It was an ugly tear. Raw. Suppurating.
“Don’t touch it, or you go outside with her.”
“Wait,” Lush said weakly. Her nostrils flared, utterly human. Ripe. Alive. “What if I’m like Petal? What if it doesn’t take?”
“It took,” War Pig said as a drop of black liquid dribbled from her ear. “Trust me.”
“I love . . . you guys. . . .” Lush said, and then groaned, holding her stomach in pain. Sweat poured off her forehead. “I would never . . .”
“What’s it going to hurt to wait and see?” Joanjet asked, putting a pillow under Lush’s head. “Huh?”
Raekwon shrugged. “Fine. This is your fault. You deal with it.”
They circled around, watching as Lush slowly degraded. First, her eyes seemed to lose focus. The light in them failed. The hole around her nose ring festered and began to leak. Her hair lost its luster, skin leached of color. Even her teeth seemed to yellow. An awful smell began emanating from her pores.
“I’m okay . . . I’m okay . . . I’m okay. . . .” she kept saying, quieter and quieter. “Okay . . . okay . . . okay . . .” until her eyes finally closed. “K . . . k . . . k . . .”
“She’s peaceful,” Sad Girl said. “See?”
“Flesh,” Lush whispered, so quietly they could barely hear her.
“What, sweetheart?” Sad Girl asked.
Lush bolted up, froth coming from her mouth. She grabbed Sad Girl’s arm and dug her fingers in. Idle hit her on the temple with a piece of firewood while Billy grabbed her shirt and dragged her across the dirt and broken glass. War Pig ran to the second floor and threw open a window. The twins tossed Lush out like a sack of laundry as she groaned and scratched, clawing for them.
Her body slammed into the crowd of Z below. Other Infects in the clearing turned as one, letting out a roar, and rushed toward the new meat.
War Pig slammed the heavy frame shut again and bolted it as Infect hands banged against the timbers in a frantic rhythm.
“You two, always smarter than everyone else,” he said, pointing at Nero and Joanjet. “It’s not their fault. Let’s tie them up. Let’s keep them down in the basement like dogs.”
Thing is, he’s right. Bleeding hearts? Liberals? The collapse of empire is always fueled by good intentions, the rubble presided over by the strict and the cold.
Raekwon blew on her chipped fingernails. “I said all along it was foolishness.”
War Pig grabbed the other candle off the mantle. Raekwon, Idle, and Billy followed him back up the creaking steps.
“We should really all stay together,” Sad Girl called.
“You stay together,” War Pig said.
One of the guest-room doors upstairs slammed.
“Well, that didn’t take long,” Joanjet said, looking at a watch she wasn’t wearing. “You see why I didn’t want to show you right away? T minus Lord of the Flies in less than an hour.”
Cupcake retreated to a dark corner, talking to herself and pulling her hair. Sad Girl began to weep softly as Estrada comforted her.
Nero put his head in his hands, while downstairs Petal Gazes, or what was Petal Gazes, sat alone.
In the dark.
In the middle of a room that had been splattered with death.
Again and again and again.
WAR PIG, RAEKWON, IDLE, AND BILLY TOOK the two rooms on the left, numbers 10o and 110. Nero could hear the twins laughing all the way down the hall. There were three rooms on the right: 200, 220, and 237. They picked the first one and all piled in, exhausted, starving, delirious. Lips dry and chapped. Nervous. They stank. Sad Girl went out and gathered snow from the windowsills and carried it back in her cupped palms. As it melted, they took turns lapping at it like dogs.
Nero found a pile of dirty blankets in the closet and handed them around.
“Everyone needs to sleep. We’re all going to lose our shit if we don’t.”
As if on cue, the scratching outside became languorous, adagio. For a few minutes they sat around the candle, listening to each other breathe. No one wanted to talk about Lush. And yet everyone was dying to talk, terrified of closing their eyes and finding out which hunter waited for them in the basement of their imaginations. They all knew they were spending the night down in that butcher’s room no matter what. In dream after dream after dream.
ZOMBRULE #15: Bedtime is when bad things happen, and dream time is even worse. Drink coffee, pound Red Bulls, snort speed, tell ghost stories, poke each other with sharp sticks, staple open your eyelids, redo that sudoku, teach yourself to cobble, learn Javanese verb conjugations, memorize Deuteronomy, guzzle sixty-two hours’ worth of 5-hour ENERGY, and/or stay up till dawn playing strip poker instead. Do. Not. Go. To. Sleep.
“The first movie? Night of the Living Dead? That was good,” Estrada finally said, his voice low and without inflection.
No one answered.
Or said anything at all.
For at least five minutes.
The wind howled. The scratching was steady and raw.
Then came another voice, equally low and worn.
“Yeah, old-school. In black-and-white. Totally creepy. My father says it’s a metaphor about anti-Communism. Not joining groups. Being an individual.”
“Dawn of the Dead was better.”
“Is that the one that takes place in the mall?”
“Yeah, I remember thinking it was hilarious. Doesn’t seem very funny now.”
“I know. I can’t believe I actually laughed at that. Sitting there, all safe. With Sno-Caps and popcorn.”
“It was directed by the same dude. These guys lock down the mall gates and clean up the Z inside. Then they get to shop in every store. Eat all the food, take the clothes, whatever they want.”
“And there was a gun store too.”
“Bet that came in handy.”
“I wish we had a gun store.”
“Did they survive?”
“Nah, bikers broke in and ruined everything.”
“That’s another metaphor. Like, about consumerism. All the Z hang out at Hot Topix and American Apparel because they don’t know any better. It’s like, even when they were alive, they were still zombies all along.”
“Sorta heavy-handed, don’t you think? A little preachy? Shopping makes you a moron? Okay, great. Thanks.”
“I saw the remake. It had fast zombies.”
“Fast zombies?”
“Ran full speed. Not this shambling business. All busting the ten-second mark and biting your back. I thought that was dumb. Humans didn’t stand a chance. Actually, I guess that part was pretty accurate.”
“You should have seen Day of the Dead. I couldn’t eat for a week after.”
“Entrails, gristle, entrails. And then, you know, occasionally acting.”
“28 Days Later was cool.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t make sense.”
“What about Z makes sense?”
“Remember when you could just get up and walk out of a movie when it was over? Into the sunshine?”
Nero’s head spun. Thick and feverish. He wasn’t listening. But the voices helped him forget.
What he had to do.
As soon as they all fell asleep.
“I used to dig the Resident Evil ones. Milla? She was totally hot.”
“Was?”
“Well, Infects must have reached to L.A. by now, right? That means Milla’s dead or homegirl really is a zombie, shuffling around in thousand-dollar pumps.”
“Oh, the irony.”
“Nah, I bet she has a huge walled mansion up in the hills. She’s probably got a security team and a generator and enough diet smoothies and B12 suppositories to last a lifetime.”
It was quiet again.
Joanjet untied her topknot. Purple hair hung limply over her face, like a tarot reader’s scarf. Cupcake, who hadn’t said anything, lifted her head from Joanjet’s thigh and sat up, entering the circle, candlelight reflecting off her glasses.
> “It’s no secret I’m scared shitless, right?”
No one answered.
“And so I’m lying here asking myself, Okay, fine, but what is it that I’m really scared of? Dying? Not seeing my mother again? Blood? Swann?”
“Bitch,” Estrada said.
“All of the above,” Sad Girl said.
“I figure it’s not so much being bit, you know? It’s the being eaten part. The being torn apart part. I don’t want to die, but I especially don’t want them . . . pawing through me.”
Joanjet rubbed Cupcake’s back. “I’m with you there.”
“Uh-huh,” Sad Girl said.
“Me too,” Estrada said.
“And then I thought, well, maybe there’s another way.” Cupcake leaned over conspiratorially. “What if we leave the front door open?”
“Perfect.”
“Sheer genius.”
“No, listen, we lock ourselves in this room. But first we cut a hole in the door. A small square, the size of a deck of cards. When they come in, we’re in control. We decide how it works.”
“I still don’t get it.”
Cupcake smiled. “We stick our hand through the hole one at a time.”
She sat back and waited for it to sink in.
“We let them get a quick bite,” Estrada finally said. “Just enough.”
“Exactly. How bad can that be?”
“Then, after a while, we are them,” Joanjet said. “They won’t want to get in anymore.”
Sad Girl nodded. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but that’s actually not that bad an idea.”
“We’re fuct anyway.”
“I mean, it’s probably like being bit by a dog,” Cupcake said. “It’ll hurt, right? But pretty soon the infection kicks in. . . .”
Estrada exhaled, closing his eyes. “Maybe it’s like heroin. Spreads through your body, feels nice. Warm.”
“No more fighting.”
“No more running.”
“You’re on the team, like getting an Evite.”
“All in this room together.”
Sad Girl looked at Cupcake gratefully. “God, you’re almost a genius.”
“That’s why I can’t let them eat my brain.”
Everyone laughed.
Except Nero.
“I can’t believe this. Will you listen to yourselves?”
“Whoa, man,” Estrada said.
Nero stood up. “So it’s not suicide, then, huh? It’s just changing addresses?”
“Hey, now —” Sad Girl said.
“No, you ‘hey, now.’” Nero let the pure cold anger surge through him, toxins being released, fury like methane rising from the ice pack. “No way I’m just giving up. No way I’m letting myself be bit. What did we fight all this time for? All the way up here?”
“It’s a last-ditch thing,” Estrada said gently. “Only if we don’t have no choice.”
“Shhh . . .”
“It’s okay, Nero.”
“Calm down.”
“You calm down,” he said, biting his lip and trying not to cry.
“Hunger delirium.”
“Posttraumatic shock.”
“Totally understandable, really.”
Cupcake took Nero by the arm and led him to the corner, where she rubbed his neck and laid him down.
Sad Girl climbed onto the bed, making the springs squeak. The noise sounded like a gunshot in the stillness. Estrada joined her.
Cupcake and Joanjet curled up by the dresser.
Nero rolled over, feeling lost. Wanting to scream.
They did have some success with primal-scream therapy in the seventies. Seems like now’s a bad time to start, though.
He wiped his mouth instead.
What was a mouth if not just a bag of teeth?
What were teeth if not made to rend skin?
What was skin but a flimsy pink enclosure people hid behind?
Ten billion of us, Nero thought. Each one just a spill waiting to happen.
“’Night,” Sad Girl said, blowing out the candle.
And then it was beyond dark.
THEY WERE ALREADY SNORING. IT WAS HARD to tell who.
Nero kicked off his shoes.
Don’t take off your shoes. You have work to do.
And closed his eyes.
Just for a minute. Only until you’re sure they’re all asleep.
He rubbed his eyes and wished, more than anything in the world, for a huge glass of milk and some French toast.
ZOMBRULE #16: There is no French toast in the Zomb-A-Pocalypse.
But mostly he wanted a girl lying next to him.
Everyone else in this lodge has one, huh?
If only to be able to get up on one elbow and grin at her, all deadpan, like, “So . . . this has been a pretty weird day, huh?”
Go downstairs. Your zombie shortie is waiting.
“Yeah, she’s waiting,” Nero whispered. “In that room. In the pitch black. With no way out. And three zombie corpses.”
Well, technically it’s four.
“Call me paranoid, but the whole deal with her being dead and everything is freaking my shit.”
Joanjet snored deeply, spluttered, rolled over.
I did notice you’re not really in a hurry to loosen the ropes.
“Truth is, the Rock?”
Yeah?
“I’m scared.”
Of what?
“Uh, lessee. Raekwon. And Raekwon’s gun. And War Pig. And War Pig’s fists. And flesh eating. And the dark. And the sound of those fingernails. And the end of the world. But mostly? I think I’m scared of Petal.”
I understand. I get scared a lot myself.
“You do?”
Only every time I climb into the ring.
“But, um . . . wrestling’s fake. Zombies are real.”
Hey, man, the only thing fake is the take. Now, get down there and rescue your lady.
“In a minute.”
You don’t have a minute.
“But what if she’s turned?”
State’s evidence?
“No, what if I go down there and the timer went off and she’s not Petal anymore?”
You mean if she still looks like Petal but is a late bloomer and since you last saw her has been incrementally and virally transformed into a human flank-eating machine just waiting for you to naively approach in the dark so she can glom on and do unspeakable things to you while everyone else sleeps?
“Exactly.”
Yeah, I can see how that’d be a tough call.
Nero pulled at his stitches. He was surrounded by bad choices and zero options and no hope and creaking wallboards and Infect moans.
Buuh-huuh.
Muuh-huhr.
Errrf-graurg.
The sounds Z made were bad enough alone, but in a group they were especially weird and creepy. They pounded and churned, rhythmic, piston-like. Brainless, greedy, rote. And yet when he really listened, Nero could hear another tone further down, buried gut-deep.
Primal.
Feral.
Dirty.
Buuh-huuh.
Muuh-huhr.
Errrf-graurg.
Was it possible the Infects got busy with each other?
Buuh-huuh.
Muuh-huhr.
Errrf-graurg.
Stuck outside with nothing to chew on, no marrow in sight, just killing time until the End-Time with a little late-night cannibal grope? Infect on Infect love? They were already stripped down to their elemental selves, all drives and needs. If the first purely human (or post-human) impulse was to eat, the second one had to be to screw.
Or maybe to lawyer up and sue.
If nothing else, they didn’t have to worry about birth control. No mortifying shamble through the aisles at 7-Eleven working up the courage to ask the clerk for a pack of Trojan ZLs — lubricated, ribbed, and covered in zombicidal foam.
Lord, do you have problems.
Nero pulled the dusty ol
d blanket over his head.
The last of his adrenaline leached away.
Every single muscle and ligament ached.
His breathing slowed, caught in the back of his throat.
Don’t fall asleep.
He closed his eyes.
Do. Not. Fall. Asleep.
And fell deeply asleep.
* * *
Nero opened his eyes.
The scratching had gotten louder, more frenzied.
It raked the lodge walls.
It pulsed, in and out.
Buuh-huuh.
Muuh-huhr.
Errrf-graurg.
There was movement.
Above him.
On the ceiling.
A white outline.
Creeping diagonally, from the corner.
Like an insect. A lizard.
But large.
He blinked.
Buuh-huuh.
Muuh-huhr.
Errrf-graurg.
The thing stopped, turned its head 360 degrees, and looked down at Estrada and Sad Girl. A pendulum of spit hung from its mouth, swung, and then lowered onto Sad Girl’s leg.
In the shape of an N.
And then an E.
And then an R.
And then an O.
Written like maple syrup, darker than her skin.
Burning in.
Nero was about to yell but couldn’t.
Scream but couldn’t.
Warn them but couldn’t.
Sad Girl cried out, tossed and turned, rubbed her leg in her sleep.
The thing moved again, crawling upside down until it was directly over him.
A form, beyond pale.
White neck. Long legs.
All thigh and ass.
Swann.
The moaning sped up.
Double time.
Buuh-huuh. Buuh-huuh.
Muuh-huhr. Muuh-huhr.
Errrf-graurg. Errrf-graurg.
Nero could see her eyes and a glint of teeth in the darkness.
He could see her blond hair, hanging down like stalactites.
He could see her skin, bare, acres of it.
The moans went triple time.
Buuh-huuh. Buuh-huuh. Buuh-huuh.
Muuh-huhr. Muuh-huhr. Muuh-huhr.
Errrf-graurg. Errrf-graurg. Errrf-graurg.
“Nero,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Don’t move.”
“Why?”
Swann let go.
And fell directly on top of him.
The Infects Page 15