Vitala Rising

by Eli Nixon

  The rolling door groaned and sagged inward. One of the corners at the bottom bent with a metallic shriek that had to have been loud as hell, but through the ringing in my ears it sounded like a whisper. Arms appeared in the aperture. Searching, scraping the cement. The door sagged farther.

  In the other doorway, the eyelights had become bodies, faces and arms and legs. Another dozen, maybe two.

  Okay, so there were a lot of them.

  I pumped the shotgun, the heavy metal suddenly feeling lighter in my grip, more flimsy. Inadequate.

  I stepped around the Camaro and aimed a shot at the widening corner beneath the rolling door, hoping to block it up, buy myself more time. Buckshot pellets sparked on the concrete and bit into the arms and faces appearing in the opening, but the impact was minimal. Titan watched cautiously from beneath the Camaro's fender, now and then licking blood from his fur.

  This garage fortress was quickly becoming a tomb.

  But there were options. Sure, there always were. I had an arsenal of unconventional weapons here. I set the shotgun on the edge of the workbench and went to a table saw pressed against one of the walls. It was one of those self-contained units, a framed workbench with a circular sawblade sticking up through a groove in the middle. Maybe I could wedge it under the aluminum door and let it slice anyone who tried to come through. Shit, though. A black power cord was wrapped around a bracket on the side, the three-pronged socket dangling at the end like the head of a mutated dead snake. No electricity.

  The cordless drill might still work if the battery had a charge. I plucked it off the wall, eyeing the zombies pushing against the pile of corpses in the doorway. More of them now were showing those strange white patches, pure as driven snow if not for the bloodstains. They were watching me, and I had a horrible feeling that I might be getting close to another one of those intelligence surges. I spit at the closest one and tried the drill. It whirred to life, the bit spinning so fast it looked like a solid rod. I skipped up to the leading zombie stuck behind the body pile and experimentally jammed the bit into his eye. The zombie shuddered and a cyclone of blood spat back at me out of the eye cavity.

  I pulled out the bit and he was still standing. The good eye blinked at me. The other was just a gooey mash of black and red, white from the popped eyeball leaking down his cheekbone.

  No, too slow. I put the drill back in its spot on the wall and hefted a pair of garden shears. Scissored them open and closed. No, no, no!

  The rolling door groaned again. A body slithered in through the opening, stood on shaking feet, and stepped toward me. I picked up the shotgun and shot him in the neck, then scanned the tools a third time, as always lingering on the chainsaw.

  Okay, yeah, maybe.

  Quickly, I replaced the last shell in the shotgun and then cut a length of twine from a roll on the workbench, tying one end to the gun's barrel and the other to the trigger guard. I shrugged into the backpack and slung the shotgun over both my shoulder and the backpack strap. Then, I picked up a roll of duct tape and peeled away a strip. I adhered the top of the strip to the edge of the work bench, letting the rest dangle.

  In the doorway, the pile of bodies shifted and slid out over the concrete floor. The barrier gone, the first zombie, the one whose eye I'd drilled out, tried to pass, but tripped and crashed to the floor. Spread out like that, feet still in the doorway, his chattering teeth were only five feet from my shoes. Titan, closer to the head, arched and hissed.

  "Okay, Rivet," I breathed. "This better work."

  I pulled the chainsaw off the wall and hefted it, feeling its weight. Bluish liquid sloshed in the opaque gas tank. I looked for the primer bulb, found it, jimmied it with my thumb ten times. Checked all the switches around the handle. I didn't know what half of them did, but there was one orange slider near where my thumb rested that said "STOP" in bold black letters. I slid the tab so that the "STOP" half of the slider was closer to the middle of the groove.

  Everything looked good. Now it was time to get the fuck out of there.

  The big aluminum door at the front of the garage finally crashed free from its railing and a mudslide of bodies fell in on top of it. Sunlight streamed into the garage, highlighting the gore caked around the doorway. Outside, there must have been a hundred more bodies, sickeningly clear in the bright, beautiful day.

  All coming this way.

  I heaved up on the chainsaw's pull-cord. The engine sputtered, went quiet.

  Okay, I hadn't really thought of that possibility.

  I heaved it again, putting my bruised shoulder into the effort. The same thing happened.

  The jumble of bodies was picking itself up, splitting away, coming around the big Camaro.

  "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," I pumped the primer bulb in time with the words. At that point it probably really was a prayer. The tinnitus in my ears was fading, letting the hateful chatter of teeth back into my world. The zombies from outside pressed in around the Camaro. The ones in the doorway stumbled on bodies, keeping their feet now, just a few feet away.

  "Wish me luck, Titan."

  Coo.

  I jerked the pull-cord, and this time the engine coughed before dying. Jerked it again. A little more life in the engine.

  A hand touched my shoulder and I shrieked, involuntarily yanking the cord with the strength of pure fear. The Husqvarna growled with power and I spun, stepping back, and squeezed the trigger. The blades whirred and bit clean through the zombie's waist, sending its torso slapping to the ground, arms still working. The legs just sort of stood there, still attached at the top by a slice of gore-streaked hip bone. I guess I expected them to fall, but they never did.

  More footsteps behind. I swung in a full, stuttering circle, the stutters coming each time the chainsaw blades stopped and bit flesh. Three more zombies fell. Another one just slipped on the blood, there was so fucking much of it.

  I had to go. Now.

  I ripped up the strip of tape I'd stuck to the work bench and wrapped it around the trigger handle of the chainsaw. For a second I didn't think it would stick due to all the blood slicking up the plastic, but the duct tape still had enough adhesive to grip itself, if not the plastic. I pulled my finger off the trigger. The chainsaw continued to roar full-throttle.

  "Get ready to run, Titan!" I shouted. I grabbed the back of the chainsaw in both hands and swung, going all the way around like an Olympian in the hammer throw, and launched the running chainsaw through the doorway and into the hallway.

  It impaled a zombie's chest like a throwing dagger and then gravity helped the saw chew its way out through the crotch. It bumped to the floor between the guy's legs like he'd given birth to it and began dancing on the hardwood, jittery from the rumble of the engine.

  The smallest corner of the blade caught another zombie's ankle, and the hooked blades bit deep, pulling the saw through the leg. The zombie fell on top of it, and a moment later the top half of his head had been disconnected.

  Still the chainsaw roared, danced, a living creature in the tight confines of the hallway.

  A manicured hand reached around the Camaro beside me and gripped my shoulder. I shook it off, unslung the shotgun from my shoulder, and rammed the butt into the woman's face. Then I fired two quick rounds into the hallway, scooped up Titan, and ran through the doorway, leaping over bodies.

  A few pieces of the hall's hardwood flooring peeked up between the bodies—some dead, some still writhing and clutching at the air—but for the most part it was a plague pit. The chainsaw had worked its way about halfway down, screaming for blood and getting it. It had missed two zombies, but I gripped the shotgun in the middle and plowed it lengthwise into their chests, pushing them sideways up against the wall so I could pass.

  With a mental apology to Titan, I chucked the cat at a zombie standing on the other side of the chainsaw. Titan yowled and landed on its face, all twenty claws buried in his forehead, then leaped off the zombie and hit the floor.

  I ran, got as much speed as I c
ould on the lumpy, slippery bodies, and jumped over the chainsaw. Cleared the lethal blade by a foot. Landed in a crouch, stood to keep moving, and slipped on a bloody patch of hardwood.

  My feet flew into the air and my head smacked the ground right beside the chainsaw. It was shaking on bare floor, spinning slowly with the vibrations, bringing the blade around to my forehead. I tried to push myself up, slipped on blood again, scrabbled furiously, trying to move. The blade inched closer, flinging scraps of flesh from its teeth, hitting my face with them. So close now, alive, hungry for me. Frankenstein's monster returned to destroy its creator.

  My flailing foot hooked a cold body. Desperate, I used it as an anchor, bending my knees, sliding my body backward. Not far enough. I dug my fingernails into the wood, gaining just enough traction to lift myself up. The blade jittered in, just under my chin now. If I slipped, it'd rip out my throat.

  More zombies were crowding into the doorway from the garage now, streaming in from outside. Slowly, excruciatingly, I lifted myself higher above the blade, willing my palms to hold, just hold, on the blood-slicked floor. It was like trying to hold steady in an ice rink. My foot was still hooked on the invisible zombie behind me. I tugged with my toes, letting my palms slide backward, elbows locked. My knee bent farther until it finally touched the floor. I was steadier now. The zombies were chattering. There were more behind me. I knew it. But I couldn't turn to look. I lifted my other leg, bent the knee and got them both anchored on the floor. More steady than before, a submissive dog. The chainsaw roaring.

  Then I was far enough back that I could lean back on my thighs. My breath left me in a rush, flinging droplets of blood from my lips. Holy fucking Christ. Something grabbed my hair and I twisted into the body behind me, away from the god damn chainsaw, give me a zombie any day but fuck that shit.

  The hand ripped away from my head with a fistful of hair and I lurched my shoulder into the thing's groin. It slipped and dropped lengthwise across the hallway, except we weren't in the hallway anymore I saw, we were at the end of it in the doorway leading to the foyer. I climbed up onto the zombie's writhing body and pressed it down with one elbow. It was an old man, the same age as Mr. Collins, my old hardware store boss. I hadn't been able to kill him that first day on River Street.

  This guy, though...I pressed the shotgun's barrel against his wrinkled cheek and pulled the trigger. The slug ripped a hole in the floor and the old man's head splattered down into the basement below. His body went limp under me.

  Carefully, I got to my feet and made my way through the house to the kitchen, shooting everything that moved. Titan was waiting for me at the back door. I got my hand on the knob and then slipped again. My momentum shoved open the door and I shot out of the house into a clump of dry weeds. The sunlight and fresh air was better than heroin. I gulped it in, then got up and kept going, away. Just away.

  I was a hundred paces into the woods before distance finally drowned out the muffled roar of the chainsaw in the house behind me.

  Chapter 9

  Three days passed after my stop at the wayside, and each morning dawned a little more grim than the last. I'd run away from the house in terror and sprinted into the woods without paying any attention to what direction I was going, and within an hour I was hopelessly lost in an endless, murky pine barren.

  The old-world conifers stretched over my head, a hundred feet high, and blocked out all but the most tenacious sunlight, which filtered lazily to the forest floor before getting lost in the underbrush. Thorny brambles clustered around the tree trunks, just about the only thing that would grow down here in the dim light and the thick mulch of pine needles.

  I was covered in scratches from the thorns, a fact which I would have minded more if I hadn't been well on the way to drunk the entire time. One bottle, two. Like apparations, they disappeared from my pack as the tepid hours passed in those first two days. I was in a twilight of both body and soul.

  I think if I'd been attacked then, I would have just let the creatures rip me apart. The fight was gone. I'd been running on fumes and liquor for so long that everything inside of me was now used up. Drained. Evaporated.

  Although my feet continued carrying me forward, I was only a shell.

  Several times, I thought I saw pink dots floating in the woods at night, but if there were any zombies following me, they kept their distance.

  I think I really would have given up in that forest if not for Titan. So often I thought of just sitting down on the soft pine needle carpet, back up against a tree, and letting myself die. Just slip away, goodbye world, goodbye zombies. They wanted to get rid of me? Fine. Why was I even fighting anymore?

  But every time I fell into one of those depressions, I saw Titan, and I pressed on. The skin was now stretched so thin over his bones that he looked like a little black skeleton, haggardly keeping pace at my side. At night, he curled up into the crook of my fetal body, a warm spot on my belly to juxtapose the increasingly chill night air. I suppose I was just as thin as he was. My face was overrun with scratchy, dark hair. My jeans and T-shirt probably would have fallen apart if not for all the dirt and blood holding the threads in place.

  Titan was Jennie. He was Theo. My only reminder of them.

  In the mornings, I gave Titan tuna, then pieces of the precious jerky when the tuna ran out. He ate almost as much as me now, and I was fine with that. Maybe it was delirium, but I had the crazy feeling that if I lost Titan, I would lose Jennie and Theo, too. As long as the cat was with me, there was still hope of finding them.

  Each time I shouldered the backpack, it was lighter. Each time, a little worm buried deeper into my gut.

  The third sunrise in the woods, the worm finally reached home. I woke up with the usual aches, the dull, throbbing pressure in my forehead that never went away, and reached into the pack for water, digging through the sea of shotgun shells on the bottom. The only thing that surfaced was a bottle of brown rum, barely a quarter full.

  I upended the backpack over the springy pine needles, watching the cascade of black and red plastic tubes fall into a sliding pile. The clear plastic wrapping of a honeybun was the last to fall out. It drifted down like a leaf and settled atop the shotgun shells. I licked a little smear of sugar off the inside, then set it on the ground for Titan.

  I drank that morning by slurping drops of condensation off the flat, waxy briar leaves. Probably a couple teaspoons in all, barely even enough to slosh in my empty stomach. Titan mewed, starving. He knew as well as I did:

  We were dying.

  By noon, my head was so light that I began to stumble. The rum was making me dizzy, nauseous. I knew it was barely enough, but I wasn't so out of it that I was going to waste a drop of that God damn, beautiful, hated elixir.

  Irregular, painless flashes of light cut across my vision periodically. The edges of my sight were a black vignette. Whispered voices followed me among the trees, dark murmurs that spoke of blood and death and suicide. The weight of the shotgun over my shoulder became a siren's call, begging me to kill myself. I had a sudden vision of myself doing it. Just bite down on the barrel, wedge that hot pink stock between my knees, and blast my brains all over the forest floor.

  Each time the dark border crept in, I took another sip of the rum. Just enough to wet my tongue, to sting my raw, chapped lips. I was on the edge, tapdancing on a highwire over a writhing, demonic mass that yearned for my flesh. An hour after noon, the last amber drop of rum slid down my throat. The empty bottle fell on the pine needles without a sound.

  I sat down heavily and stared ahead into the trees, eyes bleary. The endless straight trunks went on and on. Above me, their boughs formed fractals against the white sky.

  This was the end.

  Titan plunked himself down directly in front of me and began meowing. He looked delicious. Warmth crept into my hand and I stared at it, feeling the blood move through the veins, seeing it in my mind's eye. That looked delicious, too.

  I reached for Titan, but with felin
e grace he skipped backward, just out of my grasp. A second later, I wasn't sure if that had happened or if I'd just imagined it. I leaned forward and reached for him again, and again he backed up. His yellow eyes gleamed.

  "Here, kitty kittykitty," I said, slurring the words together as if I actually were drunk. But I was far from it, sliding fast down a greased slope into darkness.

  Titan cooed, the sound mocking to my ears. Bitch is taunting me, I thought crazily, and lunged forward, arm outstretched. Titan avoided me easily, and my face smacked into rough pine needles.

  You are one.

  "Christ," I cried, gripping my head. Titan pounced and bit my hand. The pain shook away the voice, and again I lunged for the cat, crawled after him on hands and knees. Titan zig-zagged ahead of, always just too far away to touch.

  You are Vitala.

  The voice was all too familiar, a frenzied memory from a fever dream. It had called me before. It would never stop. In my bathroom that first day, a lifetime ago, after Rivet bit off Jennie's ear. In River house, slurping sludge from the floor while the building burned below me.

  "No, no, no!" I shouted, shaking my head like a dog, still on all fours, a lone lunatic in an endless forest.

  Titan bit me again, sinking his teeth deep into my pinky. My teeth gnashed, vision pink, and I chased him, stood and chased him, tearing through the briars, ignoring the thorns, Titan's little black form flitting in front of me.

  Slaughter consume blood death.

  Eat. Feed. Evolve.

  I could sense Titan's warmth. Needed it. My stomach churned. Echoes in an empty cave. I was gaining on him, already tasting the fur and meat and blood in my growing insanity.

  And then the forest ended.

  With no warning, the trees were simply behind me, and I was teetering at the top of a sloped back lawn. The hill was high enough to see houses stretching away in a field of identical terra cotta peaks, the roofs of an orderly suburban jungle. The sight was so unexpected that it jarred me momentarily back into my own mind.