The entire time I ate, I watched the man eat his share. Not because I was being cautious, but because I wanted to see if he had got the same explosion of flavour that I did. The very quiet man, the same man who appeared reserved and didn’t display emotion, smiled and looked up at me.
“Beautiful,” he stated simply, and he was right. It was. Then he asked an equally beautiful question, “Are you a chef?”
“Yes, yes I am,” I said and beamed – the recognition warmed me to my core.
“People would pay for food like this,” he said, devouring another piece.
“Well, it’s a shame money isn’t any good anymore,” I said dejectedly and continued to eat.
“Trade still exists,” he replied simply, finishing the rest of his meal. He then looked at me and repeated, “People would pay for food like this.”
With that, he got up and started to leave. I, on the other hand, was deep in thought regarding his statements. Trade? Pay for food? Not for the first time that day, I had a thought extremely unlike me pass through my mind.
As he was walking into the darkened corridor to leave, I called after him and asked, “Do you want to be my sous chef?”
He stopped walking away for the second time that day and said, “Ok.”
And that was how I got my second-in-command. The guy who would do my dirty work. Skinning anything that was needed. Cutting and filleting the meat into appropriately sized portions to cook. Any preparation I needed, he did it for me. He even helped me come up with a menu for the post-apocalypse – testing every meal and giving suggestions. With his help, I could focus on what I well and truly wanted to do, making meals for people to enjoy. The apocalypse just made the business side of things easier. The only issue was getting meat and, let’s face it, everyone wanted meat. You could roast or sauté vegetables all day long, but customers would always want meat. Getting it wasn’t an issue, animals still existed, but getting large quantities would always be difficult. That is when someone came to me with a business opportunity.
A man approached me during the early days of my post-apocalyptic restaurant, back when I didn’t have many customers and I certainly didn’t have any regulars. He had an offer. He was a hunter, and had been one pre-apocalypse. His idea was simple. He would provide me the various meats from whatever he hunted. All he wanted in return was a hot meal when he made deliveries, and bullets matching whatever calibre weapon he was using. I wanted to consider his proposal before answering, but I could not see any answer other than “yes” – it would be beneficial for all! Others may have developed trade in the apocalypse, but we had developed an economy based on supply and demand. People traded all sorts of things for one of our meals. Bullets. Herbs and spices. Fresh vegetables. Tins of food. Everything they provided us just furthered our ability to produce cuisine. Those items would either go into producing more food, or providing our hunter with bullets to provide us with meat, both of which meant producing better quality meals. Rinse and repeat. Business was booming, and word of mouth meant a hell of a lot more when the human population had nothing to talk about other than a restaurant that had appeared at the end of the world. It was amazing.
And it was amazing for such a long time. Business was sustainable. Until one day it wasn’t. Like any business venture, there is the risk of growing too big too fast. Supply and demand become an issue. Either you maintain what you’re doing and have to turn away customers and trade. Or, you make a change, and continue to grow. These changes can make or break a business. I made amazing meals. Hot meals. Unique recipes with meat in it. Yet, I wanted to grow. So, I told my business partner to bring me any meat he found – not just what he had hunted but anything. As long as I was providing my customers with meat, it shouldn’t matter if the quality degraded a small amount. So what if the meat was found on a roadside, or it wasn’t so fresh at times, or that I unofficially encouraged him to steal it? Or that it occasionally had a tattoo or piercing on it. No one would know. Meat is meat after all, so why did it matter what or who it came from? My dream was realised. My restaurant at the end of times. The Little Death. La Petite Mort.
About Ryan Colley
I always enjoyed reading fictional worlds, but creating my own was always my passion. My Year 8 English teacher told me I should pursue writing after a short story I had written for a school project. I don't know where my love of zombies come from, but it just happened, and now it is my life.
Things changed and life moved on, but even while I was graduating from my Bachelors and Masters in Psychology, I still wrote stories and I still loved doing it. Writing is my passion, and everything else I do is a means for me to carry on with that passion.
I'm also prepared to move to a secure location at a zombie's notice ...
3
The Last Day
by Justin Robinson
Every twenty years or so, the city had to bleed. That was the unspoken explanation, danced around on the front page and the evening news. Los Angeles swelled with hate and fear, and when it couldn’t hold any more, the city’s veins opened. It had started in the same place it always had, in the raw wound of South Central. That it would stay there too, eventually cauterized by more brutality, was also unspoken.
Ricky comforted himself that the violence wasn’t going to get any closer. He was far away in Glendale, north of the rioting with Downtown in between. He watched it unfold on the news, saw it in the helicopters buzzing through greasy columns of smoke like steel dragonflies, smelled it in the charred winds. Adults mumbled reassuring platitudes that this was no different than the Zoot Suit or Watts Riots, but something deep in the persistent tangle of Ricky’s guts, told him that this time was different.
He insisted on going to school that Thursday. It was the only place he would feel safe. Not the whole day, but for one hour at least. One hour when he wouldn’t feel all twisted up in burning knots. One hour where he wouldn’t hear his blood frantically buzzing in his ears. It was all thanks to Mr. Novak. Maybe if Ricky had a dad at home, he wouldn’t need to see Mr. Novak, but the world was built on maybes.
Ricky changed his clothes in the locker room that always smelled like an old sponge, throwing his jeans and Purple Rain t-shirt into the locker and donning the black and red gym clothes marked with the happy dynamite stick mascot of Glendale High. His Converse All-Stars squeaked on the hardwood floor as he joined the rest of his gym class, lining up in alphabetical order, Ricky finding his spot right between Ethan Roark and Pablo Robles. The room echoed with the nervous murmurs of people who had been walking on razors the entire week. Ricky, not wanting to see his own fear echoed in the eyes of another, looked up at the walls of the gym, where the school’s championship banners, accumulated over eighty-four years, now hung.
The bell gave its screeching call, one that had been running claws over Ricky’s nerves the whole day, but here, in this place, it didn’t bother him. The reason for that came stalking into the gym. Mr. Novak looked like he was halfway between a fire hydrant and a pit bull. Dressed in his usual gym coach uniform of black shorts, a red polo shirt, with a whistle bouncing against his broad chest and a clipboard clutched in one meaty hand, Mr. Novak could have been ridiculous. He was a short man too, with most of the seniors and even some juniors and sophomores able to look down on the pink dome of his bald head. But Mr. Novak was a stern throwback to another time. He could be mean, and even cruel, but he was always fair, making the rare times when he softened, even slightly, all the more special. Mr. Novak was as white as it was possible to be without being a literal ghost, but when Ricky pictured what a father looked like, the word itself personified, it was Mr. Novak.
“All right, ladies,” he said. “Be quiet and when you hear your name, say ‘here,’ got it?” It was the same thing every time, and the comforting cadence of Mr. Novak’s voice already settled the butterflies in Ricky’s stomach. The rioting was far away, and would remain that way. It wouldn’t dare disrupt Mr. Novak’s class.
He waited until he heard
“Robellada,” pronounced wrong, and called back “Here!”
Mr. Novak split the class into groups and gave each one a basketball. Soon the room was echoing with the squeak and rumble of pickup games. Action stopped only with the shrilling of Mr. Novak’s whistle, and a barked admonishment of someone’s last name. Ricky forgot the fires consuming the city for a short while.
The door swung open about halfway through the period. Its sound was consumed in the din of the gym, only the bright sunlight calling attention to it. A human silhouette stumbled in. Ricky thought the man had to be drunk. Ricky knew what drunks moved like; back when his father still lived with them, he’d seen the old man stagger in, swerve through the apartment into Ricky’s mom’s room, followed by the persistent squeak of bedsprings and the occasional clap of a slapped face. It took an experienced drunk to move the way this man was moving now, in a continuing forward fall. The door swung shut behind the figure, the blinding light once again locked out, along with the world. The drunk’s features resolved in the artificial light of the gym.
Only he wasn’t a drunk. He was hurt, badly. Bleeding from half a dozen wounds. Crimson wept from a shredded cheek. His collar was soaked nearly black from a ragged laceration on his neck. His clothes looked chewed, flowers of blood blossoming at every hurt.
“Sir?” Mr. Novak said.
The man didn’t react, instead staring at the gathered boys with milky eyes.
Mr. Novak stepped closer, and then paused, cursing under his breath. “Sir, if you want to have a seat... Brennan! Go to my office and call 911!”
Chris Brennan was still, staring at the injured man.
“Brennan, clean the wax out of your ears and call!”
Chris sprinted for the office. The motion drew the injured man’s attention like a dog tracking the lime green bolt of a tennis ball. He lurched after Chris, but soon found a group of recoiling boys in his way.
“Sir,” Mr. Novak said, gesturing to the side of the gym where the bleachers extended from the wall, “why don’t you have a seat over there while we get you some help?”
The injured man ignored Mr. Novak. He had keyed in on Doug Kay-Fraser, watching him with those white-sheathed eyes. Chapped lips skinned blunt incisors in a parody of a grin. The injured man made a sound in his throat, deep, somewhere between the rattle of a cough and the purr of a cat. Then he lunged.
Doug screamed. It wasn’t close to the manly bellow that the other high schoolers would have fantasized in their darkest dreams would be their reaction to sudden violence. No, it was the high pitched yelp of a child. Of a boy who learned that monsters were real and they were coming for him. The injured man went right for Doug’s neck, the teeth tearing into the boy’s throat. Doug’s scream went wet and red after that, and he fell beneath the injured man.
Everyone was frozen. Everyone except Mr. Novak. “Fraser!” the gym teacher shouted, his short legs covering the distance between them in seconds. He grabbed the injured man by the shoulders and hauled him off the student, casting him bodily away. The injured man stumbled, fell, and slid over the polished hardwood, leaving a streak of gore as he went.
Doug Kay-Fraser gurgled. Blood, nearly black, bubbled with his breath, pooling in the ragged place where his adam’s apple had been. His skin was ghastly white, his quivering hands fluttering upward, but not quite meeting his throat. His eyes were wide, seeing nothing.
Mr. Novak cursed again. That was nothing unusual. Mr. Novak cursed sometimes even though he was a teacher and wasn’t supposed to. It showed the students that they were in a club with their teacher, one that had its own quiet shibboleths.
Mr. Novak dropped to his knees next to Doug, putting his hands on the boy’s throat. “Fraser, I want you to look at me. Look at me. You’re not going anywhere, you understand me? You’re gonna be just fine.” Mr. Novak was nearly barking orders at the boy, but it wasn’t doing any good. Ricky could tell Doug was dying, and Doug knew it too. Knew it in the terrified emptiness of his eyes. Doug Kay-Fraser, who had peed in his pants in the second grade on a field trip to the Griffith Observatory. Doug Kay-Fraser, who told everyone he had touched Amanda Rosenberg’s boobs after the homecoming dance. Doug Kay-Fraser, who sang Duran Duran songs under his breath without knowing he was doing it.
Dying.
Mr. Novak saw it too, whispering “Fuck.” Then, louder: “C’mon, Fraser. You’re a tough son of a bitch. I know it.” Fraser might have been a tough son of a bitch, but no one survived long without a throat.
Their attention had been locked on the teacher and the hurt boy, no one saw the injured man getting up. It wasn’t until Tony Carias screamed that everyone noticed. The injured man was over Tony’s shoulder, holding him like an aggressive boyfriend, tearing meaty chunks from the boy’s neck with his teeth and slobbering them down. Before anyone could react, a sheet of crimson ran down Tony’s shirt like an awful waterfall. The student’s struggles were already feeble, his cries swallowed by the injured man’s eating.
Mr. Novak leapt to his feet and charged like a bull, pulling Tony out of the injured man’s grasp. The boy took two shuddering steps before collapsing on the hardwood. The injured man stumbled back, but quickly recovered and lurched forward. This time Mr. Novak caught him by the back of the head, and powerfully hurled him into the bleachers. The injured man’s skull made an echoing crack as it ran into the wooden seats. It should have been enough to daze anyone, especially a man who looked half dead as it was. But no, he was already struggling to get up.
“Somebody, put some pressure on Tony’s wounds,” Mr. Novak said, settling into a wrestler’s crouch. Then, to the injured man. “Listen, you son of a bitch, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re gonna cut the shit right now or I’m gonna make you sorry you walked into my class.”
The injured man lunged at Mr. Novak, but the gym teacher was too fast. He gripped the man’s arm and neck, wrenching both until sickening pops echoed through the gym. The injured man snapped like a mad dog, desperately trying to get his teeth around meat. Mr. Novak’s impassive face made Ricky think of a picture he’d seen of the statues on Easter Island. Mr. Novak was merely doing without thought of why. His body was reacting, turning him into the protector Ricky always knew Mr. Novak to be. Pure instinct keeping his students safe. He hauled the injured man to the side of the court, and then brutally slammed him headfirst into the wall.
This time the crack was of the man’s skull splitting in two. He kept moving, though, teeth kept snapping. Mr. Novak didn’t stop either, pulling the injured man back and slamming again and again, until the head came apart like a melting ice cream cake. Only then did the man stop moving, his headless body collapsing beneath the hideous jellylike stain on the wall.
Mr. Novak, red to the elbows and stippled in ruby, turned to the class, sucking air. “Men...” then he moved again.
Ricky jumped, his brain catching up to what he was seeing. Doug Kay-Fraser was sitting up, his eyes glassy and faded. Mr. Novak caught him fast. Doug was snapping just like the other man had been, desperately trying to bite his teacher. Mr. Novak gave Doug the same fate, his headless body thumping to the wood next to the man’s. Someone wretched, and the gym filled with the stench of recycled breakfast, boiling underneath the coppery tang of gore.
“Is Carias dead?” Mr. Novak barked. When no one responded, he barked again, “Is Carias dead?”
Joshua Wong nodded, eyes wide. Mr. Novak picked up the body. It started to struggle by the time he hauled it to the wall, but soon, after several more sickening cracks, it was still.
“Mr. Novak?” It was Chris Brennan, looking almost as pale as Doug had been. “911 is busy.”
“Busy?”
Chris nodded. “What’s going on?” The syllables were childlike and broken.
“I don’t know,” he said, then jogged to the doorway. Mr. Novak’s movements had only the hint of hesitation. He didn’t want to know, but he had to. For his kids. Ricky found himself running next to Mr. Novak, unwilling to be f
arther away from safety. The meaty stench of blood came off Mr. Novak in a miasma. He paused at the door, and glanced at Ricky. “Robellada,” he said with a hint of approval that made Ricky glow. “Stay back.”
Mr. Novak nudged the door of the gym open. From their vantage, they could see all the way across the asphalt yard and to Colorado Street beyond. It was horrifying. Men and women, sporting similar wounds to what had covered the injured man, staggered everywhere. They moved like wolves in slow motion, cornering and attacking screaming people, falling into masses of wet screams and tangled limbs. The riot had come to Glendale, but it was worse than Ricky could have imagined. This was nothing less than the end of the world, happening all around him.
Undead Worlds 2: A Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Anthology Page 2