The Day After: A Zombie Apocalypse Thriller

by Bartholomew, K.

  “I know, right?” Drake came in. “The least they could do is continue with the free-flow of life force after we take away their avocados.”

  “Trying to give us a taste of what’s to come after…” Durrant ignored the jibe. “Just so long as we hurry the fuck up with the desalination plants. Hey, someone has to think about these things.”

  “And meanwhile there’s Oregon standing like a cunt between our allies in Washington state, who get more than enough rain to quench everybody down here ten times over.” Baker, just like his friend Durrant, was another man who’d gone out of his way to look the part of your stereotypical antifa protester. He possessed one of those faces that made you think he’d been stirring up shit from behind a keyboard most of his life, with both earlobes stretched like a pussy white-collar criminal’s anus after a year in county jail, leaving gaps so large you could almost put your fist through, a shaven head save for a strip that ran down the center, which he’d left flat out of respect for tonight’s meeting with Graft. Truly, it was hard to look at the man without feeling at least a little queasy. In contradiction to the sickly look he’d nurtured, his biceps bulged every time he did so little as lift his beer glass, and filled out the baggy black shirt he wore, which reeked of old biscuits. “My money says Oregon will be the first place we decide to invade, after we’re properly set up, that is.”

  Jeff jerked, unsure if he was even joking because surely, to declare war on one US state meant declaring war on the other forty-eight, and they’d not even secured their one yet. Thankfully, Drake, at least, shook his head into his beer as he tipped back his glass.

  Durrant did not rebuke Baker. “Nobody said this would be easy but it’ll all be worth it when we’re rid of those Washington tyrants.”

  On the walk over from college, both Baker and Durrant had briefly run through their stories of why they’d turned their backs on the USA. Neither tale was particularly thrilling, unlike the brothers Archie and Miles, who both boasted about selling secrets to China all through the Iraq war and beyond. No, the others had simply become disillusioned with American excess over time, increasing levels of inequality, which Jeff could hardly deny, and had, more than anything else, found themselves being moved by a one Governor Jacob Weiner, who’d inspired them to quit their jobs in Ohio and move to California in order to become full time paid agitators. It was their former roles as extremely useful weapons and communications engineers that had marked them out for instant progression under the direction of Graft. Jeff wasn’t sure if, like everybody else at the table, they were also ex-military, even though he’d been studying their bearing, which so often gave people away. Vets were not the usual type to so easily turn hardcore commie, Jeff knew that better than anybody else, and couldn’t help but question if maybe there was more to their stories, if they’d also been fucked over by the system, thrown in jail for late alimony payments, possibly had a child or two castrated by order of a feminist cunt with a vendetta against men who’d been given power far above her capabilities.

  “What’s with the name Suds, anyway?” Baker smirked from across eighteen empty beer glasses. “I mean, surely you don’t like your alcohol?”

  Drake took his cue to have the usual playful pop at his best friend’s expense. “Oh, you bet he does, but he got the name for being, you know, a little spare with the soap. I promise you, there ain’t nobody here who wants to share a desert trench with this guy. Man, I can still taste that stinging odor. His name’s an ironic kinda thing.”

  It was all true and that even Jeff was finding the current bar scent unbearable was saying something, as both Archie and Miles’ thighs seemed to simultaneously squeeze against him whilst everybody laughed at Jeff’s expense. A group of guys that, if nothing else, would be interesting to work with.

  “Sounds like you’ll fit right in where this movement’s concerned.” Baker grinned. “You mind if I call you Suds too?”

  Jeff nodded. “That’s fine.”

  Archie leaned a few degrees away from Jeff and then loudly discharged wind so that the blast of putrid air rattled against the wooden stool. The atmosphere had already been beyond unpleasant owing to the fact the two brothers had not only an aversion to capitalism, but deodorant too. The day’s scorching heat hadn’t helped, nor the fact they’d both eaten enchiladas on the walk down. Jeff might have ironically earned the moniker Suds, but his lack of hygiene, even back then, was nothing compared to these two brothers and just being around Archie and Miles was enough to make him feel both disgusting and superior at the same time, which was saying something considering he’d spent the prior evening eating from a plastic tray surrounded by drug dealers, at least one serial killer and countless alimony debtors. Thankfully, after tomorrow, Jeff would almost certainly never see either of them again, so he reasoned there was no point making an issue out of their behavior now. “Just bear it out,” he muttered to himself.

  It was almost midnight when they finally left the bar. Considering so much depended on the performance next day, and it was to be an early start as well, there was no urgency at all. But it had been fun, at least in comparison to six months sharing a cell with three meth withdrawing Mexicans, not to mention all the crap endured throughout the preceding years.

  “We gotta keep volunteering for this, you know, all this dangerous shit.” Now that Drake was driving, his speech was worryingly slurred. “Likely, California will owe us a few favors when it’s all done, lots of favors, to people like us, and those Ohio boys, if that’s what we’re gonna call ourselves after? Not Ohio. Already taken. California? Probably. No need to change the letterheads.” He switched lanes, cutting someone off, and received a long horn blast in response. “Awe, fuck you. You know who you’re driving behind? Anyway…” he left it at that as the car rolled back onto the Bay Bridge, heading away from Oakland towards The Castro, where Drake said he was renting a room. Jeff hoped his car would still be parked at the nearby Walmart because if not, he had no fucking clue where he was supposed to turn in. Probably find a small space somewhere on the Embarcadero. Maybe pay Titch a visit.

  Drake laughed suddenly. “When we dispossess the capitalists we can just stroll right on in and take their homes, cars, swimming pools, pets. Fuck, we can even start banging their nannies, daughters. And the judges, Suds, don’t forget we can send for the fucking judges. I’ve already picked out a house for myself. Presently belongs to the CEO of RoboCore.” He slurred and blinked heavy. “Driven by there a few times. Some fat cunt who made his billions hiring Guatemalans on minimum wage, or less, while he puts every decent and honest checkout worker in the country out of a job.” He grinned and laughed again. “Oh, baby, do I ever got dibs on that place, and his cars, and I’ll make sure Graft knows it too. Can’t risk some leftist newly arrived from Delaware, or wherever, claiming it first just because he thought to bring his guns along. Remember, Suds, we’re the ones doing the danger work, so we should get first refusal.”

  Jeff opened the window to allow some of the fresh air to blow in from the bay. Drake veered onto the rumble strip and Jeff thought he saw a spark from where the door almost certainly made contact with the crash barrier. The bridge angled left, over Yerba Buena Island and then beyond that on the right, isolated and illuminated by the moon was Alcatraz. If Drake was to somehow plunge his piece of shit Ford straight into the bay, who would even give a shit?

  “I’m gonna convert the basement into a dungeon,” he began again after a half minute of silence, “and have my judge brought to me. I’ll spare you the rest of my plans for the bastard after that. Oh,” he swerved again, “I suggest having a think about where you’d like to set yourself up. Maybe somewhere on Lombard, Potrero Row, or even Presidio Heights so you can be close to me. Be like old times.” He rolled off the bridge and entered South of Market. Somewhere, there was a Walmart with a large parking lot. “Oh, and you can forget about sleeping in your fucking car. Until you, um, get your own place, you can have the couch at mine. Besides, we got an early start tomorr
ow.”

  Drake’s couch turned out to be the floor with a few cushions thrown down from atop a dusty wardrobe. Truth was he didn’t have a couch, just a bed and desk in a tiny room he was subletting from a Chinese family who themselves lived nine cramped into just two or three rooms. Jeff thought to ask if maybe they’d be dispossessed when the Berkeley crowd came knocking, but he was too tired to risk starting an argument.

  They arrived back at Berkeley a few minutes before four, having managed a couple hours of sleep. There was a white van with the slogan ‘OVERCOME WITH EMULSION, PAINTING AND DECORATING’ waiting beside two police cruisers that Drake groaned were almost certainly present to act as an escort. Baker and Durrant were leaning against the van’s flank and were annoyingly jolly for the early hour, neither appeared to be hungover.

  “Good morning, sleepy heads.”

  Jeff ignored them and was instead distracted by the two rotund forms of Archie and Miles plodding straight through the flowerbed. “Yo.” They carried plastic bags they began rustling around in before pulling out sausage, egg and cheese McMuffins and cramming them down their throats.

  After exchanging pleasantries with the cops, they set off in the van. Drake drove and Baker took the front passenger seat. Everybody else had to find somewhere to sit in the back alongside ladders, coils of wire, toolboxes, and about fifty cans of paint, which Miles said contained the TNT, certainly enough to put a dent in most buildings.

  “So we’re painter and decorators for the day, huh?” Durrant asked with a voice that hurt Jeff’s head. He was easy to ignore. “Must be some uniforms back here somewhere.”

  The two brothers plunged back inside their bags, dug around, and removed more sickly smelling fast food that was liable to make Jeff sick, all whilst the back of the van bounced on the uneven road.

  “How far?” Jeff croaked.

  Durrant shrugged. “Two hours north-east, about eighty miles they said, past Sactown towards the Nevada desert.”

  “Going for drinks last night, that was your idea,” Jeff groaned. “Thanks.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t force anything down your throat.”

  It was a miserable journey squatting in the back of a searing hot van with two of the worst smelling individuals Jeff had ever encountered, who never stopped eating, belching, breaking wind or talking. At times, it seemed, the less Jeff was interested, the more they tried winning him over, which they attempted to do with endless tales of past deeds for their cause.

  “I’m telling you, dude, all those birthers go down like bowling pins when you take a run up and go at them like a bull, old people, women, kids,” by ‘birthers’, Archie almost certainly meant pro-life campaigners, “and there’s no feeling in the world like gearing up and crashing a Republican Party gathering. Just the other week I drove the jeep through one of their voter registration tents at the mall,” he laughed and sprayed potato chips all over himself, “think I might have crushed his ankle. Here,” he stood and moved across to Jeff’s side before crouching beside him, bringing along his cell and a stink like a full durian slowly cooking on a window ledge, “I found a group with signs demanding a reduction in taxation and I smashed this one dude so hard on the skull with a pipe that he’s still in a coma to this day.” He began flipping through a bunch of photos, searching for something in particular. Turned out his kink was dressing like the gimp in Pulp Fiction and several images revealed him choking some Latina woman with a belt whilst he fucked her from behind, his blubber spilling out across her back. It got worse.

  “Here we are. See? Took me a couple days to find the fucker but we managed to get inside his intensive care unit posing as concerned relatives.” He laughed as he held up the image of a vegetable reclining back with a neck brace and tubes running out his nose. Archie was scrubbing his armpit hard into the man’s face. The next image showed him clutching a fistful of white hair whilst he stood over him, posing victorious, like Teddy Roosevelt in one of his safari photos, the word ‘FASH’ had been scrawled across his forehead in permanent marker, and of course, there were images of Archie dangling his testicles across the wretched man’s nose, as well as another where he’d gone to the trouble of climbing up on the bed before squatting over the comatose man’s face. “I’d made sure to have my mom’s beef casserole that day … works every time.” He burst into a fit of hysterics as Jeff tasted bile.

  Ending the lives of innocent people had become increasingly lawful in California of late, just so long as you were on the right side. There wasn’t anybody about to come after Archie for as good as beating to death a seventy-year-old man for having concerns about his grandchildren’s future. If this was how bad things were now, how were they about to escalate?

  “Excuse me,” Jeff said, before moving across to occupy the psychopath’s vacated space.

  Durrant had been silent and he caught Jeff’s eye briefly. “Anyway, that man’s been quiet the last few days. Anyone got any idea why that might be?”

  “Cos he’s shitting himself in his fucking bunker, that’s why,” Miles said with a sudden and unexpected aggression. Merely insinuating the person in question was all it took to set some people off. “Well, after we’re done tonight, he’ll be shitting himself, that’s for sure.”

  Durrant ignored the hostility. “Oh, he’ll be shitting himself, but it don’t harm to be vigilant. Let’s not forget we’re rigging a strategic location and we’re not fifty miles from where the most powerful army that ever existed happens to be just sitting, waiting.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll just have to take them all with us then, won’t we,” Archie heckled.

  “Right,” Durrant conceded and sighed with exasperation at the needless hostility. Maybe they were nervous, they had cause but still, the two brothers didn’t have to be a pair of assholes. Some people just couldn’t help themselves.

  “We’re close, so get your shit together,” Drake called into the back.

  Jeff stood and leaned between the two front seats. Through the window, just beyond the police cruiser that was flashing its lights in front, a road sign stated they were entering the town of Baxter, but what shocked Jeff was that even here, the streets were crammed with tents.

  “Crazy, huh?” Drake noticed Jeff’s interest. “It’s been like this the whole fucking journey. Every town, road, field, and I’ve no doubt most the other roads leading out the state are similar. Funny thing is that if the US attacks, they’ll be passing right on by.” He twisted his head to look directly at Jeff. “You think they got the balls to shoot on their own people? How do you reckon it’ll go down if they do?” He grunted and nodded his head at the road. “Nevada. Less than fifty miles straight ahead.”

  The cruiser slowed and pulled into a grass verge. A hand appeared from the window and gave a friendly wave.

  “As far as he can come,” Drake said. “Can’t risk US satellites picking up a team of painter and decorators getting a police escort. Too fishy. Wouldn’t happen.”

  A mile out of Baxter, people on foot were heading in both directions wheeling shopping trolleys, carrying large backpacks, children. Jeff hoped those leaving hadn’t left it too late. With one side leaving and people from the other arriving in such numbers, even if Washington were to get their own way, California, it seemed, would become too unruly to govern. Whatever happened the next few days, surely, it was only a matter of time regardless.

  The lab was located down a mud road surrounded by melon fields, isolating it from the nearby town. The building itself revealed no indicators of its purpose, no signs or logos. To Jeff, it looked like a cross between a spa retreat and a plant that carried out hi-tech research, a strange blend of expansive stone and pre-fabricated steel. Certainly, the building had had money thrown at its construction, and was large enough, at least, to employ a couple hundred people. This morning, the parking lot was almost full.

  “Don’t mind us, we’re just destroying your livelihoods, nothing to see here.” Baker chuckled as he clambered out the front seat and slam
med the door.

  “They moved the scientists out, right?” Drake enquired, sounding genuinely concerned, though Jeff was unsure whether it was for the potential loss of human life in general or just for those select few who were most useful.

  “Graft mentioned something about a science conference in Fresno.” Durrant adjusted his bandana. “Totally bogus, of course, but for everyone else, it’s just a normal workday.”

  “That’s a relief,” Drake said as he grabbed a can of paint in each hand, “this has to look regular as possible and we’re gonna need some genuine casualties otherwise what’s the fucking point?” Jeff jerked at his friend’s comments but kept quiet. “It’s already suspect with the brains all just happening to be on vacation at the exact same fucking time, which just so happens to coincide with the day the building explodes.”

  “Likely it’ll be night when we get the order to blow the place,” Miles said as he hitched a coil of wire high on his shoulder, “that means the only casualties will be the idiots who got the graveyard shift.”

  “Hardly seems fucking worth it,” Archie said and pointed at Jeff, “you got any qualifications in detonation?”

  Jeff shrugged. “You won’t be surprised to learn that I don’t.”

  “You don’t say,” he said sarcastically, stripping off his Harley Davidson leather jacket and cargo pants before throwing them in the back of the van, a truly awful sight to behold, and then his fat fingers were fumbling with the straps on a set of denim overalls that almost certainly wouldn’t fit, “which means you’re only here because you’re friends with him,” his jaw jerked in Drake’s direction, “so make yourself fucking useful and fetch all this shit inside, gofer.”