Her broken hands flopped against the edge of the attic stairs again, unable to grasp anything. I sucked in a breath, trying to steady myself, to call on the rage inside me. It wasn’t there anymore. I just needed to do this. Like parachuting out of an airplane, I imagined--standing there on the edge of the door, blue sky yawning open beside me, knowing I had to throw myself out and fall. That’s what it feels like to stand there and think about killing your first zombie. This is still a real human being, and it makes no sense that suddenly life is forcing me to do such a thing. And what if there’s a cure? Doesn’t that make me a murderer?
But really, there’s no choice. It’s obvious these things will kill me if I don’t kill them. I accepted this fact with surprising ease.
I hesitated, wondering if I should use the club or the knife. The club was hard to angle and get a good blow in. I might not even be able to cave in her skull with it. But if I wanted to knife her in the head, I’d have to go down the stairs head first. And her blood could squirt in my eye, like that guy in 28 Days Later. Every zombie movie I’d seen was suddenly like a training manual, and it seemed smart to take all precautions.
She looked light enough, and it gave me an idea. I set my weapons nearby, planted my feet on opposite sides of the stairs, bent my legs down in a horse stance, and grabbed her wrists. Then I heaved upward, dragging her body roughly against the stairs and tossing her like a ragdoll face down on the attic floor. I quickly grabbed my weapons and watched.
She laid there on the ground, seeming stunned for a moment. This one didn’t even smell. Farts like roses, I guess. Her body looked ravishing; thigh-high stockings against creamy skin, skirt flung haphazardly up to reveal her lacey black panties. It was easy to forget she was a zombie as she lay there so obscenely. Not that I was actually having sex fantasies or anything, just that I noticed it was a sexy woman, wearing sexy clothing, behaving in a totally imprudent manner that no woman ever behaves around me. It really only happens in adult films. Or maybe in lucky men’s lives. I had zero frame of reference for this. I’ve had two girlfriends in my entire life, and neither one of them wore lace or stockings like that.
Her useless hands attempted to push her up, but they crumpled ineffectually under her. She used her palms for leverage and propped herself onto her forearms, slowly and methodically scooching her legs up under her torso and then pushing herself to her feet. I backed away while she turned slowly, her once-pretty face fixed on me as she lurched forward. The weight of the club felt awkward in my left hand. That didn’t stop me though; the minute she came within striking range, I swung with all my strength. The club crashed against the low ceiling rafter of the attic, jarring my entire forearm with white-hot pain as I yowled and the weapon slipped from my numb fingers, clattering to the floor. She advanced.
The knife suddenly felt so awkward and unwieldy in my left hand. “Oh shit oh shit,” I muttered, backing up until the hard wall and window were at my back. “Please stop,” I said. “Please just be normal. I don’t want to hurt you.” This was the stupidest fucking plan; why did you bring her up here? You have a death wish, that’s it. You want to be a fucking zombie, admit it. You’re so lonely and pathetic and you’re dying to be just like everyone else so you locked yourself in your own attic with a zombie.
Chronic self-derogation. It’s a trancelike state sometimes, where my head just overwhelms me with this negative, critical babble and I don’t even pay attention to what I’m doing. It’s like driving, zoning out at the wheel and just staring down the road into the future. There’s never any danger; you’re watching every car, making sure you stay on the road. Straight and narrow. One moment, you’re floating in this sea of self-loathing, the next minute, you’re standing there with a blood-drenched knife and a sexy dead zombie girl lying at your feet with her skirt flung up showing her panties to you and a perfectly precise puncture wound in her temple.
Oh yeah, and you’re the kind of pervert who casually wonders in that instance if zombie-ism can be sexually transmitted.
Chapter 8: Recently (2 weeks ago in Mavmart)
Mav’s Gang took our weapons and brought us inside Mavmart. We sat down at Mav’s royal table, which was really a bunch of foldout tables pushed together in the front of the store to form some sort of King Arthur’s Square Table while all the unimportant people sat at tables off to the side.
The dining area was situated in the McDonald’s near the entrance. All the normal table/chair fixtures had been cleared, and in their place were set up rows of folding tables. I knew Mav’s Gang had a lot more people, but there were twenty-two of them here, plus twelve serving women. That’s right—like the 1950s—he actually had women serving the men food.
The sound of occasional power tools thundered and shrieked from far across the store, so I knew there were people working there, and I also knew there were snipers and guards outside. For all I knew, they only had twelve women and fifty men, but they wanted us to see the glamorous side of things.
Beautiful girls served us bottled water and brought cold beer with a snack tray of crackers, chips, salsa, and dip. The women were perhaps the loveliest sight my eyes had ever seen. No woman could ever compare to the woman you see after weeks of the apocalypse. That must’ve been written on my face because Brock said, “Close your mouth, Sam, before you drool on these ladies.”
The others laughed, both Mav’s gang and mine.
“Sam is our virgin,” Doyle said.
“I am not,” I replied, feeling instantly lame for taking his bait. Somehow, his comment cut too close and made those wounds from puberty bleed, and people laughed harder.
“He’s writing a book about the apocalypse,” Army Dave offered. “He might actually be the last historian, so you probably want to stay on his good side.”
Mav’s right-hand man, a beardo named Cavelli, grinned wolfishly. “I’ll be sure to grab a copy at the nearest Barnes and Noble.” This got some laughter from everyone.
“I got a buddy who’s a Ranger,” Army Dave continued. “He said the government created the virus and it’s got a twenty-week shelf-life, then poof, it dies.”
“I got a buddy who’s a SEAL…but he’s walking dead now,” someone joked, eliciting laughs.
Mav raised a curious eyebrow and held up a hand for silence. “The only problem with your Army Ranger friend’s theory is that the virus started about twenty-two weeks ago, give or take.”
“Sure, but that was in New York. And not everyone got bit the first day. According to Scooby, the military is reclaiming control on November 23rd. Thanksgiving day.”
“You heard this from a guy named Scooby?” Mav said, mildly.
“Well, err, yeah,” Army Dave said. “He was a dog handler, so they nicknamed him Scooby.”
“Oh that’s priceless,” Mav said, clapping his hands together loudly. “Jackson, be sure to order a full case of Scooby Snacks for Thanksgiving!”
A bunch of laughter followed this, including Team Doyle. Even Army Dave laughed.
I had a moment of dissociation, where I looked around and it was as if I was sitting in the cafeteria in my high school, surrounded by loud, aggressive boys filled with testosterone, so different from me. People like these are the reason I didn’t go out much before it all happened. You couldn’t really open your mouth without some jerks jumping in and trying to tear you down.
There was one girl who really caught my eye. She might’ve been looking at me. She kept bringing me drinks and inquiring if everything was good, so much so that it became awkward and I wanted to say “yes, I told you it’s good.” It took me awhile to realize she wasn’t doing that to everyone else, and that she was giving me special attention. Her name was Charisse, pronounced ‘Shareese,’ and she had a tall, thin body and tousled black hair that fell to her shoulders. Her cheeks were pronounced and elegant, with a wide smile and bright eyes. She was beautiful and moved gracefully and made me shy.
I tried to watch her without her noticing, but she kept busting me, and
I would blush and look away. Every semester, a few of my students figured out how to make me feel this way. And just like this girl, they liked that power, and did it on purpose. I was powerless against them, standing there with flushed face, pins and needles rushing through me, quaky stomach, nervous twitchy hands like an adolescent boy. But somehow the university had hired me to teach them. I always felt inadequate, like I was a fraud and didn’t really know anything about psychology. Because if I had understood it, there’s no way I would’ve spent my life alone.
I was so distracted by Charisse that I barely noticed any of the conversation the testosterone boys were having. I felt like they should just get it over with and go outside and bash each other with a football. I made polite replies when I was addressed, and otherwise sat there miserably trying to compose myself and build up my confidence into some semblance of manliness.
A hand on my shoulder startled me. It was her. “Are you okay?” she said, her face inches from mine, etched with concern. And was that a mischievous, knowing glimmer in her eye?
“Yes, I’m good,” I blurted. “How are you?”
She laughed. “I’m fine.” Definitely a knowing glimmer. She added, “You just don’t look good at all. You look upset.”
“Nope, I’m fine,” I said, cursing my own existence as these curt, harsh words exited my mouth. I forced a smile to accentuate how good I felt and hurriedly turned my attention to the conversation at the table, hoping it would make Charisse stop looking at me like that.
Mav was talking about his practice as a pediatrician before the plague (so my guess that he was a pedophile gynecologist wasn’t too far off)!
Soon, the food was brought—ravioli and mushrooms in a cream sauce with real beef tips and garlic asparagus on the side.
“Holy shit, do you got cows here?” Doyle asked with a smile full of wonder.
“We took over Mavmart before the power went down,” Mav said. “And made sure to keep some coolers running on generators.”
“Goddamn this is great,” Doyle said, already digging in as my plate was being set in front of me.
I looked up, knowing exactly who it was giving me my food.
“Thanks,” I said, trying on an awkward smile but actually looking into Charisse’s eyes this time. She kept eye contact and smiled back, which looked so beautiful it immediately sent my eyes darting nervously away and my head spinning off into Sam Land.
Charisse wandered away, and the men at the table talked as though they were hanging out at Applebee’s during happy hour. I ate the food, and despite all the crap going on in my head, I was swept up in how delicious it was to eat a real meal. Team Doyle had been living off of Chef Boyardee and canned beans.
Mav blabbed something about the Evangelical baseball team he used to coach, and how they came in second in the league last year.
“I went to Living Word,” Stan said.
“Believer’s Chapel,” Mav said, with some pride.
“How ‘bout now?” Doyle said. “What do you all thinka God’s plan nowadays?”
Mav frowned, giving us the scholarly beard tussle. “Revelations said in the last days, the dead would walk the land. Might be the Lord gave the zombie plague to the worst sinners and left the rest of us here to be tested.”
Doyle snorted. “I’ve seen kindergarten zombies walking around, kids who barely come up to my knee.” He held his hand about two feet above the table to show their height.
I had a lot to say on the God subject, but I couldn’t think of a single thing that wouldn’t offend our host. I was dying to understand the human politic going on here, while I forced myself not to notice Charisse walking to the kitchen with some dirty plates.
Mav looked soberly at Doyle. “God doesn’t make mistakes. That’s a lesson you ought to pay attention to--He rewards those who serve Him and punishes those who oppose Him. That’s why my people are thriving, and yours are starving in the desert.”
As an outsider, I never understood normal social interaction. But suddenly, it’s this improbable zombie apocalypse, and I’m sitting at a table full of adults I would never have spent time with otherwise, and we’ve got Jesus freaks butting heads with rednecks while I’m bonering over the cute waitress like a pimply faced teenager! Par for the American course, if you think about it.
“Um, excuse me, is there a restroom here?” I managed to say. It happened in a pause, so everyone heard me, and suddenly I became the center of attention. I felt really stupid, because obviously Walmart has restrooms.
“It’s over here, near Customer Service,” Charisse volunteered. “I’ll show you.”
“Cavelli will show you,” Mav bellowed, gesturing at one of his goons. “No need for the women to deprive us of their hospitality!”
“Ah fuck it,” Doyle growled drunkenly. “Let the lad have some fun, Mav. Maybe the girl will teach him how to get to first base.”
Laughter erupted around the table, and Mav seemed to consider the idea.
Doyle clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder and whispered something I couldn’t hear, then suddenly Mav looked at me and grinned. He threw an arm around Doyle. “What the hell,” he said. “Go ahead, Charisse. Show the lad our fine establishment.”
The table went back to conversing. Stan gave me a wink and a subtle thumbs up from the hand that held his soup spoon. As if I was gonna enter a porno fantasy where Charisse would lead me to the bathroom and suddenly drop to her knees.
My heart drummed so loud in my head I couldn’t think straight as I approached Charisse, standing like some dream at the edge of the dining area and smiling at me.
“Come on, don’t be shy,” she said, grabbing my wrist and tugging me along.
“Yeah, Sammo, don’t be shy!” a voice yelled. Gary maybe? He was drowned by the laughter that followed.
Charisse clicked on a mini flashlight as she led me into the store. The lighting was all different now, of course. Walmart is normally a fluorescent eyesore with gaudy merchandise glaring like bug zappers. But Mav’s gang had hooked up halogen construction lights throughout, so the store was mostly dark. Making it the most creepy, unsettling place to wander through with a flashlight during the zombie apocalypse.
The rows of cash registers reared up to the left, deathly quiet tombs to capitalism and convenience. I glimpsed the Express Checkout as I followed Charisse into the darkness. It was a darkness so deep you had the feeling that zombies would lurch out of every shadow. But of course, I knew Mav’s Gang must’ve cleared the store, since they were inhabiting it.
I trailed behind Charisse, uncomfortable walking next to her and uncomfortable talking. To our right stood the women’s clothing section, complete with mannequins that had been humorously painted to look like bloody zombies. “I love those,” I said.
“Me and Lisa and Natalia painted them,” she said, turning and giving me her bright smile. “It was my idea.”
“I love it,” I repeated.
“So,” Charisse said, passing register twelve, “your gang is pretty small.”
I was still walking behind her like a nervous dick, looking at the way she walked more than I was looking at the shadows now. The flashlight silhouetted her, so it was just a shapely female shadow trailing in front of me like some sexy commercial. I felt tongue-tied. “Um, yeah, there aren’t many of us.” I wondered if she was fishing for information.
“And you have no women,” she observed.
Now I knew she was fishing, so I blurted out, “Are you mining for information about us? We aren’t trying to hide anything.”
She laughed, and the sound was somehow loud in the emptiness of the store. Normally, if you walk through a Walmart talking to someone, your voice is swallowed by the constant hum of background noise. But this was Mavmart now, and all you could hear was the distant laughter of Mav and friends far behind us. “What do you possibly think I would be mining for?”
“I dunno. Maybe Mav wanted you to find out more about us by picking the weakest link? Who knows. Every
thing is upside down to me now. And it was pretty upside down before all this anyway.”
She giggled again, that sound of pure whimsy that only female vocal chords are capable of.
“So,” she stopped walking and smirked cutely while she pretended to scribble in an imaginary notebook as she narrated, “Sam is the weakest link.”
I laughed. “I’m not giving you anything new there—that’s already obvious to everyone.”
She bit her lip. “I wasn’t trying to spy on your gang. I was just trying to make conversation, you know. What else is there to talk about?”
I was quiet a minute, and time froze as I stood looking at this mesmerizing creature who wouldn’t have given me a second glance before. Then I said, “Yeah. I know what you mean. I’m just an awkward person who isn’t good at social cues.”
“You shouldn’t trash on yourself all the time, Sam. It makes you sound like a self-pitying dink.”
“Okay, sorry,” I said robotically.
“No, seriously. It’s like you say this shit and then the whole conversation has to be about you and your lack of self-esteem. How boring to talk about. You know what my mom told me growing up?”
“What?”
“She said don’t ever limit yourself by what other people think of you. Just keep being better than you were yesterday, and then all the people who are being petty and judging you will fall away into your shadow.”
I digested that nervously, then had to admit, “Wow, you’re totally right. You totally just pegged me and pretty much my entire social problem.” I stayed quiet, embarrassed but enlightened by this, and grateful to her. “What about the fact that all these guys are so…masculine…and stuff. Isn’t that what turns women on?”
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