by Rod Redux
The story was vaguely disturbing to Mort. Gray Harbor was only ninety miles east of his home. He hoped the CDC put a lid on the mysterious outbreak real quick.
Before going to work, he checked Fred’s link one more time—curious about the tale’s dubious zombie angle. Instead of a blank DNS screen, his internet wasn’t working at all. He unplugged his router, plugged it back in, rebooted his PC, but it did no good. His link to the internet was broken.
It wasn’t the first time he’d had an interruption in internet service. He didn’t think anything about it. Just shrugged and went on to work.
“Did you read about the zombie?” Fred asked him later.
Fred had dropped by the shop, though he wasn’t scheduled to work on Saturday. He was dressed in a black t-shirt emblazoned with the Green Lantern logo and a tacky pair of checkered golf pants.
“Naw, my internet is out,” Mort replied.
“Really? Mine went out this morning.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, that is crazy.”
“So… what’s the scoop?” Mort asked, ringing up a few packs of Pokemon trading cards for a snooty little rich kid. “That’s $12. 84, bud… Thanks.” The register cha-chinged! and rattled off a receipt.
“Oh. Before my internet went out, I was chatting online with a guy who lives in Gray Harbor, and he said that military trucks were driving past his house.”
“Any zombies?” Mort asked.
Fred laughed. “No.”
“They’re probably just being careful.”
“Who? The zombies?”
“No! The CDC.”
“Oh... Yeah, probably,” Fred nodded.
Fred watched the register for a minute so Mort could take a bathroom break. When Mort was done, Fred bid his employer adieu. He was headed to Best Buy to look at internet routers, he said. Mort finished the day, locked the door, and walked home.
The city seemed unusually quiet. Traffic was sparse. There was a conspicuous lack of pedestrians on the sidewalk. Mort didn’t think too much of it, though. He was tired and hungry and wanted to eat, take a nice bath, and then read for a while before going to bed.
He tried his internet before retiring and saw that it was still offline. There was also no story about The Merry Shanty and its crewmen on the news.
When Mort went to sleep that night, he dreamed that zombies were chasing him through his old high school. In his dream, he’d taken refuge beneath his English teacher’s desk while a mob of undead classmates roamed the hallways, trying to sniff him out. He could hear them outside the English room door, groaning and shuffling. He’d huddled as far under Mr. Pommier’s desk as he could squeeze in, waiting for them to figure out where he was and crash into the room, fingers curled into claws, their low bubbling moans turned into piercing shrieks of hunger. Even in his dream, he was aware that his plumber’s crack was showing, but, pressed as tightly as he was under the desk, there was nothing he could do about it.
He was grateful when he woke. His eyelids snapped open and there was the old familiar ceiling of his bedroom. Mort smiled in relief. His body was clammy with sweat. He hated zombie nightmares, but something besides the bad dream had awakened him. What was it?
Engines thrummed in the darkness. His bed was shaking a little. The lamp on his nightstand chattered against his water glass.
He thought it was an earthquake at first, then realized it was the sound of heavy vehicles. The bass rumbling was coming from the street below. He swung his feet out of bed, walked to the window and peeked out.
Big military vehicles were passing on the street beneath his apartment, a caravan of them. The large trucks looked like some type of armored troop carriers. Green Army camouflage coloration. Tarp covered beds. Then a few jeeps zipped by. They were all headed east.
Mort watched the ominous parade from his bedroom window, dressed in only his boxers. His face, in the sallow glow of the street lights, was doughy and pale with worry. It might be a common sight in places like China or Russia, but in America, you just didn’t see military vehicles on maneuvers like that.
Restless, he turned on his lamp and went to his computer.
The internet was still on the fritz.
Annoyed, he grabbed his cell phone and called his internet service provider. At least his cell phone worked, but all he learned from the automated customer service line was that his ISP was “currently experiencing technical difficulties”. They were “working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible”. The robot voice then apologized for any inconvenience he might have experienced due to the service outage.
Mort couldn’t sleep for a long time, but it was Sunday and Fred ran the shop on Sunday, giving Mort a day to do laundry and get some rest. It wouldn’t matter if he slept in. Instead of forcing himself to go back to sleep, Mort walked into the living room, grabbed a can of soda from the refrigerator and sat down in his recliner to watch some TV.
There was one final news story about the Merry Shanty after that. Mort watched it on the Sunday evening news as he sat folding towels. The CDC was seeking two of the Merry Shanty’s crew members, the anchorman reported. The men had gone on the run following a tip-off that they were being sought for medical examination following their exposure to the unknown substance in the toxic waste barrels. Their crewmates had apparently all died from some unidentified viral infection. Police and officials from the Center for Disease Control were seeking Alan Twitty and Mark Lebowski. If anyone had any information concerning the whereabouts of the fishermen, they were asked to please call the CDC hotline immediately. It was urgent that these men be located and tested for possible infection.
“If you have come into contact with these men, please call the CDC for treatment,” the anchorman intoned grimly. An 800 number blinked at the bottom of the screen in red.
Though he was ninety miles from Gray Harbor, Mort felt a cold little worm of fear wiggling in his belly. He flashed back to the military vehicles passing his apartment building in the night. His terrible nightmare. He felt a sense of unreality. It was like he was living out a George Romero film.
Within a week, Mort saw his first real-life zombie.
3
Chocolate and Dildos
The morning Mort and Cactus Pete crossed paths with the last living pimp, the previous day’s cheery sunshine had been supplanted with overcast and intermittent drizzles. The blue skies had transformed into an old wet blanket, lumpy and colorless. The windows, when Mort woke, were speckled with rain. In the distance, thunder belched and rumbled, sounding like furniture tumbling and crashing down a long staircase.
They had snuck into an apartment on the second floor of an abandoned housing complex. The housing project was named Magnolia Village, but it was no picturesque village, and there were no magnolias, just a cluster of gray concrete buildings about six stories high. Its parking lot was full of late model cars, some with the windows duct taped, others with flat tires or big patches of rust. Magnolia Village… It sounded nice, kind of genteel and southern, but the place looked like it had been transplanted from some violence-ridden Russian ghetto. In the waning daylight, it was worse than depressing. Soulless was a better description. More like a prison than low income familyhousing.
They’d managed to move several blocks the previous day without being detected by any of the phage’s ravenous victims. Their ultimate goal of escaping the city before the nuclear plant went critical was looking just a tiny bit more plausible. Not likely. In all likelihood, one of them was going to slip up and get them both eaten. Or the plant was going to redline before they were clear. But it was plausible they might escape to the countryside and survive a little while longer. Mort didn’t dare to hope, but it was there in the back of his mind: the possibility. A subconscious glimmering of very, very faint optimism.
Magnolia Village looked as if it had been the grounds of a fierce struggle. There were bullet holes in the walls of the building, punctuation marks that capped some recent bout of violence
. Broad black scorch marks on the sidewalks. Brown spray patterns, like grim abstract paintings, swathed the entire area where gunfire had blown open human bodies. The sidewalks in between the monolithic apartment buildings were littered with the withered remains of the housing complex’s boarders. Men, women, children. Most of them were African-American. All of them had been mutilated. Their clothes shredded, their bodies devoured, their skulls cracked open and emptied of brains, hollow gourds.
Mort and Pete had seen so many corpses in the last few weeks that the bodies did not even register on their consciousness. They were only impressed that there did not seem to be any ambulatory corpses wandering the avenues between the buildings. That meant they might find a safe haven for the night.
“I don’t know where all the zombies went, but I ain’t complainin’,” Pete said in a low voice.
The complex was so forbidding, they’d probably fled it, Mort thought. Even in death, he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to linger here for long.
But it was sunset and they needed a place to sleep for the night.
They moved stealthily from wall to wall, peeking around the corners to check for zombies. It wasn’t like in the movies, where you could just bash in a zombie’s head if it spotted you. In the real world, when a zombie caught wind of you, they began to snarl and howl, and the sound alerted all the other deadheads in the vicinity. Before you knew it, you were surrounded. And they ran. They ran like unfulfilled housewives to a going-out-of-business sale.
“The coast is clear,” Pete whispered.
The two men shuffled around the corner and headed toward the most remote building. It sat at the edge of the complex, near a low-lying wooded area. Not exactly a park, this copse of trees. More like a rape-ground. There were lots of desiccated bodies missing their flesh and brains in this central area—really just crusty skeletons-- but no zombies.
“Quiet! Quiet!” Pete hissed, gesturing with the baseball bat he carried for defense. The bat was solid oak and had long sharpened nails driven through the business end of it, making it into a pretty effective wooden mace. He’d learned real quick not to use guns, except as a last defense. Zombies were attracted to any loud noise. The sound of a gas engine or gunfire drew them en masse. Loud voices. Screams. Music, too.
Mort screeched to a halt and they cocked their heads.
“I thought I heard something,” Pete whispered
“You probably did. Let’s get inside. It’s too open here in the plaza.”
Pete nodded and they slinked through the common area between the high rise buildings. Flies erupted in a thrumming cloud as the men crept past their human buffet in the center of the housing complex. The corpses looked like bones with bits of beef jerky stuck to them. Mort waved his hands at the shiny green and black flies, his skin crawling at the hive-like rumble they made. There were so many of them! Fat, autumn flies. The ones that tried to fly in your mouth and up your nose.
They selected the first apartment on the second floor they found that was unlocked. Mort carried a crowbar for a weapon-- and for prying into things that needed prying into-- but it was better to take a little extra time and look for an unlocked door than it was to make a bunch of noise trying to break into someplace that had been locked up.
Pete threw the door open and cocked his bat back.
There was often a zombie or two lurking behind closed doors. Mort and Pete had seen it often enough in the last couple weeks. Survivors got bit by zombies when they went out scavenging for supplies and, if they actually managed to escape, they retreated back home to nurse their injuries. Later, they succumbed to the Armageddon Virus, died and then reanimated, but zombies were too stupid to find their way back outside. The undead didn’t remember how to work doorknobs. It was a mixed blessing. You could escape them by simply shutting a door in their face. But it also meant they popped out of closed rooms like maggoty jack-in-the-boxes when you were looking for some place to sleep for the night.
But the living room was empty.
They went in and locked the door behind them. Checked the other rooms. The apartment was clean, furnished, showed all the signs of recent occupancy… but there were no people. No zombies, either.
“Jackpot,” Pete had grinned.
Now it was morning. A rainy gray morning in a soulless gray housing complex. They had spent the night in the second-floor apartment. Second floors were golden. They were too high for zombies to climb through the window (or, memorably for Mort one time, to accidentally fall through right in your lap) but not too high for Mort and Pete to jump to the ground below if they had to beat a hasty retreat.
Mort woke when Pete got out of bed and trotted to the kitchen to pee.
They were peeing in the kitchen trashcan because the apartment’s former resident had filled the toilet to the brim with feces and toilet paper before abandoning the hideout. The bathroom stank so bad Mort had rolled up a towel and pushed it into the crack under the door. They couldn’t use the tub or sinks either because there was water in them. Someone had at least had the foresight to fill the basins when the crisis began. All in all, it was a major score for them.
Mort rolled into his companion’s warm spot and tried to go back to sleep, but Pete was an early riser and didn’t like to be up by himself. He returned to the bedroom and nudged Mort on the head.
“Get up, sleeping beauty,” he sang.
“No.”
“Come on, Mort. Get up. Let’s have some breakfast.”
Mort and Pete always slept together now. It was safer that way. When you slept together, there was no question who or what was shuffling around in the next room. It was also, though neither would admit it, more comforting to have someone lying next to them. Simple human closeness. It helped stave off depression. Mort was perfectly happy putting up with Pete’s sleep hunching in exchange for that sense of well-being, slim as it might be.
Mort sat up in bed, smacking his lips and tongue. Had someone shit in his mouth while he was sleeping? “What did you fix me?” he asked.
Pete laughed. “Dream on, faggot! You’re going to fix me something.”
Pete was still in his underwear. At first, when they began bunking together, both men slept fully clothed out of some exaggerated sense of male propriety, scared their wieners might brush against each other in the middle of the night, maybe. After travelling together a few days, they grew comfortable enough with each other to strip to their skivvies to sleep…when it was practical. It had become a luxury. Like eating. Drinking. Being warm and dry. Not being devoured alive by crazed, slimy cannibals.
It was funny, that first night… Pete in his underwear, jamming his finger in Mort’s face. “You better not get any cute ideas, buddy,” he’d warned. “If you grab my junk while I’m sleeping or put your dick in my butt, I will use my baseball bat on you.” No worries there. Mort had no interest in same sex… er, sex. And he’d awoken the next morning to find Pete’s arm across his waist and Pete’s morning wood lodged firmly in the crack of his butt. Pete had apologized, face red as a fire truck, when Mort pushed him off. “Sorry, man, I do that when I sleep. I swear that was not on purpose.” Pete was so horrified, Mort felt bad for him and laughed it off. Neither of them worried about it now. Pete claimed Mort talked in his sleep and scratched his balls half the night, so it became a tit-for-tat type of thing.
Mort rubbed his crusty eyes. Scratched his nuts. His thinning hair was standing straight up. His face puffy and creased with pillow marks.
“Are you awake?” Pete pestered him.
“I will be in a second. Go do something. I gotta pee really bad.”
“You got a pee boner?” Pete laughed.
“Yeah.”
“Well go pee. And then you can make me something to eat.”
Irritated, Mort stood up and walked to the kitchen to pee in the trashcan. He didn’t bother to hide the tent in the front of his boxers. “I don’t know why you think I’m the bitch in this relationship,” he grumbled.
“
Whoo-eee! Now that’s what I call a blue veiner!” Pete cried.
“Ugh! Why do you always have to be so uncouth?” Mort asked, then he lifted a leg and farted in Pete’s general direction.
“That sounded like a duck with pneumonia,” Pete snorted.
Mort farted again.
“Ha! That one sounded like a firecracker.”
One more…
“Ew… that sounded… kinda wet, dude.”
The kitchen was stocked with a lot of lonely fat chick food. Lean Cuisine single serving dinners growing mold in the freezer compartment. Low carb snacks. Rice cakes that were supposed to be edible, good for you even… and yet, always tasted to Mort like mummy turds. Pete spit his out. “Jumpin’ Jesus! That’s not food. It’s like eatin’ those packing peanuts they use to ship stuff in. Fuck!” He picked rice bits off his tongue and shuddered.
Mort poked around the apartment. There had to be a stash here somewhere. Being a lonely fat chick himself—one with a penis, admittedly—he knew there was going to be a secret stash of chocolaty goodness hidden someplace in the apartment.
He found it in a shoebox under the bed. Snickers, Godiva chocolates, M&M’s… and a pink vibrator. He sniffed it to make sure it was clean. Guys did things like that. Yep, clean, he thought. There was also a much larger brown dildo under the bed next to the shoebox. It was one of those lifelike replicas, molded from an actual porn star’s cock. Feels Like Real Skin! the boxes they came in always proclaimed. Mort estimated it was about ten inches long and seven inches around. Made his dinky look like a little baby dick.