I kissed Nathan’s ears, his neck, his chest. I was ravenous for our love-making, and when he started to lick and kiss my nipples, it was more than I could stand. My hands could not get his pants off fast enough.
“Do you have a condom?” I breathed.
“What?” Nathan said, looking startled and confused. He sat up in bed. “No, of course I don’t have a condom. Why the hell would I have a condom? I’ve been living alone with my dead mother for years...”
“Okay, point taken, relax.” I said. “Let’s not spoil the mood.”
I grabbed him by his shirt collar and pulled him back down to me, kissing him passionately.
I don’t want to get pregnant. But fuck it. In this fucked up world we live in, I sure as hell wasn’t going to give up this rare moment of joy and pleasure. Besides, condoms stopped being produced when the outbreak started, so they’d probably all be expired by now anyway. Maybe I can get some birth control pills through one of the runners I know. I have a huge stash of valuable items to trade.
It would be tacky to talk about his cock, right? Oh, fuck it. It was glorious. Big, fat, and glorious. And when he first thrust into me, I couldn’t believe how incredible it felt. How could I have forgotten in these past few years how fucking good fucking felt? Or had it ever actually felt this good before? I don’t think so. We made love with the passionate desperation of people who did not know if they would have a tomorrow. At least the apocalypse has turned out to be good for something.
Afterwards, we both collapsed, physically spent. Then we gently touched each other in silence for a while, just running our fingertips over each other’s body, learning every square inch.
The way I see it, the world ended four years ago. It’s just some kind of cruel joke that we’re still here, pointlessly trying to keep ourselves alive. What for? Some hard-wired survival instinct built into our genetic code that tells us to perpetuate the species. It’s outdated, outmoded, obsolete.
But there has never been any point beyond the one that we make for ourselves, and that hasn’t changed. Existence is as meaningful or meaningless as we dictate it to be. We enrich our lives, making them worthwhile and imbuing them with personal meaning through our experiences. Or, conversely, we diminish life, detracting from its potential and devaluing it by choosing to accept dismal surroundings, mental fatigue, and emotional death.
“What are you thinking about?” Nathan asked.
“Isn’t that supposed to be the girl’s line?” I said, smirking. “I was just thinking that things change on a dime. You can be in perfect health one day, then get a scratch on your pinky toe. It gets inexplicably infected and, two weeks later, you’ve gone septic and dropped dead. That’s the way it goes—the nature of life. So you sure as hell better try to enjoy things while you can.”
“Hedonist.”
“Hell, yeah. Of course I am. What would be the point of restraint and self-denial? It’s the only way of living that makes any sense.”
“Mmmm... I see.” Nathan said.
And then we fucked again.
Later that night, curled in bed together, Tempest and I continued our pillow talk.
I was feeling unusually optimistic. “Do you think we can wait them out?” I asked her. “Decomposition has already immobilized a lot of them. Eventually you’ve got to figure that the zombie threat will die on its own. They’ll rot away.”
“But there will always be more dead. The thing that reanimates human flesh is in all of us. We’re them. It’s just a matter of time. I could drop dead peacefully from a heart attack in the night, and the next thing you know you’d be waking up to me eating your face. There’s no getting away from that.”
“No, but the mother lode of the dead have already degraded. There aren’t enough living anymore to create the massive hordes of undead we saw when the infection first presented itself. Even that group of them at the university won’t be able to walk around much longer. The streets are pretty much clear already. Most of that first wave of original living dead are now little more than pieces of bodies that quiver in place or drag themselves along, slug-like. They don’t exactly pose a threat anymore.”
“Hmmm.” she said, considering it. “Well, maybe.” She paused, then asked, “Nathan?”
“Mmhmm?” cradling her in my arms.
“My name was Hope.”
“What?”
“My name. Before. It was Hope.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” she said in her most deadpan voice.
“Wow.”
“I know. It seemed painfully ironic. That’s why I stopped using it. I felt like I was being mocked by my own name.”
“Does it necessarily have to be ridiculously naive to have a glimmer of hope?”
“It sure seemed like it for a long time. I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t have to be. I’m open to being wrong. I’d sure like to be.”
I squeezed her tight. “You know, when we’re old, we’ll have to sleep apart in locked rooms.” I said.
“Or we could just choose to continue enjoying our lives and live dangerously, accepting joining the ranks of the undead together.” she said, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“How romantic.” I said, and I meant it. That sounded pretty fabulous at the moment.
She smiled. It lit up her face, and I couldn’t resist leaning in to kiss her.
That morning, I woke before Tempest did. I went into the bathroom to change the bandage on my chest, but I must have made some noise, because I woke her. When Tempest came into the bathroom, for a moment I was worried that things would be different with the new day. I was afraid that the exceptional closeness we felt for one another last night would have passed away. But she just took the bandage from me and dressed my wound.
Afterwards, I neatly folded the old bandage up and put it in the cabinet.
“What are you doing?”
“Saving it. It’s from our first night together.”
“You’re hopelessly sentimental, aren’t you?”
“I do have a nostalgic streak...”
“Good, you can be in charge of keeping up the family albums for us.” she said.
I pulled her to me right there standing over the toilet, and we exchanged a prolonged kiss. After that, we went back into the bedroom. For several hours.
Dangers are certainly still rampant in this world, but we are starting to find moments of joy in spite of the world around us. Making existence worth experiencing is the most we can hope for, even in the best of circumstances. Under these post-apocalyptic conditions, we’re definitely making the best of things.
—Nathan & Tempest
THE END
About the Author
ALISHA ADKINS IS A NATIVE of New Orleans and has also lived in Dallas, San Francisco, and Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. She holds a Masters degree in education from the University of New Orleans and worked as a high school teacher for ten years before eventually escaping. She currently works as an educational consultant for a major publishing company.
Alisha Adkins is the author of Flesh Eaters, Daydreams of Seppuku, and Death: the Travelogues.
Excerpt from Flesh Eaters
Chapter 1
AS I AWOKE, I HAZILY noticed that my face was pressed against hard, cool cement. It wasn’t gravelly sidewalk cement, but vaguely shiny, almost lacquered cement like one commonly finds in college dormitories and other clinical institutions. Although I wasn’t accustomed to waking up on hard surfaces, I was willing to ignore it for the moment and flutter in and out of consciousness for a while. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed the luxury of easing into consciousness, as I like to do after sleeping, for, as my eyes focused, I was compelled to jolt up.
I was immediately, painfully, alert; a large, muscular man was standing over me. I couldn’t help thinking about how closely he resembled the brutish archetype I’d seen in so many video games. His chest was disproportionately large, and his bulbous arms sprouted out of his faded T-shirt, c
ontributing to his polygonal appearance. His hands were oversized, even for his frame, and looked blocky. His taut, angular face stared down at me.
The large man hovering over me was aiming what appeared to be an equally large revolver at my head. I focused my attention there, staring into the depths of the barrel, bewildered. He was saying something, but my adrenaline was pumping, and the sound of my heart was deafening. Aware that this was a classic “fight or flight” situation, I bitterly began to wonder what was keeping me from choosing a response. I seemed frozen, or perhaps time had stood still.
There was someone else, behind him, shouting; this figure was a blur to me—a blue blur (his shirt, I think) with a shiny, metallic tracer. The blur’s words “Shoot her! Shoot her!” seemed to make their way through the cyclone of movement and confusion.
My trance was broken. Facing the absurd realization that my death was imminent, I sprang awake. I frantically looked around me, desperate for something, anything. A nearby exit caught my attention; a few yards from me, there was a dark hole at the bottom of the wall. The hole was close to two feet tall and appeared either to be an air vent or, perhaps, my reeling mind postulated, a drainage duct leading to sewers. I began to start for it, but jerked myself to a stop before I had even begun to move, quickly seeing that it was futile. The hole was blocked off; across the opening hung what looked like it would prove to be a very heavy latticed, metal grate.
I started to turn away in search of some other means of escape, but caught a glimpse of something odd from the corner of my eye. Looking again, I noticed that a handgun sat near the grate. There was a shotgun a few feet beyond that.
I didn’t stop to look a gift gun in the mouth. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my churning psyche, I was whispering reassuringly to myself. In a soothing voice, I told myself that I didn’t need to (or have time to) question why I had woken up in this strange, new environ, let alone why there was a stockpile of guns lying a few yards from me. I tried to reach for the handgun, but my progress was impeded.
To this day, I still can’t work out all of the details of those first few minutes after I woke up; everything was happening too fast. My adversaries’ shouting mixed with my own, bleeding together into a thunderous, unintelligible hum. Their movements seemed to meld them into one giant, nebulous enemy. Straining for the revolver, I felt as though I were fumbling for a light switch in the dark. I remember thinking that my burly assailant must be sitting on my chest; I’m still not sure if he was, or if my lower half had failed to wake up with the rest of me. Whatever was holding me back, I lay prone and, stretching and contorting, finally managed to wriggle away from the two men, just far enough to grasp the gun.
I had no idea if the thing was loaded, but since I’d heard a hammer being cocked amidst the cacophony, I knew it was my only hope. The blue blur was rushing at me, looking more and more like a skinny, unkempt man with a gun as he did so. I raised the gun and fired.
I am not a gun person. I have had no formal training with guns. In fact, the only time my father took me shooting, the sound of the guns firing made me cover my ears with my hands and cry to be taken home. I would have been lucky to hit my blurry blue attacker at all. That I shot him in the forehead with what to a casual observer would have only looked like dead accuracy is another baffling detail in the bizarre, surrealistic world I had fallen into.
I had no time to breathe a sigh of relief, as the second gunman was bearing down on me, uttering nasty guttural noises. That he hadn’t shot me yet was inexplicable to me at the time. In retrospect, I attribute it to the crazed way I had been shaking my head around. Since I had not actually faced a situation remotely like this before, it seemed perfectly appropriate to me to hysterically thrash my head about. I believe my spasmodic behavior saved my life. I’m sure he was holding out for a clean shot; he needed to conserve ammo.
I managed to stagger to my feet. He was only a foot or two away from me now and was trying to grab my arms, to hold me still.
I raised the gun toward him, levying it to what I presumed was his chest level. I wasn’t even looking at what I was doing. I could only look at him—and his gun. His gun was shiny and black, and I would have sworn it was the size of a cannon. He was still trying to get a good hold on me, to get a clear shot at my head.
I fired. He staggered back; a blood spot materialized on the upper chest area of his shirt, instantly plastering the cloth to his chest, and began to spread outwards. He swayed and then lumbered forward for me again. I shot him again. I didn’t even hear the gun shots as I unloaded them. I knew I’d fired when he fell backwards. His heavy frame hit the floor solidly, resonating. Blood emptied out of him and pooled around his body.
The echo of his fall began to fade, and was replaced with momentary stillness. I stood up and inhaled deeply.
Then the bullet-ridden oaf leaped up and lunged at me. His eyes were milky and dead.
I was vaguely aware that my feet had involuntarily begun to shuffle backwards; I remember hearing the soles of my boots scuffing against the cement below me.
I felt as though I’d walked into a zombie movie. The reassuring whisper that resided inside of me promptly gave up and went silent. Still, I had no time to be incredulous; he had hold of me. I accepted that I was living in an obscure, low-budget movie and resolved to deal with my complete and utter loss of sanity after I had disposed of my undead assailant. He had dropped his gun after the second shot I fired into him. It lay in his blood, forgotten. This hulking abomination was more concerned with immediate gratification now. He was looming over me, grabbing at my arms, digging his nails into me. His mouth was descending toward my shoulder, gaping hungrily.
Face to face with what bore more than a passing resemblance to a hungry zombie, I did what any self-respecting horror buff would. I shot for the head. At point blank range, he really didn’t have a chance.
The monstrosity roared and seemed to fall back in slow motion. His limbs twitched wildly. Then everything went silent.
Dumbstruck, I stood, motionless, staring down at his body. Anyone who’s ever seen a horror flick knows you should never stand within arm’s reach of your fallen adversary. But I lingered there, inches from him. For hours? For days? Maybe it was only minutes. All sense of time deserted me that day (nor have I ever fully regained it since).
The bullet wound in his head couldn’t have been more than a dime in size; it was deep and dark, but bloodless. The skin around the wound was loose and pushed into unnatural ridges. Staring blankly down at the carcass, I found myself thinking that his forehead resembled a mountain range with the abscess, a valley in its middle. Then I began to think that his forehead looked more like an enormous shortbread cookie with a dollop of dark raspberry filling at its center. This analogy disturbed me, and I forced myself to look away.
I surveyed the room. It was small, dimly lit with covered, fluorescent lighting, and made of cement, painted off-white. Just beyond the corpse, there was a drain in the middle of the slightly concave cement floor.
The drain was currently being put to work; a stream of blood was winding a meandering path into it, emptying in a slow but steady drip. My assailant had recklessly trekked his own vital fluids around him, daubing the floor with his juices during his repeated, frantic attempts to assault me. In addition to the substantial puddle he had left near the middle of the room, streaks and droplets blanketed the chamber.
The grated hole and shotgun lay behind me to my left. I began to think about what chance I might have of ever wrenching the damned grate off and where the opening might lead. I was not hopeful on either count. The more frail of my two antagonists lay near this duct. Taking a few steps closer, I was able to get a better look at him.
He was lying face up. The bullet wound was hard to miss. If the wound in his forehead was larger than his friend’s, it was imperceptibly so. However, long trails of blood had run, in rivulets, down all sides of his face, pooling around his chin and in his ears. Avoiding looking at his eyes, I ginge
rly grasped a tuft of his ratty hair and lifted his head. The back half of his skull was almost entirely gone. His head looked like a broken hard-boiled egg out of which someone had plucked the yolk. Then I began to notice the bits of gore strewn about him that were presumably scraps of brain matter.
Abruptly dropping his head, I stifled a gag and turned back around.
Where the hell was I?
Turning, I looked to my right. The room in which I found myself appeared to be a very large shower room. This hypothesis was strongly corroborated by the fact that there was an ornate-looking shower head on the opposite wall. There was also a door—a fairly standard, run-of-the-mill opaque glass door. How could I have missed it before? Feeling suddenly decidedly less restrained, I walked over to it. My boots made unpleasant squishing noises in the wetness below me.
The door was slightly ajar; bright light poured through the crack. I cautiously peered into the adjoining room. It was a bathroom. More importantly, it appeared to be empty. I slid the door open.
The bathroom was immaculate. It was brilliantly white: the walls were ivory with alabaster molding, and the sink faucet and porcelain commode gleamed. The mirror above the sink reflected the overhead light, making the room’s illumination almost blinding. It looked totally unlived in; there was no rug on the floor, no toothbrush on the sink counter—not a single sign of use. It looked like a mock-up bathroom in a department store.
I entered the virginal room, tracking blood across the floor as I went. Stopping in front of the mirror, I ventured a look at myself. My left cheek was streaked with blood. My hair was knotted and caked with foul stickiness; strands clung to my face. I was wearing an army-green T-shirt, spackled with blood, and loose-fitting grey-black jeans, which also bore some nasty, darker smears. I had had some vain hope that seeing what I was wearing would jog my memory. I thought I might remember where I had been when I put my clothes on, or what I had been doing—some event that might have led me here. No memory came. They were my clothes, but they offered me no recollection of how I had gotten here.
Making the Best of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 8