Darlings of Decay

by Chrissy Peebles

  Pushing aside the contused cadaver, I’m barely able to stand. Ohhh. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh . . . Ohhhhh.

  That was fun. Dizzied, my legs flaccid, I tumbled down a flight of concrete steps. More pursuers bumble past above. I’m curled in a ball, the fresh gashes on my elbows and knees scarcely noticeable amidst the numerous festering fly wounds. I’m sure that I’m a sorry sight, blending in with The Deadbeats, these rank remnants of humanity prowling the streets without a pulse.

  Tears are flowing. What can I say? I’m human.

  I can’t subdue the tide. Unashamed, I’m overcome by wrenching sobs.

  She cried abjectly, alone in the park, arms embracing herself, a poor substitute for the child she had yearned decades to hold. She couldn’t bear the pain, couldn’t go on this way. Her life was a bleak expanse of sorrow. To have known him so briefly, his expressions, the small trusting hand in hers, and to have lowered her guard — to have failed him for even a second . . . It was too long. That was the time it took to lose him.

  She couldn’t allow herself to live without her baby one more day. One more hour. It was too long. Too long. Too long. The words chanted in her mind, taunting, inviting, accusing. She clamped hands to ears but couldn’t shut them out.

  Digging in the folds of shabby garments, she reverently smoothed the stained and creased photograph of a smiling family. Father, mother and son. But that was a long time ago. Too long. It was too long to believe he would be back. She wasn’t crazy. Quite the opposite. Insanity would have been a blessing, a reprieve from guilt and regret. She had to accept that she would never see him, touch him, again.

  She had encountered the palm-reader in recent years. The woman was like her, a homeless denizen of the street. Jolene occupied a corner and spewed dire end-of-the-world messages. Adele had squeezed her arm to demand, "How did you know?”

  The psychic’s eyes cleared for an instant. Recognition flared. "I gazed inside your soul, down to your pith!” she rancidly spat. "Where the devil dwelled!”

  Adele had rushed from the corner, bile scalding her throat.

  "You can’t outrun them!” bade the harpy.

  Did she mean the cult? Adele fretted for weeks, paranoid of every face, every person she met on sidewalks, crossing intersections. It was in the past, she eventually realized. She was safe. As safe as a woman could be without a roof overhead.

  Adele withdrew a rusty chipped knife discovered in an alley behind a dumpster. Its blade held the brownish bloodstains of battle. She traced the steel edge with a fingertip. The dagger would serve as a fitting instrument to end her world, her private Hell . . . this tragic bereft existence into which she had been deposited by her own tainted birth in a devil-worshipping cult. It was there she met her husband, Zeke. They had escaped together when they learned she was pregnant. After the Midnight ritual where she was drugged and laid out on an altar as one of Satan’s brides. Desperately praying the baby was Zeke’s, Adele had refused to believe anything else, rejecting the fortuneteller’s words. In her heart she knew the truth.

  Maybe the black sedan that picked them up along a highway had been a little convenient. Maybe the house, car and cash inherited from a relative she had never heard of seemed a bit serendipitous. Then the luck soured. Their boy vanished. Zeke died. She lost the house to a corporation over property taxes. The psychic had been an omen.

  Lifting the knife, blade down, she braced herself and murmured an appeal for mercy. Soon her torment would have to end.

  Reduced to the most primitive of needs, Ziggy utilized supreme effort to scale the stairway. His stomach craved sustenance. Yet food would not replenish his will or hope. It could only fuel and satisfy the body. Perhaps lend false comfort. Without hope, there was no nourishment for his emotions. Depression must overpower the instinct to survive.

  He scratched at his sores. The man’s skin crawled from within. He wanted to bay in agitated frustration. He was a wreck.

  At street level, listening for danger, he detected a scuff. Then a rustle. Moist eyes scoured the vicinity, seeking to identify the furtive sounds. His proximity was a hot zone; he had to stay alert. Posture rigid, he pondered whether to duck back down the stairwell or attempt to flee. Before he could decide, a figure hove into view with a mane of tangles and disheveled layers of clothing. Their eyes locked. The prophet halted. Her jaw went slack. An arm elevated like a shotgun to point at him. "You!” she hissed.

  The condemnation sliced through internal organs. He buckled as if stabbed, hands to his belly. Remorse tied innards in knots for not sparing his wife and child. For callously not caring about the world, letting all of this happen. Everything. He felt that somehow he was the cause. It didn’t make sense, couldn’t be true. Yet he felt that he was a vessel of death and destruction. He shouldered the cumbrous weight of responsibility for the world’s demise.

  Absolute silence shifted to noise, a flurry of commotion. Fruit Flies revolved around him, blanketing the air. Their hum vibrated like mini-bombers as they clogged ears, filmed eyes and skin, streamed in and out of his nose and mouth.

  Above the buzzing of insects, a grunting and gnarring of beasts echoed. He knew they would find him. Blindly the fly lord confronted ranks of zombies, numbed by the circulation of his puny minions. Mute, he couldn’t address the monstrous horde. Instead he gesticulated broadly, arms wide as if in welcome. He surrendered to their justice.

  A shroud of flies funneled toward the sky and churned there like thunderclouds to witness Armageddon.

  The prophet was first to reach him, growling with the ferocity of an insatiable appetite. Self-preservation unleashed a violence that Ziggy had believed himself incapable of, and he slashed her visage with fingers curved to talons. He threw her to the pavement by the hair and rendered the harridan null as if she were a roach. Whatever abominable darkness lurked in his depth, it was a surprise to him. This ruthless yen to stay alive at all costs seemed foreign. He had regarded himself as neither good nor bad, a man without distinction. But here he was combatting a legion of goons bent upon rending him to pieces. Was saving yourself heroic? What if he inadvertently saved the world too?

  He stood erect, huffing, and faced the ghouls. Save the world? Not a chance. He retreated.

  Adele chided herself for hesitating. Coward! She commanded herself to plunge the blade and quit behaving like a wimp. "Do it!” the woman lamented. She had no reason to live. Her arms tensed. This was it. Mind focused, breath composed, channeling a state of peace, she drove the knife downward.

  A grating unintelligible shout interrupted her arc of triumph against the twisted threads of Fate.

  The woman winced, blade suspended, and glanced aside in aggravation. A large man sprinted across the park to the playground. He collapsed in the sand at her feet. A pathetic croak issued from a dry throat pitted by innumerable bites.

  Adele sighed and lowered the knife. It would have to wait. "Hey.” She nudged the guy with the toe of a worn shoe. "Are you okay?” Of course he wasn’t okay! He had been lacerated from top to bottom. He looked like a dog’s chew-toy! The injured man lay moaning and panting. "You need some help?” She didn’t know what she could do, but it was polite to offer in these situations.

  Ziggy’s hands groped sediment. The woman was alive. They would follow him directly to her. What had he done? He tried to push himself up. One fist clasped something other than sand. The man blinked at an object, a faded toy. He experienced a pang of nostalgia. An obscure recollection. It meant something. The sentiment evaporated.

  Her knife fell. "That’s mine!” The homeless lady tussled over the plastic wind-up turtle.

  Ziggy couldn’t let go. He didn’t know why, but he just couldn’t release the turtle. It stirred something profound.

  Weeping, Adele pleaded with the man to give back her son’s favorite toy. She would bring it to this park where she had brought him, arranging the turtle on the sand where he liked to bury it. The toy made her feel close to him. It was a connection, like this square of symbo
lic land that she visited religiously . . . a pilgrim traveling to a holy shrine. A public place, it belonged to everyone yet was special to her.

  And to him.

  Ziggy had come here guided by a little boy seeking consolation, running to his mommy. The shattered man squinted at this crying lady. A smiling young woman’s ghostly image superimposed upon her haggard countenance. A wave of pent-up hostility frothed to the surface. He bellowed "Mime!” — garbled without a tongue — and reclaimed his most prized possession. Knocking the lady aside, he climbed to his feet in a victorious stance, the toy aloft.

  Adele sat up gasping. She clapped jittery hands to her mouth. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be! Strangled hysterical laughter spouted as she rose grinning with glee. Arms apart, she stepped to wrap her child in a hug. "No, I can’t believe it! You’re my son! My dear sweet boy!”

  Ziggy whirled, eyes enraged. She had lost him! Allowed him to be taken, abducted by strangers! She had no right to call him her son! His jaw flapped. Beads of heartache glittered in his cold eyes. He couldn’t explain the hurt he had borne inside for most of his days. His exterior wounds were nothing by comparison. He warded her off, features conflicted.

  "I love you. I always have,” she whispered.

  Ziggy shook his head.

  "I’m sorry.” Fingers to her neck, eyes limpid pools of anguish, Adele stared into the face of the boy she had wanted more than anything to find. He was tall now, like his father. He had the shape of his mother’s chin, her cheekbones and hair. And his father’s sheepishly handsome smile; Zeke’s blue-gray eyes. "We both loved you so much,” she told their son. "You were ours and no-one else’s.”

  Tears poured from Ziggy’s eyes. His obstinate betrayed expression washed away and he resembled that little boy. It was the happiest day of his life.

  Adele cried out with joy and submerged him in her arms. The man’s height made no difference. He was still her child.

  Ziggy’s arms engulfed her, tentative, then forgiving. They hung on to each other as if they would never let go. What really connects us? Blood? Or something deeper? Something less tangible? Ziggy’s muddled brain flowed like a river in search of a new path. Maybe it was who we touched in this life that counted, who we interacted with and made the world better for in grand or modest ways. Even if we ultimately failed them.

  As a gathering army of mutants ringed the park, a cursed man vowed to defend a treasured lady with his final breath. The zombies barged forth in a frenzy and Ziggy valiantly countered them, kicking, circling, lashing in vain. There were too many. And then the flies descended. Their hum amplified. The itching beneath his skin magnified in response. His flesh swelled, and movements became sluggish. He was sweating tubs.

  It occurred to him at the last that he was an incubator. The Fruit Flies planted eggs; their growth cycle must have accelerated. Maggots hatched and were consuming him, compelling him to attack others, to cannibalize and infect them.

  When they reached his brain, Ziggy lost his mind. And his temper.

  In horror, between billows of flies, Adele ogled her son bloating to impossible dimensions. His skin bubbled. Then he screamed, on and on. The creatures around him tumbled back as the man erupted in an unrestrained spate of head-bashing limb-breaking mania.

  Her stomach and teeth clenched. The woman harbored no further hope. They were surrounded by a gruesome melee of fiends, and there was nothing she could do to protect her son. The time to do so was past. He strove to protect her now but it was futile. She swallowed. A rueful smile shaped her lips. At least they were together. At least they had that much.

  Ziggy’s flesh ruptured, sundering to jigsaw bits, and more flies emerged. Adele was jolted to the grass by a crowd of zombies pawing her.

  "NOOOOOOOOO!!!” Her fingers coiled. She had located the knife. She had survived a cult of wicked freaks, endured losing her husband and only child, then found her child just long enough to lose him again! She might not win, make that would not win, but she was not going to die like some flimsy skittish female in the movies! Roaring, she stood up green eyes ablaze, nostrils flared, and commenced killing the dead. Who probably didn’t feel anything, but it made her feel pretty darn good as zombies toppled with holes in their heads.

  A knife was no match for the flies. The insects invaded cavities, clogged her nose, teemed to her lungs. Their clamor stifled dreadful cries. As the zombies joined in, she mercifully suffocated while myriad tiny and big mouths devoured her flesh.

  It’s hot. You’re bathed in perspiration although it’s early. Wearing goggles and a gas-mask, you venture outside into polluted air that is now black with flies. The world is deteriorating before your eyes, everywhere dark and humming, a drape of madness and mayhem like the final curtain on a play with a cast of fools. Where did they come from, this latest plague? It’s lucky you’re so paranoid, cloaked in a thin white hood, long sleeves, boots and slacks. An insect pinches your hand and you ball your fists, shoving them into pockets, but your ears are vulnerable within the hood. You didn’t even know a Fruit Fly could bite! Your ears are on fire from pain. Perhaps they’re another insect, some new species. You’ve never seen anything like them. You pull the hood tighter. A hand is exposed to their nicks, the rapacious nips. Is that blood? Upset, you cram the fist in its pocket, having skipped gloves due to the high temperature.

  Hastening along a sidewalk, you notice a group of people approaching. It’s apparent there is an oddness about them. Weaving, oafish, milling together yet not conversing. Maybe they’re just weird. On second thought, you doubt it. They’re weird but that isn’t it. That isn’t what makes you step from the curb and cross the street.

  They might think the same about you for donning a gas-mask, but the style is catching on since the Global Government began blatantly poisoning the public. Fashion, however, is the last thing on your mind at the moment.

  They’re looking right at you. Groaning in a peculiar manner. Like they aren’t human. Kind of bizarre. And they’re crossing the street, diagonally, making a beeline toward you. Creepy! You speed up to maintain a cautious distance, glancing at them repeatedly. On closer inspection, they are extremely foul and mangy. You would definitely not care to meet them.

  Well, it’s inevitable at this pace. Time to run.

  Briskly you scurry, aiming for a populated area. Unfortunately, the streets are vacant. Besides the bugs. Your goggles are getting steamed; you wipe them on your clothing, hands tucked into sleeves. The insects are so thick, you’re crashing into them rather than the opposite. You adjust the fogged and smeared lenses with your cuffs and scrub at the flies spattered on the glass.

  Peering over, you note that the too-friendly or malicious creeps are still angling to intercept you. They’ve shortened the gap. You can discern their aspects are grossly mauled, and the skin that isn’t missing has a pallid unnatural hue. A tremor of fear passes through your soul. Unsympathetic, cordial or not, you want nothing more than to get as far away from them as possible.

  Where is everyone? Between the gory characters and bugs, the empty streets, a heavy atmosphere of anticipation, you feel like you’ve stepped into another universe. Or woken up the last person on Earth.

  You can’t be dreaming, your ears sting. Your fists too. Exploring the rim of an ear, you discover it bloody. The back of your hand contains gouges! Removing your all-purpose E.T. (Every Thing), you weigh the pros and cons of activating the gadget and being tracked, monitored, to check the news — which is owned by the corporations and will tell you as much or as little as they deem necessary.

  You’re being monitored by cameras anyway, and sensors, in practically everything. You need to learn if there’s an emergency, dictates logic. Pressing ON with a beep, fanning the buggy air, swirls of soupy mist undulating, you link to the rest of the world. Article headlines and videos leap off the screen, cryptic apocalyptic messages about zombies and mutant flies. Uh-huh, sure. This has to be a joke, some kind of prank or hoax. Zombies!

  Reading a
n article, your optimism sinks. You feel like you’re the only one who didn’t know the world has ended . . .

  It’s true. Your gait lags. You remember the unsavories and pick up your stride. A solemn Asian anchorwoman intones, hair mussed, her complexion damp: "The Fruit Flies mutated to carnivores by retaining teeth from their larval phase. They appear to be immune to the pesticides and will lay their eggs in the living or rotting flesh of humans. The zombies may have been a result of this fly infestation — or a separate parallel affliction. These are the facts at present. We will update you as details and events —” The video cut off. That was hours ago.

  What isn’t being discussed in the news is what initiated the mutations, the underlying causes of these threats. Culpability lies with the corporate structure of society. Everyone who isn’t Somebody grumbles this below their breath, but none of the masses are empowered to do anything about it. There was a time when speaking out mattered, when people everywhere could raise their voices together and inspire change. Now it was dangerous to disagree. Dangerous to complain, criticize, think differently. Those freedoms had led to war, it was taught. Now people are content. There is peace. If they don’t like the way things are, they will be sent to Transition Camps. Basically, forced labor.

  Perhaps a collapse of civilization wouldn’t be so bad.

  Your reverie has allowed the gimps to gain ground. You’re grateful for the gas-mask. They must reek. Darting into a park, you are anxious to get rid of them. Should you go home? They might follow. The park seems tranquil, deceptively ordinary. A woman is seated on a low wall by a play area. You lope toward her. Maybe she’s like you were, oblivious, out of touch.

  Something isn’t right. The flies appear to be orbiting her. You bustle to the center of the insect maelstrom and grasp her shoulder, then uneasily eye the matted hair and dirty garb. A face swings in your direction. She has lines, too many lines, but she seems okay. The face turns farther. Half of it is hideously ravaged. Her belly protrudes beneath a stretched top, a pregnant quaking mound. You scream as her abdomen detonates in a torrent of flies. A visage ripe with welts and tumors showers you. Blood and bugs. The insects penetrate your clothing. Zombies, attracted like sharks, stagger to the feast.