I waited until the drunk zombies were a full block ahead of me and started after them, keeping to the shadowy yards. Almost immediately, more zombies were coming into the street, mostly from the direction of downtown.
It got really hard to move here. I stayed in the shadows, but at least one or two zombies streamed along every thirty feet, a trickle of them headed toward the sound. I didn’t want to face even one zombie with my baseball bat, and I wondered when that trickle would become a flood. My gut began to tighten. Maybe this was a bad idea after all. Gunfire seemed, for all purposes, like a mating call to zombies.
But when you’re a basically defenseless person in a time of crisis, possessing zero survival skills, you don’t really have any other options except to find some authorities to take charge and fix the problem. It’s like when your car breaks down: you don’t buy a tool set, jack your car up in the driveway and crawl underneath to see if you can figure out what’s wrong. You find an authority and pay $100 an hour then thank them gratefully for getting your life back to normal.
The next cross street was impassable. The zombies flowed too steadily and close together, and there was no getting across without being seen. I wasn’t in a great hiding spot either, tucked between two cars in someone’s driveway. The longer I waited for a clearing in the dead sea, the more likely I was to be spotted. There were too many zombies converging here, flowing toward the guns.
I opened the duffle bag and pulled out the flares. It was really the only shot I had, since going away from the guns was not an option.
I braced myself and pulled the cap off, expecting the flare to blaze to life, but it didn’t. “Defective piece of made in China shit,” I muttered under my breath. I grabbed another and pulled the cap, same thing. Was I doing something wrong? Is there a pull tab? I examined the flare and found a powdery red surface, like a match head, then I saw the cap had a flint-striking surface on it, too. How the hell should I know, though—when would a normal person ever use a flare in their entire life?
Just as I was about to light my flare, I caught a sound behind me, and sure enough, a heavy black woman was coming for me with her hungry fish mouth anticipating Filet-o-Sam. I grabbed my bat and swung, but her arm was in the way and I just managed to knock it down. Shit. My second swing came straight down onto her head with a sick chunk sound, and my third swing crushed her skull against the driveway. Two more zombies had noticed me and were heading across the yard, but they were forty feet away.
The zombie woman I’d dropped lay there shuddering while I crouched back down and struck the flare against the flint. Whoosh. I chucked the flare down Genesee Street onto the sidewalk and immediately had another one in my hand ready to light.
The flare seemed to work. The zombies heading away from it didn’t notice it, but the ones who saw it went for it. I grabbed my bag and my bat and darted across the road like a rodent, disappearing into a dark alley.
The alley was empty, but I saw the two zombies behind me were still following me and headed for the alley. I lit another flare and chucked it toward the center of the intersection. Sure enough, their gazes followed the bright red flame and they turned in mid-shuffle to head toward it.
Long pauses ensued every time I reached cross streets and parking lots--because the big, well-lit sections of pavement were my nemesis. There were too many zombies converging, but I made it each time, my heart racing.
Bock bock bock went the gunshots. That’s what it sounded like as they echoed off the buildings. Johann Sebastian Bach Bach Bach. That amused me, and I played Ave Maria in my head as I watched these human marionettes jerk, jolt, and shuffle down the road. It’s like being at the mall with headphones on; everything is a music video and everyone is a spectacle.
This was short-lived, though, because suddenly the gunfire became a staccato. I heard shouting, too, and my heart sank. Then it stopped all the sudden, and I heard the distinct sound of something else, something I hadn’t heard from anyone except the K-Rock DJ’s on the radio--laughter!
Chapter 26: Now
So next thing I know, Marsha, Vance, and I are hanging out drinking Elijah Craig whiskey and eating a meal that’s home-cooked on a Sterno she’d scrounged. Spicy Spam and ramen with spinach, onions, basil, and tomatoes she’d found growing in a hydroponic garden up the street.
“This feels like the best meal I’ve ever eaten!” I tell her. “Where’d you learn to cook, Marsha?”
She laughs girlishly, and for once, it isn’t that awful cackle. “Oh, my mama. Everyone knows the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach!”
I’m feeling a bit toasty and blurt out something totally uncharacteristic of me, “Yeah, but to get to his stomach you have to go through his dick first!”
There’s an embarrassing pause, but then they both burst out laughing.
“Sam Sam Sam, and here I thought you were a prude!” Marsha says.
“Oh man, I did too,” Vance says. “He’s got that shy, meek thing going on, right? But underneath there’s an animal living in that boy!” He laughs again.
“A manimal!” Marsha says.
Whatever she’s implying is lost on me. I blush at the attention. I feel good and even forget about the zombies for a while.
If this were a Hollywood film and Vance were white, he’d definitely be played by Sam Elliot--rugged, gentlemanly cowboy, ala Road House or The Big Lebowski. Since Vance is black, they’d use Morgan Freeman doing his Shawshank schtick.
In real life, he looks like a dark-skinned Steve Buscemi. His face is gaunt, covered with a scraggly week of patchy, unshaved beard, and his eyes could only be called ‘buglike.’ He’s missing a noticeable number of teeth. No one would call him attractive, but there’s something so gentle about him that I’m glad he found us.
“That straw hat makes you look like a Scarecrow,” Marsha says. “That’s what I’m gonna call you. Scarecrow.”
Vance chuckles. “I’ve been called worse things.”
His story is interesting. His whole family lived in the south, except his son James, who’d come up north on a basketball scholarship. James got hurt in a game, tore ligaments real bad in his leg, and lost his scholarship. He’d fallen into depression, and then drugs. “So I bought an RV and drove up here,” Vance says. “I decided to take him around the country, go see Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, share all that ‘beauty of living’ stuff that fathers always want to share with their sons before we die.”
“Sounds like a great plan,” I say.
“Yeah, ‘cept my RV got left on the highway down by Binghamton where all the New York City traffic was flowin’ in like a tribulary to escape the zombies.” He meant tributary. “So I found a ride with some folks who knew the country roads in these parts, and they brought me on up here. And, of course, Syracuse was already goin’ to shit so I just, well, started checkin’ the campus for him. The campus was completely overrun. But James is no dummy, and he can fight. I’ve got every faith he’s still alive somewhere ‘round here.”
“Camillus is hell and gone from S.U.,” I tell him. “I teach Psychology there.”
He perks up. “Jamie took an intro to psychology a year or two ago. Did you have a James Vance in any of your classes?”
I cringe. “Oh, man, there’s two hundred kids in every intro. It’s a lecture. I don’t really know any of their names, unless they come up and talk to me outside of class, which most don’t bother with. Intro is really impersonal, just teach them the basics and give ‘em Scantron tests. No papers, nothing for us to grade.”
“That’s what a fifty-thousand-dollar-a-year education looks like, huh?” Vance says.
“Fifty-thousand?” Marsha gasps. “That’s more than my house cost!”
I nod. “Yeah, it’s ridiculous. Most of the classes aren’t like that. Just intro classes. The department makes us rotate teaching intro. Nobody wants to do it, but how else can you give kids the basics?”
“I suppose.”
“So why Camillus, Scarecrow?�
�� Marsha says.
“Oh well, Jamie had a girlfriend in Camillus. I forgot the name of the town until I looked on a map. But then I recognized the name. So I’m just wandering around here, checkin’ things out, lookin’ to see maybe if there’s a camp of survivors. Radio’s been dead for days, and no phone signals either. Figure I’ve got nothing left to do but walk around ‘til I find him or they get me.”
“You got a wedding ring on,” Marsha says. I look, and sure enough, he has a gold band on his finger. That’s the sort of thing I never notice.
“She was bit.”
“I’m sorry,” Marsha says.
“It’s okay. We got to say goodbye.”
This is the first time I saw Vance not smiling. I see his pain, his age, and his weariness. I want to hug him or something, but I also feel foolish and unmanly so I just say, “There’s actually a bunch of people holed up in the Walmart near here. Men and women. They had at least a couple black guys in their group.”
Vance’s eyes lit up with hope. “Show me this place; maybe Jamie’s there.” His voice is youthful in a way and deluded in my opinion. Everyone wants to believe their kid is special and made it out. 99.9% of parents were wrong about that, though, and his kid had a bum leg.
“Um, okay, yeah,” I say, feeling put on the spot so I don’t know what else to say. “I’ll take you there.” I hide my terror at the thought of returning to Mavmart.
Chapter 27: Then
Gunshots rang out up ahead, so I know I’d almost reached safety! I could see muzzle flashes and hear voices laughing and talking at the cross section of Richmond and Geddes. Zombies were dropping, too. I could see them fall.
I cautiously got closer and felt that knot in my stomach again. This wasn’t cops, I saw. It wasn’t any authorities. They were regular men and women, mostly urban black people, hanging around laughing in the middle of the road and shooting zombies. There was a parking lot on the corner and more people hanging out there, too. It looked like a normal Friday night in the ghetto, groups of people just hanging out. Twenty or so of them stood together in the nearest group. I snuck up closer so I could listen in.
“Lookit that dude! He got his eye hanging out.”
“Somebody ate it,” a girl said.
“Motherfuckers eatin’ each other’s eyes out. They not even on they own team!”
“I know this is the government,” the girl said.
“It gotta be.”
“Nuh uh, this got military written all over it,” a new voice said. “I saw it on the military channel. They not zombies, they brainwashed. It’s like the CIA.”
“CIA is still the government, stupid.”
Blam went a gunshot.
“Ohhhh shit, Uncle Tom in a suit, that’s twenty-five points for me!”
“Naw it’s twenty. Whitey in a suit is twenty-five.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right.”
“And that ain’t no Uncle Tom, nigga. Look his shoes—dude’s got dreakers on!”
“Look his hair!”
“My man’s incognito. He’s Agent 007. Five points.”
“If he 007, then he worth fitty points, mother-fuck.”
Blam. Laughter. “Y’all stupid,” the girl’s voice says. “I just got me a little Chinese girl. How much is that?”
“Five points.”
“Bullshit—ain’t no Chinese living round here. That shit at least twenty.”
Blam blam blam. I could see zombies dropping now.
“Bitch you makin’ up rules now.”
“Look here, crooked dick, yo’ ass loses even if you get the most points.”
My heart sank deeper and deeper with every word. Not only were these not authorities, but they were totally useless kids. Probably no older than twenty-five, obviously drunk since they were holding beers, and definitely doomed to make critical errors and get themselves killed in this sort of situation. And I was just some nerdy cracker-ass white guy, as far as they’d be concerned.
I backed away into the bushes of a house and started retreating. I had zero idea where I was going now, but it was definitely somewhere else. The Onondaga Lake Yacht Club was only a few miles from here. That seemed like my best bet, now. Hopefully, I could find a pawn shop along the way and get a gun.
The front door of a house opened just behind me and a black guy came out wearing a jersey with the number 86. He held a shotgun in one hand and a pistol in the other, and without noticing me, he shouted, “Hey yo Darnell, I found it--” He stopped as his eyes fell on me. “Fuck are you doing in my yard, nigger?”
“Oh uh, I’m just passing through,” I stammered.
“There’s a white man in my yard!” he shouted, eyes stabbing me with anger.
“What?”
“There’s a fuckin white man creepin’ through my yard. Sneakin’ away from y’all.”
“No, I wasn’t,” I said.
“Oh yeah you was! Get the fuck up, you sneaky motherfucker.” He pointed the pistol at me. The shotgun was over his shoulder.
I stood up, dropping the baseball bat.
“See!” he yelled. “You see him?”
“Bring that fucker over here,” someone shouted.
“Get on over there, chickendick,” he commanded me. “My friends wants to see yo pasty white ass.” He aimed the gun at my head and fired in one smooth motion. I heard the bullet zing past me, felt its wind. My ears rang. I looked back and saw a zombie rolling off the hood of a car. “He was headed fo you,” the guy said. “I just saved yo sorry ass life, mothafuck.”
I felt sheer terror. The zombies had been a sort of numb, disassociated terror. Black people were a very real terror. I’m the guy who crosses the road when I see these kinds of savage urban thugs heading toward me.
I’m not racist. I have lots of black kids in my classes, but they’re kids who want an education. College professors are anathema to these urban types, the opposite of all they stand for.
Which is why I was absolutely terrified now. They were already playing cat and mouse with me. They saw me as the ‘other,’ as weak, as their enemy.
“I’m not your enemy,” I told the guy, trying to diffuse his hostility. “What’s your name?”
He replies, “My name is Shut-the-Fuck-Up-And-Get-Yo-Ass-Over-There-Before-I-Feed-You-To-The-Zombies!”
Chapter 28: Now
Vance, Marsha, and I drank and laughed late into the night.
I crack them up when I grab a basketball from the garage and draw a sharpie marker face on it. “Wilsoooooon!” I cry out melodramatically, rolling the ball into the hallway.
I begin feeling comfortable with Marsha and Vance, as comfortable as I get, anyway. I tell them more about my life than I had really told anyone, other than Veronica. They both think it’s strange that I was never married, and Marsha outright said, “Are you gay?”
This isn’t the first time people had insinuated that. “No,” I blurt. “I’ve always just been shy with women. They act like I’m some kind of weirdo. I don’t like the way that feels so I just sorta don’t really talk to them.”
Marsha nods with a knowing look in her eyes and a sort of half smirk on her face, like she knows something I don’t. “What about your students? Did you ever…?”
“No! Of course not!” I shake my head. “Well, once I made out with a former student, after she graduated. She wanted to do more, but I just felt weirded out and had to stop.”
“You are weird, Sam. But in a good way,” Marsha says. “So, was she fat or just ugly?” she jokes, laughing at a cringe-worthy volume.
I shrug. “Neither. She was beautiful. I just felt guilty. She was just a kid, and didn’t really know me as a person. She looked up to me as an adult.” I pause, remembering that moment, and just how young and immature she seemed, kissing me fiercely and running clumsy hands over my body. “It was sexy in a way, but I also felt like a pedophile. It didn’t feel right to do that.”
“Pedophile!” Marsha cackles.
“There’s nothing wro
ng with a younger woman giving an older man sex,” Vance says. “She appreciated you.”
“That’s right!” Marsha agrees.
I squirm, not wanting to defend myself, and I don’t really have a defense. “I dunno, it just felt wrong. Wouldn’t it feel right if it was right?”
Marsha says, “The first time I had sex it hurt like a bitch, but if I went by your logic, I woulda stayed a virgin forever and became a nun!” More shrill laughter. Marsha is the type of woman who makes herself laugh so much that it begins grating on you. We’re upstairs, in the master bedroom, which faces the backyard. The downstairs is locked up tight and heavy curtains on the windows up here block the electric lantern light we’re using to see. Still, I’m worried her ruckus will attract every creature on the block.
“Amen,” Vance says. “Funny it took a zombie apocalypse for you to find a woman, Sam.” He nods toward Marsha. “That makes me kinda happy for you.”
I squirm. I want to tell him Marsha isn’t my woman. The thought of having sex with her isn’t appealing at all, but she’d been sorta acting like she was with me all night, or at least not correcting Vance when he insinuated it.
“I couldn’t have found a nicer guy for sure,” Marsha says. “I’ll get him over his shyness one of these days.”
What the hell is she doing? I shoot her a look that she doesn’t notice.
She continues. “Men are so predictable. You guys are pretty much all the same, thinking with your dicks constantly.”
“I’m not like that,” I say to Vance.
“All guys say that,” Marsha says, rolling her eyes. “But the first time you saw me, you pounced on me like you hadn’t seen a woman in years!”
“Oh I’m sure,” Vance laughs, oblivious to me beside him, squirming at Marsha’s comment. “I can tell Sam is actually one of the guys who ain’t thinking like that. Or at least ain’t doin’ nothin’ about the thinkin’, to get all psychology on you!” He guffaws at his own joke.
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