Welcome To Hell.A.

by Stephens, L.

  Jake flicked the disembodied fingers off him as he used his foot to drag the still-ringing phone back towards him. He finally reached and quickly answered it, putting it at the crook of his neck as he held on to the door for dear life. With the ringtone ended, only the muffled drumming against the door was the reminder of something foul at play, not to mention the motionless corpse of Zombie Chong bleeding out onto the tile in front of him.

  “Yeah, yeah, you fucking got me,” Jake whispered into the phone.

  “Jake?” she said in a breathy voice. “Is that you?”

  “Of course it fucking is! Who’s this?” Jake said incredulously. “Where’s fucking Daryl?”

  “Watch your language, dingus,” she said sharply.

  “Sarah?” Jake said softly like a scolded schoolboy. “What’s going on? Where are you? Wait, how did you get Daryl’s phone?”

  @KillingJake can’t a guy just hide in the ladies room without a thousand fucking zombies banging on the door? #CreepCity

  CHAPTER 122: MARTHA STEWART

  Love is the absence of judgement

  ― Dalai Lama XIV

  Lost in thought, Sarah held the phone to her ear, searching for something to say. Adding to her stress, Lynne and Ava looked to her with hope on their faces. Just like Jake, they wanted answers. All of this was just what the doctor had ordered, a brief respite from the panic that had engulfed her and was threatening to take over her life. Sarah didn’t know where to start. His best friend, who she had heard countless stories about but hadn’t met until today, was dead.

  “It’s a long story,” Sarah said, sadness underlying her voice. “I’m on a rooftop with him. We’re stuck.”

  “You’re on a rooftop? With Daryl? What the hell is going on, Sarah?” Jake whispered, worry starting to enter his voice. “I’ve been trying to find you all day, how the hell did you end up with Daryl? Is he okay?”

  Sure, it was fair of him to ask where his friend was, but this was top five on the long list of infuriating things about Jake. He was smart, you could doubt that at your own peril. He had an almost psychic way of seeing through bullshit and determining the real answer with only a scrap of information.

  “I think you know the answer to that, Jake,” Sarah stuttered. “Please don’t play dumb with me, not now. I’m on his phone and I’m stuck on a rooftop. Where are you?”

  There was a long pause. Sarah knew Jake was stung by her comment. It was a little cold. It wasn’t like she had busted him for not returning a text message, when he had clearly been on his phone liking some Instagram model’s pics. His best friend was dead, mere yards from her, and she wasn’t even going to acknowledge it, because it was his fault she was here, knee deep in shit.

  “I’m in a fucking restroom in this building where Daryl said he would be. So, if you’re with him, I’m guessing I’m a few floors below you,” Jake whispered. “Where is Daryl, Sarah? Is he okay? Answer me, please. Come on, you can tell me.”

  He wasn’t going to let this go, and she didn’t blame him. She knew she had to tell him but not right now. Right now, there were more important things.

  “Jake,” Sarah said slowly. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to you of all people, but I need you to save me. You got me into this mess. I need you to get me out.”

  The words came out of Sarah like a runaway passenger train heading to Chicago with no one at the controls. The history of them had been littered with occasions where he had let her down mercilessly. Weddings and dinner parties, where she just wanted to show off her new boyfriend to her friends and family, had ended in an empty seat and an embarrassing excuse.

  "Sarah," Jake whispered. "I’m not sure I’m going to be able to save myself. I got four of those fucking things banging on the other side of this door, trying to get me."

  “Oh, Jake,” Sarah sighed. “As a boyfriend, you were consistent in being undependable, and I can’t believe you still haven’t changed, and you know what’s worse? I actually expected you to.”

  Once again, she was embarrassed. She was going to have to tell Lynne that they were on their own. That the guy who had gotten both of them into this catastrophe, had deserted them.

  “Just listen to me for a second, okay?” Jake whispered.

  “No, you listen,” Sarah interrupted, her tone even but still stinging. “I need you, Jake. For once in your fucked-up life, do something for someone else. Stop running away from me! I’ve been nothing but nice to you. I’ve made excuses to everyone around me and to myself because, deep down, I know you care. David was a loser, I know that. Please don’t let me down, Jake. I can’t bear to think that all the men in my life are losers.”

  This wasn’t the first time she had thought this, but she had never said it out loud before. There was hope in her voice, but hearing herself say it was like a death blow. She knew it was true. All the men she was attracted to were losers. They all made her feel good about herself and gave her a little project to keep herself distracted from the undeniable truth: she was a loser too.

  “Jake?” Sarah whispered, tears escaping from her eyes. “Are you still there?”

  She hoped he wasn’t, because life without him was simple—boring but simple.

  CHAPTER 123: LOSER

  Jake could feel that a rash on his chest had formed from all the times he had rubbed his tattoo looking for calm. He wanted to loosen his grip on the human barricade he had made and rub it some more, but then he realized that was the old him. Every word Sarah had spoken had been a sharp knife chipping away at his black heart, hoping to find a layer of soft red flesh. He knew it was the truth, and she knew it was the truth, but his present predicament wasn’t enabling him to be the hero. This is standard Jake Meyers, he thought in the brutal silence as Sarah waited for him to answer. His interpretation of being a hero was letting someone loose before there would be a moment they could rely on him, before he could really let them down.

  “You made a mistake,” Jake spat. “I’m not that guy.”

  Jake closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure if it was to hold back tears or just to let his mind settle with the path he had chosen.

  “Do I need to come get you?” Sarah said.

  Jake wished he had never answered the call. With one sentence Sarah had crushed him.

  “Jake!” Sarah said sharply.

  A single tear, a solitary droplet, squeezed its way from his eye, and he let it cut a trail through the soot and dirt that had accumulated on his face.

  “Look I'm sor—” Jake choked on the word before steeling himself. "I've caused you more problems than anyone else could in two lifetimes, and I'm the reason you are in this fucking mess right now. And you know, it's funny, I had this grand plan to get my shit together and make it up to you one day, but I guess I just got sidetracked, and here we are, fucked, totally fucked, and as usual, it's all my fault."

  Jake could hear Sarah sob through the phone. He tensed his eyes to prevent another tear from worming its way down his face.

  “This isn't the time for a heart-to-heart,” Sarah said cheerfully through the sobs. "Just hide, Jake. Hide yourself.”

  "I honestly wish..." Jake said, pausing as he searched for words. "I wish... Look, I made mistakes."

  "I know you did," Sarah said, trying to ease his apology. "You’re a fuck-up and maybe that's what I really loved about you. There was this helpless guy looking to be saved, and I wanted to be the one who saved him because I knew deep down he was a good person.”

  He couldn't stop it; the next tear practically raised his eyelid to escape and followed the stream the tear before it had run.

  "You were always too kind to me, Sarah. And you know I took advantage of that. Don’t wait for me, okay?” Jake said solemnly as he ended the phone call and jammed the phone back into his pocket.

  The phone call had been like torture, but he regretted ending it. He had been waiting to talk to her all fucking day and now he was running away from her again, all because he was scared, scared someone was going to f
ind out the truth about him. Find out that he wasn’t special, that he was just some self-obsessed asshole, a loser with a penchant for delusions of grandeur. Jake found himself laughing. What a fucking a joke, he thought. This secret he was keeping was not even a secret. Anyone who spent more than two minutes with Jake saw right through his little charade.

  He loosened his grip on the wall and pulled the headphone cord from under his shirt and threw it towards Zombie Chong. There was going to be no time for fun and games now. With laser-like precision, his hand found the gun at his side, and he slowly stood. The zombie press grew stronger without all his weight behind the door, and his shoes barely kept their grip on the floor. Like a monk searching for his inner Zen, Jake closed his eyes and began to nod his head with the beat of the thumping, it wasn't steady or precise but it was close enough, and Jake got into the rhythm.

  "Fuck this noise!" Jake whispered to himself.

  Right before the next thump came, Jake pulled the door inward with all his might and again squeezed himself between the door and the wall it backed onto. Just like it had worked before, four zombies flew through the door and slid into the corpse of Zombie Chong. Given his chance, Jake swung around the door only to come face-to-face with an errant zombie who hadn't been trying to get in and was just admiring the work of the others. It seemed like slow and steady was about to win the race for this zombie, but Jake raised his gun to its open mouth and pulled the trigger, spraying a thick stream of blood out the back of his head. Jake pushed the zombie out into the hallway and followed him before the dog pile in the restroom could get to their feet.

  @KillingJake breaking hearts and being self-obsessed is the epitome of a loser. I am this loser. #PermissionToBuzzTheTower #YouKnowImAllTalkRight

  CHAPTER 124: HECTIC

  Instead of wondering WHY this is happening to you, consider why this is happening to YOU

  ― Dalai Lama XIV

  Sarah didn’t know where to look. It didn’t matter anyway. Her eyes were full of tears. She never knew he was the love of her life until that moment, and she never realized that the love of her life was a piece of shit loser who wouldn’t even try and save her. It was a symbolic gesture because his number was still in Lynne’s phone, but she felt cleansed as she threw Daryl’s phone as far as she could over the edge of the building to the street below.

  “Help me!” Ryan screamed. “I’m on fire! God-fucking-damnit, help me!”

  His cries almost made him seem human and Sarah rushed to Ryan’s side. He lay in a pool of his own body waste and tears as his hands tore at his shirt. His every movement made the destroyed skin of his torso fall off like a piece of slow-cooked pork. There was a part of her that wanted to see this living piece of human excrement get his final desserts, but another part wanted to end the misery that this day had brought to this poor man.

  “Are you okay?” Sarah asked as if the obvious wasn’t clear enough.

  “What the fuck you think?” Ryan screamed as he arched his back like an eighties era music video vixen on the top of a red corvette. “You fucking cunt! My body is on fire, I’m fucking dying, here!”

  “Charming,” Sarah said sarcastically as the less than single digit percentage of empathy she felt for Ryan disappeared. “Even on your deathbed, you can’t even redeem yourself.”

  A chill rushed from the small of her back to the base of her neck, and she checked herself mentally to see if her body was reminding her not to be so cold, but looking down at Ryan’s rotting husk, she still felt no sadness for him. If anything, it was almost a relief to see him getting a fitting end to what she could only imagine was a life lived in absolute darkness. His eyes didn’t leave hers as he screamed vitriol at her, and as she watched him flailing on the ground, she could still hear him, but her brain wasn’t registering what he was saying. Sarah had picked up something underneath his screams and was beginning to focus on that. It was like one of those fabricated CSI-style audio programs that could mute the loud noise from the recording and find the hidden sound underneath that solved the crime.

  “Mommy?” Ava said quietly.

  Ava’s voice was small and distant, but it ran through Sarah’s mind like a freight train, and it took her less than a second to spin around but within those milliseconds, the life and death of the universe played out in her mind.

  “Lynne, no,” Sarah whispered. “Please, no.”

  She could see Ava’s arms were open, a normal child reaching for her mother to give her the reassurance that everything was okay, but in this case everything was far from okay. It could have been worse, Sarah thought. Well, strike that, it couldn’t have been any worse. She was about to deal with something beyond her, beyond what she ever imagined she would be waking up to today.

  From Sarah’s viewpoint, Lynne’s teeth were readying to take a bite out of her daughter’s soft and supple flesh. Ava’s complete and utter trust of her mother was being betrayed by a slow and relentless transformation that would be the end of both of them. It was the darkest but most prominent scenario that Sarah had dreaded in the precious moments she had taken to register Ava’s call to her mother and her spinning around to see what fucking mess the universe was about to serve up to her next.

  To Sarah’s relief, Lynne wasn’t about to feast on her daughter, she was just whispering in her ear, but truth be told if she was, that would have been the one final thing that could have made Sarah just go ahead and give up on today, give up on life. With a sweet kiss to her forehead, Lynne released Ava and began walking to the edge of the building. Ava started to follow her mother, and Sarah softly grabbed her by the hand and picked her up. Her face was covered in dirt and tears, but it was the most beautiful thing Sarah had seen all day. Sarah wasn’t used to the weight of a small child, any child really, and she struggled to hold Ava up. She slowly crouched down and put her on the ground and buried Ava’s face into her chest. She didn’t want Ava looking at Ryan or looking at her mom. There was nothing but horror on the rooftop in every direction.

  “It’s okay, darling,” Sarah lied. “Let’s just wait here for a moment.”

  Lynne had a steady and determined stride to her step as the lowering afternoon sun shone on her. Her shape was silhouetted and her hair glowed beautifully, giving an impression of an angel gliding into a heavenly light. It was like something you would see at the end of a Lifetime movie. The sun disappeared behind one of the surrounding buildings as Lynne stepped onto the barrier that surrounded the rooftop. It was less than a foot thick, but she stood on it with confidence. She had lost her angelic look. Her hair looked ratty and her skin was pasty. Sarah was no doctor, but she could see Lynne was close to turning into a zombie. Sarah guessed the ugly dog and three-legged pony show Ryan was putting on had shown Lynne the exciting and somewhat colorful times ahead for her.

  CHAPTER 125: A LIFE WELL FUCKED

  I’m dead already, Lynne thought. I never really was alive. I deserve all of this. I deserve all this death running through my veins. It’s all for the best. I’m not the one who can give Ava a good life. I never was.

  Lynne could see a lot from where she stood. Zombies gathered and strolled down the lifeless street. In the distance, smoke poured into the sky as news helicopters floated around like flies hovering over a dead carcass. The idea that she was soon going to be a part of the metaphorical carcass that was Los Angeles wasn’t far from Lynne’s thoughts, but she let it wash over her, as there were bigger issues than being poetic right now. She could feel the sickness running through her with almost every heartbeat. Her blood was thickening and her legs felt like they were filled with pins and needles. Memories crashed through her like waves on an empty beach. Strange urges took over her. It was like she was living all her life’s moments every five seconds, and now she wanted to bust out one final Yurchenko Loop. She guessed her synaptic pathways were dying out one by one, and with each death came an old memory, soon to be forgotten and rotted away.

  Leaving Ava had been a tough decision, and even though Lynn
e was used to making them, this decision wasn’t like all the others she had made. For the first time in her life, it wasn’t self-indulgent and impulsive; it was benefitting someone else. Getting up on the edge of the building to jump to your death could be defined as self-indulgent and impulsive, sure, but in her heart, or what was left of it, she knew she was doing the right thing for everyone, especially Ava. It seemed like she had left Los Angeles for a better life in Colorado, but the real truth was the move had been a failed attempt to try and lure Mark and make him choose her and Ava over his family. Colorado was just a thin veil. She was still doing everything she was doing in L.A. but on a much smaller scale, never really giving Ava the fresh start she deserved.

  On the edge of the abyss, with the wind gently blowing against her decaying skin, she was filled with a sense of purpose. She could finally do what was right for her child without her shitty hang ups getting in the way. There was no escaping from what was ahead. Lynne had found the strength to cut it off at the pass, and she was thankful Hedley Lamarr wasn’t there to shoot her in the foot for using such a cliché. Another memory, another ridiculous moment in her life, a moment with her father or the guy who was pretending to be her father. He was happy, and she laughed as well, even though she didn’t understand the joke or who Hedy Lamarr was.

  † That’s Hedley. †

  Lynne turned back one last time, and she could see Sarah whispering to Ava, and she was glad there was still one person pure of heart to take care of her one and only love. Sarah and Ava were bathed in a golden light. Even though Ava was wriggling and Sarah looked strained and forlorn, it filled Lynne with hope and joy. There was a good person left in this disaster, someone not looking out for herself, someone that wouldn’t make the bad choices like she had done every step of the way, someone who wouldn’t just give up in the face of adversity, like she had done, every step of the way.