A young pregnant woman jumped from one of the porches as though she was a cricket on hot asphalt and appeared at Princess’s side. “No you don’t!” Princess elbowed the girl in the jaw. “It was supposed to be a good day.”
The heavily pregnant girl fell on the blacktop and struggled to get to her feet around the huge belly. Princess kicked her in the head. “Go!” We ran.
A few steps later a kid rolled out so fast in a wheelchair I was amazed that the thing didn’t topple over. He launched his broken body in Rotten’s direction. Rotten extended one hand and caught the kid in the chest. The kid fell hard against the curb, crushingly hard I should say, and we ran on.
A couple steps later an old woman did a back flip and ended up right in Sully’s path. Sully stopped so suddenly he fell on his ass and the woman descended on him; I kicked her in the throat. She was frail, I outweighed her by a good twenty pounds, if not more, and I heard her neck snap. Highland pulled Sully up and we ran again.
“Right!” Highland yelled as we approached the corner. Rotten turned and we followed. Highland dug in the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a key, and took the lead.
About half a block up, he slammed into a metal door, ducked low, and slid the key home.
“It’s a gig,” he said, as we fell inside and he locked the door behind us. “Going to be a rave here next week.” He led us up the stairs. “Don’t judge me, it pays the bills.” I didn’t mention that Highland does lights and sounds for raves, did I? That’s because I didn’t know until that moment, that’s the thing with Highland, you just never know.
“That’s all I can say for sure, they’re fast,” I said.
Highland rubbed his chin and looked back onto the street. “That’s not much,” he muttered.
I shrugged and yawned. Hell, it was the middle of the night, or at least it felt like the middle of the night. I was suffering my typical depression and hadn’t had enough sleep, not that I had ever had enough sleep.
“This is what I think,” Highland said, turning from the window. “We sleep in shifts. Rotten and Dove will take the first watch. Princess and Moonshine, the second, and I’ll take the third. But I want you guys to pay attention, make notes if you have to. I’ll wake you guys in the morning and we’ll talk.”
“What about Sully? He doesn’t get a shift?” Moonshine stared at the man.
“Not until he understands it isn’t the flu,” Rotten said. “Hell, he might open the door and offer them aspirin or something. He can’t be trusted.”
The others moved off to stretch out on the floor, Princess snuggled up against Moonshine far away from Sully, and Rotten and I stared down at the street. It was quieter; the screaming had all but stopped. He elbowed me and pointed at the corner, I turned to see a man rolling as you might see a child rolling down at grassy hill. He rolled quickly like the street was on an incline instead of being completely level. Rotten and I glanced at each other without speaking, and turned back to the window to watch the man roll past.
“You saw the video of that guy jumping over rooftops and down on cars and back up onto the roofs again, right?” he whispered.
“Yeah, like five times,” I said. “Weird shit. And all the other weird stories we’ve been hearing for a month now. You’re right. We should have seen this coming. Hell, we’ve been watching zombie movies forever.” How many times had we gathered in Highland’s basement for The Night Of The Living Dead marathons? And what about The Omega Man? I know we watched that one a good thirty times, and I had such a crush on Charlton Heston when I was twelve. And the last time we’d all been together it was to watch Zombieland at Rotten’s place. We should have known, but we were caught up.
I was caught up in life, busy getting my heart broken over and again, trying to keep up my grades up in school, and dealing with my depressive nature which took a lot of work on my part to ensure I had time to lay around and feel sorry for myself. I was lucky that I didn’t have to worry so much about the future. I’m a trust-fund baby. My Grandpa invented a doodad that is used in computers and he got rich. And as I am one of his grandchildren, he set me up - college education, room, board, and food paid until I graduate – then squat until I turn thirty-five. I intended to make the most of my very liberal education, and I figured I had all the time in the world. And hell, the way it was looking I might not graduate until I was thirty-five.
Princess was busy running her gallery where she sold art, her own and others, and vintage clothes, jewelry, and furniture, or whatever she found on her excursions to thrift shops and antique stores. The gallery was downtown, close to the river where the property was run down and cheap, and she lived in the small apartment in the back. She lived bare-boned and often turned up at my apartment around dinnertime.
Rotten was a musician and divided his time between music and conspiracy theories. He didn’t have to work as he came from old money and received a monthly stipend that more than covered his simple lifestyle. His parents, who had also never held jobs, were new age hippies and traveled the world spreading their brand of love and light.
Moonshine was probably the most normal one of us and that kept him pretty busy. He worked in a giant hardware store where he sold wood and wood accoutrements. Moonshine was a hunting, fishing, motorcycle riding, and baseball loving good ole boy. He was a guy’s guy, a jock, and it seemed his friends and adventures were limitless, but he still made time for us.
And no one really knew what Highland did, not really, his life had always seemed like a big mystery to us. Okay, we knew he did light and sound shows, we knew he still lived in his mom’s house, and that he could get anything you needed and only charged you if it passed the fifty buck range. But Highland was quiet and you just never felt like you really knew him.
Rotten had known the apocalypse was coming, but the rest of us had forgotten the pacts and rules we made as children. At eleven, we knew the zombie apocalypse was going to happen. At twelve, we had plans – serious plans. At thirteen, we’d meet at midnight, or whenever we could sneak out, at the corner of Atworth and Sumner and act out our plans. At fourteen, we still got together and watched the movies. At fifteen, we were different - we grew up and put away our childish notions.
“We should have known,” I whispered. “But we forgot.”
Rotten nodded his head.
We woke Moonshine and Princess a couple hours later and stretched out on the floor beside each other. I tried to sleep, but my mind found it hard to settle. That had always been my problem, I thought too much. I had been told over and again in my youth that I shouldn’t think so much, but really, how do you change that? I was a wonderer. Not much of a social creature unless a subject I could discuss was broached. That’s why I still kept in touch with these old school friends - I fit in. It was rare in my travels, even in the classes I chose to take, that I’d find people who could even consider the alternative ideas of life and the meaning of it, much less discuss them. These old friends were odd, but they were family, and I trusted them.
I thought about the guy rolling hundreds of yards as though it was a few short feet. His bones and joints were thudding against concrete and yet he smiled. A few feet is all in good fun, as I remembered some drunken nights in my sophomore year and the hill in front of the fraternity house of Sigma Phi. Six feet after too much beer is fun, but a hundred yards on hard pavement is demented. Sully said it was a brain-swelling virus, a flu. He compared it to meningitis. But I’d never heard stories of people with meningitis tearing out people’s guts. And frankly, seeing Penelope rip into Heather was worse than all the zombie movies I had ever seen, and I know Highland was just as freaked, especially since the spray of the initial wound hit him square in the middle of his white shirt.
I drifted off to sleep, but I dreamed of back-flipping pregnant women and seas of blood.
Day Two
Friday
December 12, 2014
Highland woke me with a poke of a boot to the ribs. I sat up and swung at him. “What the fuc
k!” I yelled.
“I know how you are about your sleep, Dove,” he said, moving out of the way of my hand. “I ain’t bending down there to get my head knocked off. What the fuck, indeed.” He ambled off to the window.
Princess sat on the floor and scratched at her scalp under the dreadlocks, while Moonshine jumped up and did jumping jacks. Rotten stood with a groan and said, “Is there a john in this place?”
“Down the stairs, first door on the right.” Highland pointed.
“He shouldn’t go alone.” Moonshine picked up the two by four with nails.
“I don’t need a guard to piss,” Rotten snapped over his shoulder, heading toward the stairs.
“What the hell, Rot, you think you’re the only one with a bladder? Get over yourself.”
After we had taken our turns in the bathroom we gathered back at the window, well, everyone except Sully. I think Sully was still in shock, I mean we were all in shock, but Sully seemed to have a really bad case as he sat on a crate and stared at the floor.
“Okay, report what you saw,” Highland said.
“We didn’t see much, some guy rolling down the street like he was rolling down a hill. And I mean all the way down the street, it was creepy,” I said.
“We saw some guy running on all fours like he was a cat, he loped, must have covered five feet at a time. That’s simply not humanly possible,” Moonshine said.
“Anything else,” Highland asked.
“No, not really,” Princess said, twisting the dreadlocks up on her head and stabbing a pencil through them to keep them off her back. “We saw a prostitute get attacked by an old man. He nearly tore her head off, but she got up, kinda listing to the left, and went in the same direction as her attacker.”
“Well, I may have found the answer to our problem. Look over there.” Highland pointed to the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. “See that thing that looks like old clothes or a bag of trash?”
We studied and then nodded.
“That’s a zombie. I noticed a lot of them going up the street as the sun was coming up and heading to the parking garage on the corner. They seemed to move with a purpose. That guy was far behind and couldn’t move as fast as the others, probably because his leg was just barely hanging on. Anyway, he stepped into a patch of sun, stood there for a second and then collapsed. He smoked for a moment, and then he shriveled up.”
“So, you’re saying they’re zombie vampires?” I laughed.
“Hell, yeah! Why didn’t we ever think of that?” Moonshine held out his fist for someone to bump.
“So they won’t be out in the day?” Princess bumped his fist.
“That’s what I think, but we need to still be cautious. Maybe he was abnormal.” Highland chuckled. “As though any of them are normal. But I thought we should try to go by Princess’s place and let her get better clothes and shoes and then head out to my place in the old neighborhood.”
I looked at Princess’s mini skirt and platforms and down at my shorts and cowboy boots. “I wouldn’t mind some better clothes.”
“Yeah, I know, Dove, but your place is the opposite direction and Princess’s is just a few blocks away.”
“I don’t know why girls wear miniskirts and shorts in December anyway, seems pretty dumb to me. I don’t mind seeing cold girls walking around, if you know what I mean.” Moonshine winked at Princess. “But I sure don’t know why you do it.”
“You might have just answered your question there, Moon Man.” Princess winked back. “I’ll give you some clothes, Dove, we wear the same size.”
“Okay,” I said, not happy, but I figured in the zombie apocalypse you couldn’t have everything you wanted.
“Well, I’m going home.” Sully spoke. “I am not spending anymore time with you crazy people. Zombie vampires! Jesus, the only thing that is more ridiculous is that you are actually serious. This is not some movie on Shock Theatre,” he said, referencing the late night gore fest on a local cable channel. “Those people are sick.”
“Says the man who cowered in a corner all night,” Rotten said. “And where were those police you were so sure were coming? Oh, that’s right, they didn’t come. Just like we said they fuckin’ wouldn’t. You haven’t even gotten off your ass all night; you haven’t looked out the damned window once. Shit, if it hadn’t been for us, especially Moonshine, you would have been the next little morsel on Penelope’s menu.”
“Sick or zombies, Sully, they will kill you if they get a hand on you,” Highland said. “We’d all be better off sticking together, but if you want to go home alone, feel free. It shouldn’t be too hard for us to find a car, I’m pretty sure those guys sleeping it off in the parking garage won’t miss their cars. We need to move fast, though. We have a lot to do before it gets dark again,” Highland went to the trash piled along the walls to seek out a weapon and pulled out a two-foot piece of rebar. “This will have to do, we gotta go.”
“I’m going only as far as my car,” Sully said, as we piled up against the metal door that led to the street.
“Fine,” Princess said. “You were always a weak-kneed, Viagra sucking bastard anyway. We don’t need you.”
“You guys ready,” Moonshine asked, his hand on the knob.
“Yeah,” I said, looking around at all of my friends with their recycled weapons. “I think we’re good.”
“All right, we move fast. Up to Green and down to 5th Street. Stay in the road, away from shadows and buildings. Put Sully in the fucking middle cuz all he’s gonna do is whine. Unless…” Rotten chuckled, “we want to let him go play with the little flu sufferers.”
“That’s mean, Rotten,” I said.
“Mean, but funny.” Princess laughed with too much gusto.
“Ready?” Moonshine yelled and threw open the door. We followed, Highland behind Moonshine and Princess and I on either side of Sully. Rotten took the rear.
Moonshine ran to the corner and stopped, looking both ways. “There’s nobody,” he said. We stood for a moment and listened to the silence.
“Good. Move.” Highland pushed him in the back.
Moonshine jogged in the middle of the road, jumping over a few smoldering zombies who couldn’t find the dark in time. There were cars parked along the curb, but no one was hurrying to work. It was quiet and the usual line outside of Slug of Joe was non-existent, just a handful of smoky heaps of plaids, grays, and pinstripes could be seen on the sidewalk outside the door.
“Weird,” Princess muttered, jumping over a pile of what was once a human, and I have to admit, I admired the way she jogged in four-inch platforms.
We entered the intersection of 3rd and Green and Moonshine stopped in the middle of it. “There’s nobody,” he said again.
“The ones who survived are hiding – move!” Highland pushed him forward.
We jogged on.
“Fuck!” Moonshine yelled and jumped, coming to a hard landing on both feet. “Fuck!” We stopped behind him and looked where he pointed. “What the fuck!”
It was a head, a woman’s head. She still wore earrings, lipstick and eyeliner, and actually, she looked perfect except for the fact that she was missing her body.
“What the fuck!” Moonshine said again.
“She’s dead,” Rotten said from the rear of the pack. “Zombie one oh one, Moon. Gotta take off the head to kill them.”
I laughed, I didn’t mean too. I mean it was a head, with earrings and make-up! Shit, I wanted to sob, but I laughed.
“What the fuck, Dove?” Moonshine yelled.
“I know,” I said, laughing harder. “I’m sorry.” The tears came. “It’s a head! With make-up!”
Princess burst out laughing and then Highland chuckled.
“Shit!” Rotten fell to his knees, clasping his belly and laughing along with us.
Okay, we knew it was wrong, but it was either laugh or completely freak out, lose hope, and give up. It was a head, in the middle of the street, wearing make-up. I know, I can’t exp
lain it, but we laughed. Moonshine looked at us for a moment with wide eyes and then fell into his classic giggle that almost sounded like a donkey braying and we laughed harder.
“You’re all insane!” Sully broke from the pack, ran to the corner, and the laughter left us in an instant.
“Stay out of the shadows,” Highland snapped.
“There’s nobody! They’re all dead!” Sully bellowed.
“He’s dead,” Princess muttered.
“Yep,” Moonshine agreed and moved toward the man.
“Stay away from that doorway!” Rotten yelled and began to run in Sully’s direction, his metal stick held high.
Sully turned and ran into the alcove of the National Bank. He pounded on the thick mesh that separated him from the glass doors and peered inside to see no one. He turned, saw Rotten running in his direction, and looked for a way to escape. He glanced to his left and then he saw them. Four of them perched on a little marble bench out of the sun. Two were children and their eyes reflected the light back at him as when your headlights cross a cat or raccoon in the middle of the night on a lonely road. It was night shine - on a city street - at seven in the morning. He looked to the right and saw three more, one an old lady in a housecoat that looked like his grandma.
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