saw that it was Cristoph. He had dropped his whip, as well as his gun, and was down on one knee, holding his chest. He was pale. Very pale.

Owen hurried to him. “What are you doing? Get up! You have to get up, the act isn’t over!”

“H … h … heart attack,” Cristoph gasped.

“No! You can’t! Not now!”

“All the … the … excitement. All the … all the.”

Cristoph’s strength completely left him and he sprawled in the sawdust of the ring, gasping, grimacing, then was silent.

And the dead knew.

They saw that their wrangler—the only one who could truly keep them at bay—was down.

Owen knew what was going to happen a moment before it did, and he was powerless to stop it. Almost as if they had one thought—one mind—the dead pulled on their chains with strength that seemed beyond human. In all the rehearsals in all the weeks leading up to this, they had never shown such strength. They pulled the strongmen at the other ends of their chains to them. The men tried to get away, but there were just too many of the dead. No, they weren’t smart. Yes, they moved slowly. But in numbers, the dead can do anything.

The strongmen didn’t stand a chance.

When the audience saw the blood—saw the bits of flesh being ripped away—and realized this was not part of the show, they panicked. They began to mob the exits—but the exits were too small, and the crowd too dense.

And the dead, with no one to hold them back, began advancing on the crowd.

“Everyone, please! Please stay calm!”

But no one was listening to Owen anymore.

A rifle shot rang out. One of the dead—the senator—was taken down, but there were still sixteen already climbing over the first row of seats to get to the scrambling audience. A second shot rang out, missed the mark completely, and killed a man in the audience who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That’s when Cristoph’s sharpshooters abandoned their posts and ran, deciding it was every man for himself.

Maybe if he hadn’t been so confident, Owen might have armed himself with a gun. But there was no time to think of that now. The shock was all he could focus on. The awe of seeing his life crash and burn.

The dead reached the audience. They feasted. They bit as many as they could. Owen fell to his knees. He watched as more and more people went down, and he knew that this would not end here. This tent would be the vector of a new epidemic. A new outbreak of living death.

Then he heard a groan that was far too close for comfort. He turned to see the movie star standing ten feet from him. She was still shuffling from one foot to another, her tattered gold dress fluttering in the breeze coming in from the exits. The living were gone. The dead littered the stands … dozens upon dozens of them—too many to count … and they were all beginning to rise.

The movie star gazed at him, her eyes cloudy, but still that shade of violet that made them so captivating. She began to shuffle forward, her head lolling to one side, her hands reaching toward him, her teeth snapping in anticipation.

She was not beautiful anymore, but then all beauty fades. Who was Owen to judge such things? There was the beauty of life, there was the peace of death, and now there was the terrible netherworld between.

Owen stood, dusted off his ringmaster’s jacket, and held out his arms. “Shall we dance, Miss Taylor?”

And he let her take him into her cold embrace.