by Smith, T. W.
He stood and crossed to the bedroom closet, opening the louvered doors. He checked the shelves, the hangers, the floor, and came up with nothing. He closed the doors quietly.
Stop taking my stuff, queer-boy! said the Lonnie-thing. How would you like it if I came over to your house and went tearing through your bedroom? Bet I’d find some really interesting things, wouldn’t I? Now, come over here where I can see you!
Will turned. From where he was standing, he could see nothing but the bed. In fact, he could leave the room without seeing her at all, close the door and never see her again. But first he had to move.
Get over here, faggot! Get over here close where I can nibble on your feet. I’m not picky like Ben. I’ll nibble on your toes real soft and gentle-like. I’ll take your foot in my mouth like you’d take your boyfriend’s cock if he weren’t dead. Yeah, slip that foot in my mouth, slow and easy, and when I do finally bite down, the blood will gush and flow and taste so good.
That broke the trance and Will went straight for the door. He reached to pull it closed behind him when she spoke again, softer, pleading.
Wait, Will! Don’t leave me here like this. Please, have mercy. You have a gun. Use it. Help me.
He stopped, and looked at the gun in his hand.
She’s right. I shouldn’t leave her like that.
He entered the room a final time and stepped around the bed. The Lonnie-thing was still there—no change. Was he expecting there to be? Would there now be something behind those crazed eyes resembling intelligence, something human remaining in that mess on the floor?
No.
Her eyes found him, mouth agape—a wriggling bloody horror, forever on this carpet, in this bedroom. As real as it may have seemed, she hadn’t spoken. Will knew this. She couldn’t have possibly known that Frank was dead.
It was all in his mind.
Great. The whole world is going to hell in a flaming hand-basket and I have this to deal with too.
Another voice: Brian’s. You can’t shoot her, Will. The sound will lure them. Time is ticking. Get your stuff and go.
He turned away, closed the door, and headed back down the hallway. In his mind, the Lonnie-thing’s pleas resumed: No! Don’t leave me! Come back here and be a real man! Come back!
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he rounded the corner to the breakfast nook only to find the zombie Realtor man—Jerry, his name was Jerry—standing in the kitchen. The other woman he’d seen was entering the room as well, from the open door to the basement. The man saw Will and jerked around, his hand clipping a kitchen tool caddy. It went sailing from counter to floor, crockery exploding, stainless steel spatulas, whisks, and spoons clattering. The volume was like a tiny explosion in the small room but the man was oblivious as he came for Will, ceramic shards crunching beneath his heavy shoes.
Will was shocked with surprise and anger. An adrenaline surge came and he rode it, moving toward the creatures and the table. He snatched the totes in one hand and the dog food in the other, and then backed away into the foyer, his only real option for escape now. He proceeded down the hall to the front entrance, releasing the dog food long enough to twist the bolt, and open the door. The paperboy was standing in the street. He turned at the sound of the door and began lurching his way into Lonnie and Ben’s yard.
Will dropped the supplies on the porch and reached back in for the dog food. The Realtor and the woman were more than halfway down the hall, gaining fast. He shut the door, and held the knob while fishing in his pocket with his free hand. His fingers found the Mercedes key fob. As he fumbled with the keys, the knob came alive in his hand, those things twisting and pulling it from the other side. Will tried two keys with no luck, but the third one turned the bolt and locked the door.
Won’t last long though. They figured out how to open the one in the basement.
He carried the supplies down the porch steps and into the front yard before releasing them again, this time into the thick grass of the lawn. The paperboy was coming fast. Will dug through the tote and found his machete . He raised it, eyes following the blade’s spine past the tip and toward the approaching zombie. The boy-thing hobbled faster toward him, satchel bouncing against his hip. Will closed the distance with a few steps, raised the machete, and brought it down hard on the creature’s head. The blade cracked the skull and went in all the way to the bridge of its nose. The boy’s eyes rolled back and he crumpled to the ground.
He had to use his foot to hold the boy’s head in place as he wiggled the embedded machete loose. While doing this, he caught movement next door, high. He turned to find Katie was watching him from her second story window. She waved, timidly.
What… the… fuck?
Just then, Lonnie’s front door slammed open and the Realtor-thing came spilling out, falling down the steps and into the grass. The woman was right behind him. Will ran to the left side of the house and around to the backyard. He had to get away without leading them anywhere near home, so maybe he could play roundabout and have them follow suit. He’d circle the house, pick up the bags and be gone before they caught up with him. When he reached the backyard, he waited long enough to see them round the corner before high-tailing it to the side with the—now open—basement door.
He spared a few seconds to glance up at Katie’s window again. She was still there, eyes-wide, shrugging her shoulders in a universal I don’t know what to do pantomime.
Will didn’t linger. He raced across the front yard, snatched the bags, jumped over the paperboy, and crossed the street—running up Judy and Howard’s driveway, to the right side of their house. He dropped the loot in the woods near their fence and went back to make sure he wasn’t being followed. The Realtor and the woman were again in Lonnie’s front yard, going back around. They had not seen him branch off.
They’re confused.
You’re projecting again. It’s a pattern.
Will they just keep going around the house, forever?
No. Something will distract them.
Harold and Judy’s woods led to the lake as well—sans a trail, but easy enough to figure out. Before going all the way to the water, Will crossed over to his own fence, reaching over the chain-link, and placing both bags and the backpack on his property. He kept the machete and continued on.
Once there, the sun was still fairly high in the sky. The lake was gorgeous.
Yeah… big and blue, and probably full of those fucking things.
He emerged from the woods and walked down to the shore, always mindful of sounds, pausing here or there to make sure he was alone. He sat and waited near Howard’s dock for a good half-hour.
The sun was a little lower when he opened the gate leading home. Halfway up the trail, he crossed through the woods to collect his bags.
When he entered the backyard, he waited again, listening for anything out of the ordinary. He heard no sound. No one came.
After making rounds of the immediate fence, he went inside. He took the dogs to the basement bathroom for a brief stay. Before he shut the door, Lola looked at him with scrutinizing eyes: You wouldn’t leave us in here, would you?
He went back upstairs to the peephole in the front door sidelight, convinced he’d find the Realtor-thing and his girlfriend marching up his front yard.
They weren’t.
But there were more zombies now—in the street and loitering in Katie’s front yard. Seven total. Some he recognized and others he didn’t—joining the Realtor and the woman, who had stopped circling Lonnie’s house. They were all agitated, wandering aimlessly about each other but—mercifully—not headed in his direction.
Will watched them for several minutes. Eventually, two veered off down the street. Maybe the others would soon follow.
He stepped back from the sidelight and allowed himself to breathe.
The batteries in the Quiet Collars were fine, but he decided that he and the dogs would sleep in the basement that night. He fed them some of the new food and they gulped it
down greedily. He made a makeshift bed on the couch in his old office, and the dogs slept on the floor.
As he drifted into shallow sleep, he thought about Katie in that upstairs window.
How could I get her over here? Should I get her over here?
And just before he slipped into unconsciousness, he heard the Lonnie-thing speak.
No, baby. She’s ours.
Aftermath
Three weeks earlier.
Will saw the first zombie in his own neighborhood three days after Frank had disappeared.
She was walking down the street in front of his house in the midday sun, her gait slow and staggered. She was barefoot, in muddied jeans and a torn, pink midriff. She was missing an arm and the bloodied stump at her shoulder was blackening. He did not recognize her.
She was still pretty, even with the missing appendage. Every ten steps or so, she would stop and look around before she would resume walking, as if she were hunting. He knew this was not the case. Zombies were reactive creatures, their behavior anything but premeditated. She was probably hearing something, a sound he could not hear (being behind closed doors)—maybe a bird she had difficulty pinpointing for pursuit. Still, her mannerisms suggested she was on the prowl.
You’re projecting, Will.
Brian had begun speaking to him after Frank’s disappearance. Sometime in those days following, when time had muddied and grown stagnant—somewhere in that dark tunnel Brian had emerged, his voice steering Will away from the mire, and guiding him back to higher ground. He had been distraught, borderline catatonic—the sensory overload, the helplessness, Frank snatched away—it had simply been too much.
Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped!
Ha. Ha.
He knew that it was not really Brian, but a shade of his own self, making conversation—just like he knew that last statement had less to do with Frank and more with the events he’d witnessed via satellite in Lima (and maybe his fondness for Shakespeare). But to think that somewhere in his brain a box had opened and Brian had popped out was a little jarring. Why Brian? He didn’t even know the guy.
The girl with one arm veered off the hot asphalt and stumbled into Judy and Howard’s front yard. Will held his breath, certain that she would continue her trek by diverting across their yard and into his, but she did not. She lost her footing in the grass, doing an exaggerated pirouette, arm extended, until stepping off the curb and pitching for the street. Last second, she fell into a deep lunge half-skip, recovering and resuming her erratic pace down the street.
She meant to do that.
Very funny.
He had heard of children having imaginary friends—could this be a similar condition? He didn’t think so. And the voice was so distinct, a personality not quite his own… and a bit on the obnoxious side.
Hey, I’m in the room, you know.
It could have been worse. He could have been reading the autobiography of Larry King, or someone despicable with a bad accent. Besides, Brian’s appearance had been a rescue from… from what? Madness?
Maybe.
But there were higher priorities to consider—a rational voice in his head was far less to be worried with than the other problems mounting. And Brian was a good sounding board. Maybe that was his purpose—psychologically speaking—to be a tool for determining strategies, resolving problems, remaining sane.
I am not a tool.
Whatever he was, Will owned it. The prize was his—he’d won it, and he’d learn to live with it, just like he was learning to cope with all of the other shit being thrown his way. Cope—such an unappealing word, and one he’d always associated with weakness. Brian had mentioned coping with his mental disorder in the introduction to the manifesto. There seemed to be a lot of coping going around. Coping was the new black.
The one-armed girl had made it all the way down the street. Will moved from the foyer to his office window to continue observing her progress before she rounded the bend and disappeared from sight.
Well… now that you’ve seen the new neighbors, what’s next?
He was on his meds—would have them for the remaining week—yet anxiety loomed still with this first sighting. Dread coupled with obsession was an evil marriage, overbearing and suffocating. In the past, irrational fears would interrupt his thoughts, dominating and altering his mood. Did I leave the stove on? Is the garage door down? Little things that most people would shrug off lingered like unwelcome guests until he disproved or remedied them (and multiple reassurances were often necessary). Sometimes he wasn’t even aware of the source of his unease, as if he was overlooking something, the tiniest detail that would result in ultimate catastrophe. Rarely did these suspicions manifest and, if so, the outcome was never as dramatic as the imagining. But the anticipation was the killer—worrisome gnats that circled his head prophesying disaster, averted only if he could remember what danced at the cusp of his thoughts.
Visual confirmation that these things—these zombies—were near, just outside and in the street, amplified any similar insecurities tenfold. Sure, he had seen one already—in the field near Frank’s car, the one with the broken back—but it hadn’t registered like this. That encounter was brief, and he had been distracted by the accident and Frank’s absence—pumped with adrenaline and in shock. Now, observing one from the window of his home brought a deeper, more unsettling apprehensiveness.
This… is… real.
He had spent three days alone, without any contact other than the dogs, feeding them out of habit and waiting—waiting for Frank to come through that door and convince him that everything was going to be all right, just fine. Waiting was what needed to be done he told himself, nothing else. Just wait.
But Frank never came, only the gnats. They flitted about with their tiny, high-pitched questions driving him to the doors and windows. They told him that he was wasting time and needed to be prepared—but with Frank removed, the urgency was gone, there was no desire. So, the gnats pummeled him with a barrage of irritating inquiries. Is the garage door down? Are the doors locked? What about the gate? Not the one in the driveway, the one at the lake. How will you know if Frank comes? You better check the windows again…
Seeking peace—and with what little strength he could muster—Will concentrated solely on the eradication of these pests. But his success with tuning them out was minimal. Cracks in his composure would surface, and in they’d swarm again with their invasive musings—swirling about his head, chirping, a whirlwind of endless chatter.
Somewhere during this battle, Will’s strategy evolved from eliminating the voices to reducing their volume and managing them. He imagined kneading them together like dough, shaping their conflicting tones into one monotonous pitch like static, then somehow decreasing the sound into a harmless white noise that—though it may linger—was far less distressing.
His head was boiling, and sweat beaded his face as he focused. He centered on his heart, its rhythmic beating in his eardrums, using the sound as leverage against the voices, forcing them to submit beneath its cadence. It was an unorthodox technique, but it was all he had and he was determined to make it work.
And it did—the voices began lowering from shouts to whispers, and eventually he was able to blend them into a lush, comfortable purr. As the chatter diminished, his strength returned with renewed confidence. His tensions subsided and he was able to relax again, enveloped in an invisible cloud of indistinguishable whispers. He closed his eyes and lay back on the carpet in the den, relishing the softness beneath him and drifting toward much needed rest. The whispers faded further, calling him to slumber, like the mythic sirens of Homer. And as he reached the threshold of unconsciousness, as his mind finally emptied into a void of pure, blessed silence…
Will?
He sat up, eyes wide, startled. The voice was so clear, so succinct. He thought someone had entered the room.
Will, it’s me, Brian.
The static was gone now. There was nothing but absol
ute silence and this voice, this new arrival.
From the website. I wrote the manifesto.
I know, but how?
Does it really matter, Will? You needed me. Now I’m here. Maybe I was one of the voices, the strongest. Maybe I told the others to buzz off—ha-ha—that I was taking care of you now. Maybe I brokered a deal between you and them—a compromise of sorts—and now it’s just me, solo. The important thing is I’m here, and I’m going to help you. Hey… I just realized it’s my birthday!
And so Brian came to be. With him, Will’s cognizance returned, and his survival instinct. His voice was not always calm, but it was rational, ushering Will into a keener focus. He explained that there were always steps to take and the dangers of complacency. He stressed the importance of details, how missed opportunities could lead to catastrophic events, that nothing was ever one hundred percent predictable, and that anything unexpected—especially now—could and likely would happen. Any small oversight could compromise their home, their safety, their lives.
Trust no one, Will, not even people you once knew.
That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it?
No. People change when confronted with mortality.
Will contemplated the dual meaning of this last statement.
Brian continued: When people are starving and need shelter they will do anything. What would you do? How far would you go to protect your home, the dogs?
He was worried about Rocko and Lola. He couldn’t always control them. He may be their master, but it was impossible to anticipate their every behavior. They couldn’t see the creatures, but what if they somehow sensed one outside and became agitated—growling, or worse, barking? Rocko had a hound’s bellow that carried well throughout the entire neighborhood. In proximity, he could easily be heard behind closed doors. Keeping fresh batteries in the Quiet Collars was no guarantee. They would have to be kenneled more often and they would not happy about it. No one likes living in a cage.
You didn’t answer the question, Will.
I don’t know. What are you asking? Would I steal? Would I kill?