Genesis Virus

by Pinto, Daniel

  David moves upslope and near another exit. Quickly down-swinging at a zombie infused with a gout-ridden neck, shoddy claw-like digits, and a faint tinge of pinkish pigmentation similar to a piglet without a care in the world. He hits the head like a samurai before it hurries out of reach. David focuses on the green grass in sight that looks abnormal compared to his black and red world. From nowhere, long curled and wooden nails rake over David’s face, in a slant. David winces and turns his forearm striking the zombie that has a mangy noose around its throat like a plastic wrap around a seal. The whacking pushes the zombie’s head to one side with its ear resting on its shoulder. In the corner of his eye, he sees a zombie from behind bite that zombie in the neck in a vampiric passion. David dodges the next zombie jarring for the nape of his neck, he uppercuts its head in half, he imagines this is how a bear trap would feel. Headless bodies fall into him the more he tries to move. He kicks the flopping bodies. All his toes are numbed.

  Like something out of a Shakespearean play, David tries to get out of the walking forest of Birnam Wood. X’s of arms lift above and cage David, blotting out the sun. Greener pastures have disappeared. A steadfast David screams and swings his machete; he prunes dead limbs left and right, at crooked elbows, like an explorer pushing into and discovering an even dangerous world. David cuts the head off a zombie then gores the zombie in the gut, turning it into a battering ram/shield. David’s feet uproot the soil, he raises the frail zombie and other zombies nimble it to bits.

  Awash in stark black blood and grime. David’s eyes concentrate on a zombie with a bloated red belly like a dragon, craning its neck with an agape mouth. David slices its gut with the brass-knuckled handle of his machete and bumps into it with a bleeding shoulder. There’s a high pitch squeal reminiscent of air fluttering out of a balloon. Worms and maggots spew out as the zombie’s torso and its head flings backwards and hangs upside down between its legs.

  David’s ears are ringing from the many firm slaps to his head. Zombies triangulate, placing David in their crosshairs. David looks over both shoulders; his machete blade is loose in the brass-knuckled handle. He bounds for and through zombies as he holds his machete crosswise; he’s a walking guillotine on the war path, clearing a route and then another.

  A zombie bites David on the wrist like a bulldog and wrestles the machete to the ground. Quickly, another zombie scrawls on David’s neck with its cracked fingernails. “AAAAAA.” David screams in pain, slim fingers slip into his mouth and scrape his tongue as he pulls back. He stabs a zombie in the heart with his machete, snapping the weapon in two, before his sword hand is driven into the ground like a wooden stake. With the other hand, David punches upward with his palm, striking the zombie in the nose, its head splits open in two halves and bounces back like a pez-dispenser. Its hollow sockets catch the radiant sunlight as it bounces.

  Still in the clutches of the damned, David crawls forward, zombies tumble off his back, he manages to cock his arm and throw a haymaker with his left fist. Knees are screw-driving into the dirt. The opponent zombie opens wide, its holey tongue slides out as it violently tilts its head back in anticipation. The poor God’s version of a man chomps down on David’s row of knuckles in the nick of time. A spillover of warm blood drips from David’s fist. This is want you wanted, soak it up.

  The jaws of death are trapping both of David’s hands. Genuflecting, he lowers his head in submission, drops down to both knees again. Ensnared and subdued, he becomes lightheaded. Cyanotic faces as blue as the morning sky, tower over him. The floor rushes up towards David face, splashing bloody mud into his eyes, leaving one eye open to see his death. Two metallic jawed zombies climb his back and bite the sides of his neck. He doesn’t give the dead the satisfaction of a begging scream, but reluctantly offers his head to his executioners, in exhaustion. Hands nailed by long teeth. David’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders like Atlas. The forsaken undead refugees crowd around him like vultures waiting for scraps of food. Zombies are sweating blood for their hard-earned meal.

  22

  Eastbound, Ava and the others ride up the crest of the hill, with their backs to David, about to descend into safety. She ponders aloud at the expanse of trees. “He’s not going to make it…we’re only a few hours away.” Lou stops his buck between his friends and looks to them for confirmation. “A pawn sacrifice for a king…some friend, that’s cold even for you.” His words pull Ava from the edge.

  She says. “This is not easy. But I’ve lived long enough to know how this plays out.”

  Lou moves to Ava’s side.

  Coop says to her. “If you want to go. Go. We’ll be fine.” She looks at the placid Chief, the jittery horse beneath Youngblood, lastly at Lou, who’s pointing a gun at her head. “Tell us where the Boss is and go save your boyfriend, that’ll be perfect for everyone.”

  She says. “If I say. You’ll shoot me anyways. Suck my clit.”

  Youngblood says, “…no he won’t,” his horse’s back legs slips off the edge. The Chief grabs his nephew’s reins. “Stay out of it.”

  Ava slaps the gun from her face. A single gunshot follows. Ava points one gun straight and her other gun over her stomach in the opposite direction, hedging her fate.

  Coop looks only at the Chief and says. “Everyone preaches a better world, start creating one. Violence begets violence. Maybe we should all die here, if this is to be our life.” Coop pushes all the saddlebags off the horse and skews off in a new direction, not looking back at the fellowship of losers.

  A gust of dust lingers in the silence of the remaining dreary travellers.

  23

  David’s a corporeal breath away from interment, when there is a small tremble in the ground. Followed by a sound an eternity away, it distracts the undead on his neck and arms. During, David pulls out both the heads and spinal cords of his captors. Bones raddle in a quick progression. The human handcuffs are alive-ish and bedeviling him, he stands and smashes the two screaming heads against themselves.

  David runs and skids on the ground, whistling and throwing his voice. He rubs his blood on ankles and on the backs of the heads of other zombies as he whistles and dances through the raving crowd. A slimy finger goes deep in his ear like a painful Q-tip. Zombies bite at his body, his shirt drips off, but he still has the bulletproof vest covered in teeth like confetti. The skin around his fingernails is peeling back. He elbows the idiot savants in their guts. Zombies full of enmity are eating each other like starving piranhas. Zombies pull and pull endless intestines out each other like some sort of sadistic magic trick, creating small openings for David into more surly zombies. The floor is stickier than a men’s public restroom.

  Even without body heat, the parking lot of zombies is absorbing the heat of the sun like asphalt, creating a sauna effect killing the oxygen; it smells like a modern vomitorium. David’s a lost brown dog in a shit storm, camouflaged to a subgroup of pissant zombies. Invisible to a minority, but still surrounded by the majority of living things for miles.

  David crawls on the ground with his knife in his mouth like a stealthy soldier in enemy trenches. Slice your throat, keep moving, what’s the point, Phillip is dead just give up, try until you can’t. Kill all these…MOTHERFUCKERS.

  He feels something chewing on the leather of his boots and realizes he hasn’t move an inch in minutes. Clasping with an ironclad grip, a zombie is dragging along behind David like a POW private. David puts the man out of his misery by donkey kicking the zombie’s head into itself like a Coke can.

  From the waist down, David’s drenched in the meals of the past. If he was to run into another human he would be shot for the uncanny resemblance to the deceased.

  A zombie springboards its head over David when he turns to his back, their mouths are aligned for an upside down kiss of death. David stabs it in the ear and slides the blade out of its scalp with the ease of opening an envelope, then guts the zombie down the back as he slides the body down to his groin. Temporarily, crawling b
ackwards with the zombie surfing on his belly, the waggling zombies are oblivious and ping and ricochet off each other like pinballs to thumpers.

  David cries and laughs with his mouth shut as he scouts and shuffles on his elbows and knees, past the dark tunnel into light. Infirm zombie arms resembling scraps people fed their pets halfheartedly, scratch at David’s backside, to ferret him from his hole.

  Knowing how you’re going to die doesn’t make it any less painful. He shunts zombies back to grab a stick, jerks at ocher necks and baste in their heads. Laryngeal grunts sound like heckling and almost makes David piddle himself. He turns as if he was tapped on the shoulder and pokes a geezer in the crustaceous paunch, snapping the stick; it vomits gory paste on David’s back as he flits away. An outcropping and foothills is in his sightline just outside the bastion of the dead.

  David’s half running and half crawling like a galumphing ape-man, he swipes pouring sweat with the heel of his hands, leaving blood on his cheeks. Light afoot, David’s in a small safe-ish circle, zombies are concerned with something else, he leans over on his kneecaps, jeans ripped, watching the umpteen blood flies. David’s unsure if has move at all in the undead forest. He’s the only distinct landmark. The evil forest seems to be chasing and sheltering him at the same time. He’s both a prisoner and a escapee. It will be dark within the hour. Tricks and luck quickly run out in the dark.

  He contemplates maybe too long, death can wait.

  Subdivide the crowd by tossing your boots in the opposite directions and run straight with everything you have left. But one direct bite to the Achilles tendon…I don’t know. Plan is shit, what else you got. Reprieve over.

  A zombie playing possum decides for David in a foray. He jukes to the left and spins off the back of an overeager zombie up ahead sprouting for his red knees. A racing zombie breaks through the compacted line, with a blue star football helmet and tackles David in the spine, hauling him for yards through scurrying zombies. He’s a bowling ball striking through pin thin shins.

  David spins to his back and is not bitten, he crab walks backwards as the zombie hammers the top of the hermetic helmet into his chest with the speed of a woodpecker, knocking the wind out of him. Keep moving. The zombie is gnawing on the faceguard like a dog with a bone. Large lidless eyes stare at David; the helmet is protecting both their lives. Focus. The absurdity of it all, escapes David.

  David under-grips the faceguard, rocks back on his pelvis a few times. All in the hips. Then simultaneously, he pulls the helmet forward and kicks both legs upwards into the zombie’s stomach. The forceful g-force tears the zombie’s body off from the neck and it flies in the air like a straw man into the faces of the bystander zombies loitering and trying to get a peek at the street fight.

  Slogging to the finish line. David runs straight and does not waver, gripping the jawbone of the helmet, smashing heads inwards and outwards, killing and re-killing the dead like Samson against the Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. Dozens of bloodsuckers lay at the wayside. No matter where he swings, the weapon connects. Zombies galumph, keeping each other upright. David runs and riffles heads out of his way like weeds that keep materializing. From arm length to finger length in light speed, David assaults zombies in their askew noses. After each swing, David’s face stipples with layers of blood; the only clean surface is the white of his eyes. He elbows chest cavities inwards to shove the dead away like a bodyguard against rabid fans. Get the fuck back.

  David feels like he might overdose on adrenaline.

  He’s lost in a living mausoleum stomping in tissue sediments within puddles of blood; a sprinting zombie lowers and lifts its head like a charging bull between David’s shoulder blades. Disoriented and sprawled on the grass and soon to be his resting place if he doesn’t move.

  The zombie head slips out of the football helmet and its friends crush it like a bug. David barrel rows backwards sacrificing the helmet for his life, he stands by grabbing the broken arm of a zombie and stabbing another zombie with it through the eye. There are growls from the gaped tooth mouths of both curmudgeon zombies.

  He advances on heavy feet; fingers kneading into the doughy faces, spearing four digits through skulls with one hand and with the other slicing his knife just above zombie eyes. Mists of blood cover David’s lips. Copious amounts of dark blood trickled down his arms, it looks as if he has been dunking his arms into buckets of red paint and is about to paint the story of his life on a blank white wall.

  24

  David’s evanescing into thin air; he’s low on fight and flight. His unkempt poofy hair is now a flat mess caked with guts and grit. It looks as if someone has dumped days old bowls of spaghetti on his head. Behind him is a field of twitching carcasses. Dark feathered birds hover and swoop in the embodying miasma.

  David’s body aches, his bleeding heart is on its last leg as he falls into a zombie like a drunken man. He chins the zombie’s chin; they clink together like wine glasses, shattering the dead face inwards. David grabs another zombie by the nose, shoving his fingers into the zombie’s nostrils, yanking it back and detaching the zombie’s head in half, upwards.

  The blood loss, the exhaustion, the extra weight are eating away at David’s resolve and paralyze him for a moment. If you run or don’t run you’re a loser either way. Who keeps score on this kind of thing? The troops of munchers shift stances, breaking up formation, followed by a droning sound similar to a flat-lining EKG. A zombie resembling a bird with cataract eyes with fine strands of white hair, minus teeth, bites David with rows of solid bone. David feels the tiny bones in his hand shift around like broken glass on a board. More domineering zombies overtake David like quicksand, he can’t breathe under the suffocating weight.

  Through the arches of legs, David sees a black figure in the distance. He stops crawling, lies on his back and laughs to himself as the dead bite each other in a fury. At least I get to leave this hellhole.

  All the zombies disappear from the downtrodden landscape from David’s mind’s eye with a blink. He’s in the car with his blind date, him and Ava are laughing at Abigail’s cursing, he’s shaking Delilah’s hand. He remembers…him sitting on a bench in the park overlooking the lake…watching people and relaxing after a jog…his happy routine with familiar and fresh faces every time he went…his heaven.

  “HERE...” He crawls out of the pile, pushing a staggering zombie in his way to the ground, waves his hand high, jumping up like a drowning man in an ocean. David blurts out. “HERE.” Caring more about his life than pride.

  25

  Coop circles his horse and shots in the air, the zombies love it, David’s too busy rolling on the ground trying to dodge the fizzling dead as if they’re elephant feet. Coop’s gunshots ward off the reams of zombies from David in a slow and steady allure, his novelty long forgotten.

  Freewheeling on the ground, the horde parts around David like the Red Sea. Coop charges and changes direction. Move or get trampled by accident. That would be a damn shame.

  Westbound, Coop comes into better focus every second like a Polaroid picture. Coop’s an American hero, the ghost of Wild Bill Hickok, firing his guns into the air like six-shooters.

  Coop races by David shooting into the herd. They start out crawling, then walking, then running after him. David stands and pushes his way out from the other side, bursting through the amniotic fluid. Finally.

  Coop’s a miniature and fuzzy version of himself.

  With a second wind, David runs besides the zombies, they’re a family of wildebeests shaking the earth. They run back to familiar ground. Where’s my bike? Soon enough, David’s left for dead at the back of the herd like a youngling. From afar, it would seem as if David’s a lion chasing the frighten animals on the plains.

  David’s drafting behind the herd, it goes left and he reroutes right, rolling into the ground in exhaustion. He’s prostrating at his bike like the Jewish at their Western Wall, praying for luck. From the ground again, he sees something that causes a sni
ppet of a smile. David crawls up the bike and takes his first deep breath in ages like a new born.

  He squeezes the handlebars hard enough to snap them off. “Coop, you old fool.” The motorcycle spins and blasts from its vortex.

  26

  Sliding out of the slaughterhouse chute, David rides his bike to find Coop. Not going to be the chicken or the pig today. The ache in his body is a dull throb as he rakes through the burning coals in his brain trying to warm-up to the idea of seeing tomorrow.

  In the distance, Coop looks like a seesaw horse with kids running towards it to be the first to enjoy it.

  David says. “Come on, faster, you piece of shit.”

  All eyes are on Coop firing left and right, buffeting top of skulls with the bottom of his guns. Hunger pangs carved all over the inbound zombies’ faces. The pain and struggle on the zombies’ bodies look like they’ve ran the one thousand mile Iditarod race with Coop as their master.

  Ever since the rain fight with Delilah, Coop’s horse has been looking thinner.

  David stops his bike sideways, watching Coop turn the running herd towards him.

  Scraps of clothing barely cover the tetchy zombies, resembling cave men hunting down their prized mammoth. Teeth and fingernails impale Coop’s horse with a second skin.

  David writhes the handlebars. “Hold.”