by Guy James
But time wasn’t forthcoming. Jane heard a scrape, and turned to see that Vicky was now in the kitchen, having pushed past the wine refrigerator.
Jane reached for a knife with her non-pan hand, just as Vicky—much more deftly than before—grabbed for Jane’s reaching hand.
Vicky’s fingers closed over Jane’s wrist just as Jane’s fingers closed over the knife’s handle. With a strength that startled Jane, Vicky began to pull Jane’s hand up, toward her dry, gaping mouth, toward cracked, broken lips that resembled the lips of a person who had just come crawling out of the desert, lips too dry to bleed.
“Let go of me!” Jane screamed, struggling against Vicky’s grip.
Jane’s mind began to flutter off somewhere as she looked into Vicky’s eyes, as she couldn’t help but stare into them, powerless to resist the cold feeling that now washed over her.
No escape.
No way out.
She began to scream, and barely heard her own voice.
Chapter 27
Milt took a few puffs of his inhaler, then picked up the empty Coca-Cola bottle and held it in front of his belly like a shield. He gulped down some aromatic, battle station air, then belched in fright.
He had read enough comic books and played enough video games to know exactly what he was looking at right now. It was a zombie—one of the walking dead.
Milt wondered for a moment if the zombie had walked into the store that way, and if he had been too preoccupied with procuring the Twelve-Gemmed Hammer of Azrael to notice.
No, Milt thought, I certainly would have noticed a zombie walking into the store, wouldn’t I have? Milt thought it was more likely that the zombie had walked in as a man, and transformed into a zombie while browsing the store. That meant that there was a zombie virus running amok, and—wait a second, zombies? There was no such thing as zombies, this was just some idiot troublemaker trying to scare Milt—probably the landlord’s costumed agent. Milt was well aware of his landlord’s contempt for Milt and the comic book store, and this was just the kind of thing his landlord might do to try to intimidate Milt into leaving.
“I am afraid your crass tactics are not going to have any effect on me,” Milt said, fury filling his fat cheeks as he spoke. “You and that villain Mr. Trevena are going to have to compensate me for all of this damage. And let it be known that I shall never leave this place. It suits my temperament quite perfectly.”
The man in the zombie disguise moaned in response.
“Are you listening to me, you ruffian? Answer me! Are you unable to formulate a rejoinder on account of your trifling wit? Perhaps a higher concentration of mono-syllabic words is in order. I will not leave here. And that is a poor mask. Mr. Trevena would have made a better zombie au naturel than you do in your absurd makeup and thrift shop attire.”
Apparently, a rejoinder did occur to the man—part of his lower jaw fell off. It landed on the carpet and bounced twice before sputtering to a stop by Milt’s bursting furry slippers, which were straining admirably against the pudgy girth of Milt’s feet.
Milt reexamined the man’s mask and observed bite marks on the man’s face and neck. There were chunks of flesh missing, and with the piece of lower jaw now missing, Milt could see the man’s tongue hanging out and askew, raw bone and jaw muscle peeking out from behind it.
Milt considered this for a moment.
So it was not a mask. Milt’s mind found itself struggling for purchase, as his body put forth a commendable, though unattainable effort to recruit muscle fibers—any muscle fibers—into action for immediate flight from this obvious predator.
Milt had to do something quick, or the zombie was going to get him. It was lurching toward the battle station, getting closer with each rigid spasm of its legs. Miltimore the Sword-Wielder would know what to do, and in a timid, unbelieving sort of way, Milt knew what he had to do too.
A karate yell flew from Milt’s mouth.
It had no effect on the approaching zombie, so Milt struggled to his feet and lumbered his great body around to face the wall behind his battle station. From it, his shaky hands pulled his replica, 39 inch Conan the Barbarian Sword of Crom, which he had modified to resemble Miltimore the Sword-Wielder’s sword by coloring the hilt black and darkening the blade with charcoal, so it looked more like a sword that was used, and not one that just hung around for display purposes. Milt figured that Miltimore the Sword-Wielder used his sword, and its gleam would have dulled over time by way of contact with blood, bone, sinew, gristle, wine, women, and the countless other adventuring objects that Milt’s replica sword was never to encounter…until now.
The sword looked authentic, and it felt that way too. It was heavy, and it was a product of sound planning that Milt took care to eat well, or he might have more difficulty wielding the sword than he already did.
As the zombie approached, a quick realization dawned on Milt. For years, he had made a ritual of sharpening the sword with stones. He did this while he watched the Conan movies and polished off Snickers ice cream bars, usually as a reward for another glorious life conquest—in the virtual world. The last time Milt had done this was last month, when he set the record for the longest World of Warcraft continuous playing session at eighteen days, four hours, thirty-two minutes, and seven seconds. When Milt had woken up at his battle station two days later and realized the enormity of his accomplishment, he took his sword down into the basement, popped in the first of the Conan movies, got out his sharpening stones and ice cream, and set to work.
Now he knew there had been a reason for all of that. All the while, he had been preparing for this moment, for this day. The monster had leapt off the comic book page to confront Milt, and Milt was ready.
Milt raised the sword in front of his body in a shaky, awkward jiggling of arms. The zombie reacted to Milt’s sword-brandishing by moaning and hastening its stumble toward the battle station, its ruined jaw gyrating sideways, click-clacking as it swiveled.
Locking eyes with the revolting jaw gyration, Milt raised the sword over his head, feeling a sticky, chocolate-infused part of his shirt come unstuck from his body.
Then, when he judged the zombie close enough, Milt belched up some peanut shards, and brought the sword down with all of his sword-wielding might.
Chapter 28
As soon as Sven turned out of his driveway, he saw them.
Lewis Mountain Road wasn’t a very wide street, but it wasn’t very narrow either. It fit four cars shoulder to shoulder.
Ahead of him, Sven saw bodies in the road, similar in complexion to the things he had encountered so far that day. The ones in the road stood, pale and deflated, and Sven knew they would be hungry.
There were four of them, scattered about the street. They didn’t look at each other, and they didn’t react when Sven pulled out, shifted into drive, and began to creep up the street toward them.
The closest one was Charlie, who lived three houses up from Sven. Charlie was 34 years old, and lived at home with his mother. The two of them owned a popular Scottish Pub on the Corner, called The Pub. Charlie liked to call it, The Pube. Sven thought this was very funny, but he also understood that most people couldn’t appreciate that kind of basic humor. It wasn’t crass like everyone said, it was just good, basic, caveman humor. You had to have a certain level of testosterone in your body to understand it, and Sven did. Poor Charlie, Sven thought, he had a lot of potential.
The next was Linda, a professor of economics at the University of Virginia. She had always been very nice to Sven, and when he saw her that way—the way she was now—he had to look away. Linda lived across the street from Charlie, and at the moment she was standing across the street from Charlie too.
The next grey bodies were farther down the street. They stood together, and Sven didn’t know who they were. Judging from their backpacks and relative lack of pudginess, Sven guessed they were college students.
Sven drove up the street at 10 miles per hour, being careful to..
.he wasn’t sure what exactly, just being careful. Ivan had found a comfortable spot in the passenger seat’s foot well next to his backpack, and was cleaning his face with a paw.
They passed Charlie and Linda first. Neither Charlie nor Linda moved. They both looked pale, emaciated, and very obviously in need of medical attention, if medical attention could do them any good at this point. Sven rubbernecked, overcome by a dreadful curiosity, then made himself drive past his now-former neighbors.
The two college kids were farther up the street, in the middle of the road. Sven saw that he would have to drive around to their left to avoid them, because there was a car parked on the right side of the street next to where they stood.
Unlike Charlie and Linda, the college kids did react to the car’s movement, and from a distance. They each raised their heads, locked their black eyes on Sven, and began to creep in the direction of the oncoming car.
Sven’s mind flashed on that movie, The Happening. Everyone Sven knew hated that movie, but he liked it. It made sense, it was about how people were screwing up nature and nature would come back to get them one day. It was bad to mess with nature. Sven had a feeling that whatever was happening that day, like in The Happening, was happening for a reason. Something was out of balance, and the illness that was now ravaging his street was probably there to restore the balance, except Sven hoped he wasn’t part of the balance restoration. Right now it was a matter of living long enough to find out.
When he drove closer, Sven saw that the college kids were an item. Their fingers were laced together and they wore matching outfits.
As he drove around the staggering couple without any trouble, he noticed their skin. It looked dry as paper, like they were all dried up, devoid of moisture. Sven glanced at the rearview mirror. The grey couple had begun to turn after him. Whatever joy they were sharing they would not spread to Sven, Sven was getting the hell out—
“Help!” a woman’s voice screamed. “Someone, please! Help me!”
Sven searched for the imperiled screamer, but saw no one.
“Sven!” the voice screamed, startling Sven into slamming his foot on the brakes. It was Jane.
“I’m trapped in here! She’s trying to…”
Sven took his foot off the brake and careened into Jane’s driveway. He hit the brakes, raised the windows all the way, and put the car in park. He could see Jane now, through her kitchen window.
He got out of the car, put Ivan in the backpack, and slung it on. Leaving Ivan in the car to roast—or worse—was out of the question. The sick people were unusually strong, and Sven was sure they could break into a car for something they wanted, maybe for a cat. As long as Ivan rode in the backpack, he would be able to make a run for it if something happened to Sven.
Sven leapt painfully from the driveway onto the front lawn, then ran to the window where Jane was. Seeing the state she was in made his heart drop. She was screaming, and flailing a knife and cast iron pan at her clearly diseased roommate, who looked just how Lars had looked, and was trying to bite Jane’s arm.
Without a word, Sven tore the screen off the outside of the window, then began working on the window itself, which he quickly realized was jammed.
It was designed like many of the windows in his own house, so that it could be pushed out from the inside. Sven pulled at the bottom of the window, but it wouldn’t move. It was stuck, and there wasn’t enough clearance for Jane to get out through.
Sven pulled hard on the left bottom corner of the window, ignoring the stinging pain in his chest. The corner came free, providing a narrow, slanted opening in the side of the window that still wasn’t practical to climb out through.
Jane screamed again, flailing harder with the pan and knife, inspiring Sven to redouble his window-pulling efforts. Jane had already begun to climb through the gap between the frame and the side of the window that Sven had managed to slant outward. Her right leg dangled out the window as she pushed into the frame with her shoulder, still flailing her kitchen gear at Vicky. They pushed and pulled together, Sven pulling with all of his weight, Jane leaning against the window with hers.
Then there was an awful tearing pain in Sven’s chest, and the window broke the rest of the way out of its frame with an impressive snapping of wood.
Jane fell from the window onto Sven, but she didn’t come down all the way.
Her left leg was caught.
Inside the kitchen, Vicky had hold of Jane’s calf, and was pulling it toward her open mouth. Most of the way out the window and supported by Sven, Jane swiped at Vicky with the knife, having lost the cast iron pan in her fall.
The knife lodged in Vicky’s cheek, but Vicky was dogged in her struggle for Jane’s prized calf. Sven wasn’t going to let Vicky win. He wrapped his arms around Jane’s middle and pulled.
They fell backward onto the grass. Jane was free, and her calf was whole. They lay there panting for a moment, Sven telling himself this was no time to lie down, pain or no.
Then Jane screamed again.
Vicky’s gnarled hands and raggedy parts of her forearms were still latched on to Jane’s shin. One of the forearms was detached from the rest of Vicky’s arm well below the elbow, and the other forearm was detached just above the elbow. The clinging body parts looked bloodless.
Jane’s eyes were half-closed as she lay panting, as if she could get away from Vicky’s detached hands and forearms by refusing to acknowledge their presence. She crawled backward, away from the house, but Vicky’s clingers remained.
Jane looked at Sven, her eyes pleading. “Get them off me, please.”
Sven reached for the twitching hands around Jane’s shin. Reluctantly, he began pulling on the fingers. When Sven pulled on one finger, the others would tighten, and when he let go of one he had pulled, it went back to its place, holding on to Jane’s shin.
Confused by this, Sven looked up. Vicky was looking down at him with sunken black eyes and a gaping, hungry mouth. The tattered stumps of her arms were pointed at him.
Sven swallowed and resumed pulling on the fingers. He was less delicate now, snapping the digits off one by one until the hands were fingerless and could be pried off.
When the hands were removed from Jane, Sven turned to find Ivan watching them from a comfortable spot at the bottom of Jane’s lawn. Sven felt his empty backpack. Ivan must have jumped out during the window-pulling.
Jane’s eyes were wide as she stared up into her kitchen, where Vicky stood framed by the broken window. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, wiping at her face. “Please, please let’s go away from here.”
Without a word, Sven put Jane in the car, set Ivan in her foot well, got in, and started the engine.
Chapter 29
The sword stuck.
This kind of thing never happened to Miltimore the Sword-Wielder, Milt thought. He had barely been able to keep his grip when he sliced through the zombie’s head. Then the sword caught on something impenetrable at the base of the monster’s neck. Letting a shudder jiggle its way through his body, Milt knew he would never forget the slippery rattle that had made its way down the sword as it lodged in place.
The blade had hit the zombie’s head off-center, and had come down through the zombie’s right eye.
The right side of the zombie’s head began to fall away, exposing what Milt interpreted as dehydrated brain matter. It made Milt think of smoker’s brain, if there was such a thing. It looked like the analog of smoker’s lung—shriveled and brown and not healthy-looking at all.
The monster began to fall forward, and Milt was overcome by a wave of revulsion. He let go of the sword and stumbled backward into his battle station, stepping into the Coca-Cola cooler with one slipper-clad foot and knocking over his urine receptacle with the other. A smell hit him then—not just that of the urine pouring onto the floor or the iced raspberry potpourri toppling out, but a strange, curious smell that seemed to be coming from inside the zombie. Of course Milt knew that zombies we
re rotten creatures, and yet the smell wasn’t that of decay as Milt would have expected. It was…it was…well, it was wonderful.
Reflecting on the marvelous odor, Milt fell backward onto a Star Wars theme chess set, removing it from mint condition status with a decisive crunch. Milt’s body was pumping adrenaline too furiously to take notice of the jagged chess piece fragments digging into his padding.
Milt huffed and puffed and finally rolled upright onto his knees. He looked down at the twitching zombie with its head split open, lying in a pool of iced urine and raspberry potpourri. Then Milt proceeded to hurl as he had never hurled before.
As he expelled the contents of his voluminous, multi-compartmented stomach—a Coca-Cola-coated mass of partially-digested miniature Snickers bars—Milt remarked at the lack of blood flow from the zombie corpse. It was as if the zombie’s flesh were all dried out.
That made Milt picture bags of salted zombie jerky hung up for sale in the Wegmans meat aisle.
With that salty vision clear in his mind, Milt’s hurling hastened.
Chapter 30
“Mom? Mom? What’s wrong?” Lorie walked into the living room to find her mom on the floor, slumped against the couch cushions. Lorie was holding her nose, and on a different occasion, hearing her own nasally voice might have made her think of those people on TV that inhaled helium and then talked like chipmunks—not today. Her mind was filled only with fear and concern for her mom.
Lorie put her hand on her mom’s forearm, and gasped at how cold the skin was to touch.
“Are you okay? Can you get up?” Lorie asked in her nasally voice.