Cinco De Zombie

by Albert Aykler

  “Can someone call an ambulance already, for fuck’s sake.” Biker Gene’s whole skull had gone bright red. “My wife’s having some kind of seizure, and I’m dizzy as hell. What was in that food?”

  “Nothing was in my food. It was that chipmunk wrestler on the floor.” The cook looked like he might climb through the window and jump all the way down the biker’s throat.

  With all this friction and animosity out in the open, my creep-o-meter had dropped back to normal. Even though my fingers felt itchy for a substantial zombie bashing weapon, I figured we still had an hour or two to clear the place before the dead rose.

  “Any signal yet?” The Weekend Cowboy Cop stood waving his phone around at the top of the stairs to the poolroom.

  “Nothing.” Pete the Bartender sounded panicky. “Maybe we oughta drive out to the bend.”

  “Did you ever get signal here?”

  “No, never. That’s why we have the landline.”

  “Well, it’s dead.”

  While they debated the finer points of telecommunications in a mountain pass, I walked over to have a closer look at Ziggy. If the same thing I saw on Ziggy’s face was happening to Soccer Dad, I could see why Chad wanted to record it. A kind of grimacing smile stretched back the lips to reveal his rattling teeth. His eyes looked strange. Forced shut but bulging. The forehead wrinkled and unwrinkled in a strange rhythm.

  Why, I wondered, was Ziggy infected on the same timeline as Soccer Dad? The Biker Nurse kind of made sense. She had touched and breathed over the open wound. Did this mean everyone here was infected? Was Ziggy’s immune system weaker for some reason? I felt his neck for a pulse. Too much muscle twitching to get a good read. Nothing at his wrists. I put my hand to his chest and yanked it back in reaction to not a heartbeat but vibrations like bugs swarming under a blanket.

  “What the fuck, Ziggy?”

  His eyes opened. Struggling between the twitches, he spoke with almost no breath, “Stuck ze faddar. Stuck me. Stuck ze faddar. Stuck me. Stuck ze faddar. Stuck me.”

  The sound faded, but the muscles kept trying to speak. His whole body shook. I looked at his feet. His hands. In his left hand, he held a small hypo. I saw what I thought I saw. He had stuck the father with something, and then must have stuck himself by accident. Direct fluid injection of the infection to himself.

  Neither Soccer Dad nor Biker Nurse had reached this level of twitching. I had no memory of seeing someone zombify, but this all made sense. Kind of. The disease was taking over the nervous system and rewiring it.

  I stood back, watching Ziggy turn into Zombie Ziggy. It all happened in a matter of minutes. The sound of his body hitting the floor as he shook had brought a crowd and distracted Biker Gene from her wife’s body, which must have started the early stages of the same change.

  I looked over and saw that Soccer Dad’s body was still. But his face moved. Too much. Too fast. Chad kept recording his dad, but Tara had begun recording Ziggy. Karen held her daughter’s shoulder, watching Ziggy, and reaching for Chad. She was the only one whose terror lacked any puzzlement. She knew something.

  The waitress remained near Ziggy. Kneeling down. Holding his hand. Thinking she might help him, I guess.

  “Step back from him,” I told her.

  “Shouldn’t we do something for him? Shouldn’t we help?”

  “There’s no helping him now.”

  “He’s your friend. How can you say that?”

  “Do you have a weapon back there?” I asked the bartender without turning to him fully.

  “What?”

  “What are you talking about, man? A weapon?” The cook thought I had lost it.

  Bob Seger built to a crescendo on the jukebox. I remember thinking, It’s shaping up to be an 80s Classic Rock Zombie soundtrack tonight.

  Everyone continued to watch Ziggy, but I noticed another sound as Segar’s song finished. The Biker Nurse shook and writhed, head banging against the floor.

  That spun her wife around, and she shouted, “No.”

  The next song started. Sly and The Family Stone. “That’s unexpected.”

  “What?”

  “Sly Stone.”

  “She likes it.” Pete the Bartender meant the waitress.

  Ziggy’s spasms paused again. Then only his legs rattled. Then nothing.

  “About that weapon.” I didn’t take my eyes off Ziggy. I reached out, but the bartender clearly thought I had lost it.

  Weekend Cowboy Cop said, “Those are severe death rattles,” loud and deep enough that he could have man-cop-splained the Second Coming as nothing more than a late pizza delivery.

  I laughed, “Please, back away from his body.”

  The waitress still held Ziggy’s right hand. She pulled his curly mop of hair from his now unwrinkled forehead. “He’s your friend. He died horribly in front of you. You should be ashamed.”

  “He’s just scared.” Weekend Cowboy Cop made an accusatory excuse for me.

  “You ever watched someone die before, Cowboy?”

  “Actually—”

  Ziggy’s eyes opened, and a guttural zombie stomach rumble came up out of his taut grin.

  I looked back towards the Biker Nurse. Biker Gene tried to hold her still saying, “Baby. Baby. Baby. It’s OK, baby.” Over and over and over.

  And then I checked Soccer Dad. Chad kept recording and Soccer Dad’s face kept twitching, but no shakes yet. Maybe whatever Ziggy had dosed him with had slowed things down.

  I grabbed the back of the nearest barstool. I would not face two (or possibly three) zombies empty handed.

  I looked over at the Weekend Cowboy Cop, “Now would be a good time—”

  And he dropped to his ass hard on the first step going up to the poolroom. “Jason, you OK?” Pete the Bartender look worried. The waitress looked at him, too. Weekend Cowboy Cop (AKA Jason) was not the type to faint or go down so hard so suddenly.

  “Shit. He’s infected, too,” I said under my breath.

  Pete heard me. “He’s what?”

  “Infected.”

  Corporate-Cutthroat-Karen looked at me and faded into plain Karen before my eyes. She pulled Tara closer and looked over at Chad (still filming dear old dead dad), and then back to me. We shared a thought. If we had a zombie cowboy gestating in the poolroom, and we did, then everyone was infected.

  Competitive Idiot Genius Kevin had successfully aerosolized a new fast-acting strain of the virus. I looked from her eyes to Ziggy’s murse on their table where he had left it. I nodded and shrugged as if to say, It’s your one shrug of a hope. Karen went for Ziggy’s murse.

  And the sound of Weekend Cowboy Cop’s head hitting the pool room floor boomed once in shaka laka time to Sly and the Family Stone as he fell backward. No chance of him being the one to make this easy with that piece tucked in his cowboy boot, but maybe I could get to it before he went zombie.

  I saw Biker Gene turn to figure out where the boom that was the cop falling had come from. Biker Nurse sat up behind her.

  I let go of the barstool and headed for Jason the Weekend Cop’s boot.

  One step away from the pool room stairs and the waitress screamed in pain behind me.

  I looked back.

  Ziggy was Zombie Ziggy and getting intimate with the waitress in a gastronomical way.

  Cynical zombie killing amnesiac that I am, I did not turn back for that poor screaming waitress. A wonderful, beautiful person, with parents or cousins or someone who probably loved her and a restaurant that depended on her competence and charm, but by my math (and, as it happens, I am damned good at zombie math), she was a zombie one way or another.

  I let her scream and went for Weekend Cowboy Cop’s boot. I got there before he started twitching. Easy as tacos, I would be armed. This could all end with a relatively minimal amount of gore. Since kitchen air handling systems are often separate from the rest of the restaurant, there might even be a couple of survivors left besides myself, depending on what came through the kitchen pas
s-through window.

  Weekend Cowboy Cop could probably manage a fast draw from his tight boots, but it took some pulling for me. By the time I had pulled up his pant leg, I could tell by the sounds of barstools, screaming, grunting, and Pete the Bartender’s sideline coaching (“Run. Under the bar, quick,” etc.), that the waitress had evaded any secondary nips from Ziggy. I looked over my shoulder and saw my one-eyed-friend-gone-zombie. If only this gun would come out already, I thought, I will end him.

  Zombie Ziggy could not negotiate the bar stool legs shielding the crouching waitress. A scream from the other side of the restaurant stopped him. Stopped all of us. Zombie or not. A world had split in two.

  Zombie Biker Nurse sunk her teeth deep into Biker Gene’s gut. “What the fuck? Aghh.” Biker Gene tried pushing her off, but Zombie Biker Nurse came back with frantic zombie strength and sunk her teeth into her beloved’s neck. If Biker Gene managed to scream, it got lost under Sly and the Family Stone.

  My hands and fingers felt like wool gloves dipped in honey. I told it, “Come on. Come on. Come on,” until I started to lose my breath. That was me panicking. Fumbling. Any gifts my infection gives once my adrenaline gets going had not yet arrived. Once the adrenaline engages, my heart rate slows and dexterity and strength improve incrementally, but it took a few minutes sometimes. Or a good scare.

  And as if on cue, Weekend Cowboy Cop started into shaking, his head pounding out a surf punk doom rhythm against the pool room floor that did not match jukebox soul. The drumming pulled Ziggy Zombie’s attention away from the Biker Buffet in the dining room. I fumbled at the jeans and boots. I did not want to turn away from Ziggy, but then he came at me, and the adrenaline, and whatever else came with my condition, hit.

  In flowed a wave of warm calm. The world slowed. My hands felt normal again. I could disentangle a pile of nachos without breaking a chip. I reached into the cowboy boot and looked back at Ziggy not two steps away now. Watching him, I pulled, and out came the weapon. I brought it to my other hand to switch off the safety and pull the hammer back.

  No safety. No hammer. Not a revolver. Not a little Tomcat Beretta. I looked down.

  Shit. Not a gun.

  A knife. A big ass hunting knife. But only a knife.

  I ripped off the sheath and threw it at Ziggy’s one good eye, keeping the knife for the all-too-close work that was surely to come. The sheath hit him square in his one good bulging eyeball. A little luck never hurts. It did not slow him down, though. He ran at me blindly. Drawn by the sound of the Weekend Cowboy Cop and the smell of my warm living blood.

  I scrambled but not fast enough. Weekend Cowboy Cop’s knee connected with my jaw as his body spasmed. That threw me back as Ziggy Zombie came down scratching and clacking his chompers on top of me. Fortunately, the bodily chaos and his lack of sight kept him from getting a good piece of me. I swung, stabbed, and poked with the knife but kept missing anything that would slow either zombie. I kept at it until I lost the knife in Weekend Cowboy’s ribs, but I managed to break free. Ziggy Zombie’s frantic need to feed only tangled him up with the still twitching Weekend Cowboy.

  I jumped down into the bar area. Both the waitress and Biker Gene had stopped screaming, but I could hear Tara crying over the opening chords of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ “Refugee.” Is this jukebox from 1980?

  I was unarmed and everyone not crying was about to come up zombie.

  Fast zombies. Very fast zombies.

  How long had I been struggling to get free of Ziggy?

  I had lost track of someone. Someone now on the other side of the bar from me. Zombie Soccer Dad. How did he get there so fast?

  I almost didn’t recognize him in the great big black sombrero with silver sequin decoration that used to hang over the bar. How did he get that on his head?

  Pete the bartender stood rigid with fear at the opposite end of the bar, a bottle opener raised to try to defend himself. Why did he think that would help?

  I stood baffled beyond action on the other side of the bar.

  Glancing back to where I had last seen Zombie Soccer Dad on the dining room floor, I instead saw Karen and the kids cowering under a booth along the far wall. Zombie Biker Nurse had them boxed in. Soon, she would likely tire of the now twitching flesh of Biker Gene. She had painted the dining room floor with enchilada Suiza-tainted entrails attempting to escape her girlfriend’s insatiable appetite for biker belly.

  Zombies have a few of particular sensitivities and tastes, among them a rejection of infected flesh and an odd aversion to cinnamon in significant quantities (pounds not ounces). The former would matter here and determine when Biker Nurse would move on to the defenseless family.

  The cook screamed, “Pete,” from the kitchen. Zombie Soccer Dad gave an oddly gentle tilt of his sombrero-ed head before he popped like a spring for the bartender’s tan, fleshy neck. Pete buried the sharp bottle opener into Zombie Soccer Dad’s shoulder as the zombie’s teeth dug into his neck.

  Zombie Soccer Dad took the blow without flinching, but the momentum pushed him backwards, ripping out the left side of Pete the Bartender’s neck veins and tendons.

  The Bartender’s tense, cheerless heart kept pumping and a bloody fountain shot from his neck spraying the bar and the large Mexican beer banner over the kitchen window. Somehow, most of the blood did not go into the kitchen or onto the Dad’s second chimichanga platter still awaiting delivery.

  Pete brought both his hands to his throat, vainly trying to keep his blood in his body, lurching forward and past Zombie Soccer Dad as he did, but with dying control, so that as he stumbled, he fell across the beer taps, practically jumping into them. The taps snapped off, sprayed, and then bubbled beer. The bartender slipped and fell, disappearing behind the bar with a loud thud.

  “You fucker,” the cook screamed, waving a cleaver at arm’s length out the kitchen window. Over the cook’s shoulder, I saw the hair-netted and aproned dishwasher frozen in a state of shock at the back of the kitchen.

  Zombie Soccer Dad saw a meal in the window he wouldn’t have to kneel to eat. And I don’t mean the chimichanga platter. He went after my taco chef friend unsticking me from my spot in the no-man's-land of this zombie boondoggle. I did the opposite of what made any sense and ran for the bar.

  The cook, who had quite sensibly pulled his arm and cleaver back in as Zombie Soccer Dad came for him, yelled at me, “What are you doing?”

  “Weapon. Weapon. I need a weapon.”

  “Under the bar, by the ice maker.”

  I found a decent aluminum softball bat that might survive more than a couple of skulls, but then again, they may survive it. Everyone looked big, fast, and hungry at the moment. And very, very infected. How the hell could this happen so quickly?

  “Gun?”

  “What?”

  “No gun? You don’t have a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Shit.”

  “What? I don’t like ‘em.” A swing and a miss with his cleaver. “Besides, we give Jason free beer, so he’s here every night.”

  “Without a gun.”

  “What?”

  “He had a knife in his boot.”

  “Well, shit. Can’t trust nobody these days.” Zombie Soccer Dad leaned through the window reaching for the cook, who kept swinging his cleaver in self-defense. I noticed the cook had his phone in his other hand, recording video of everything, which explained why he couldn't seem to connect his cleaver with the fast moving, but not too clever, Zombie Soccer Dad trying to come through the kitchen window.

  I looked down at the bartender, already twitching at my feet, then up in time to see the all-but-forgotten chimichanga platter flying at my head. Amidst all his groping, Zombie Soccer Dad pitched this two-and-a-half pound monster of Mexican cuisine with some real velocity and lucky placement from fifteen feet away.

  Before I could think, I swung the bat. A solid hit lined right back at the pitcher hit Zombie Soccer Dad square in the back. Nothing like self-preserva
tion to hone batting skills. He slowed and started to turn towards me.

  The cook finally connected with Zombie Soccer Dad’s elbow. The cleaver sliced through the infected flesh, catching on the bones of his elbow. One end of the blade stuck in the counter, wedging the arm between the blade and Formica. Zombie Soccer Dad jerked to a stop, one hand reaching for me and the other attached to the counter behind him.

  Karen-Mother-Of-Two and the kids screamed.

  Anyone who tells you there are rules to zombie infections and the impending pandemic apocalyptic nightmare they threaten is a conning you. Zombies do not come with rules or regulations. Most of life doesn’t.

  The best we get, if we take the risk of living outside highly contrived lab conditions, are a few basic guiding principles. Maybe a handful of useful procedures. And a bunch of ever-adaptable practices. These three things that can help you survive. And maybe help save humanity.

  Besides, rules and regs go against my whole dissipated, feckless, worn-out punk rock ethos. That said, ever since someone, a long time ago told me about having an ethos, I have believed in having one.

  Funny thing. I cannot remember who taught me about ethos or how I came up with my own, but my ethos is something I carried through that first incident at Silvercrest along with my love for tacos and my friendship with Ziggy.

  Anyway, my guiding belief comes down to this: Don’t be an asshole.

  But over the course of half a dozen zombie incidents, I have also developed some simple principles to help me orient and focus in times of crisis.

  My principles have to do with when it is OK to take out a zombie. They run long and often require some consideration and reflection. I tend to focus on principles after an incident. I wrap my trauma and guilt in them, hoping that I can convince myself everything I did was for the best. From principles come practices and procedures. For example:

  Principle: Zombies do not speak. All words uttered by a zombie are latent language center synapse fires, without connection to logic or the now zombified person speaking.

  Practice: Observe and record words uttered by zombies as necessary, but never mistake them for the work of an active living mind.