by Alan Spencer
Cindy’s lips trembled. She stifled tears. The truth was sinking in fast.
“I don’t have those wonderful things you have, Boyd. I’ve never been in a relationship long enough to start a family. I always wanted a daughter, probably two so they can pick on each other and raise hell. That’s what children are put on this earth to do. They annoy us until we grow old, and then they can change our diapers and refill our prescriptions when we’re in the rest home.”
Boyd questioned that nugget of life wisdom. “You’re not even thirty yet, are you?"
“Twenty-seven.” She stole back the bottle. “Bottoms up.”
“It’s not too late to change our situation,” Boyd reasoned with her. “We just have to think."
“I still don’t see how we’ll escape.”
“Hayden’s the key. We get him, and when those people come to take him, we give them hell and escape. Guns and everything. I can’t predict what will happen, but it’s our only option. As long as we have something that they want, we can use it to our advantage.”
Cindy lowered in her seat. “I’m scared of what’s out there. Those things will kill us both.”
“We'll be very careful. The night is on our side. We can sneak around easier. I want to see what Hayden's doing in that restaurant."
“I’m going with you. I’ve been alone for too long. I can’t stand it anymore. And what if you didn’t come back?”
“You’re risking your life out there. Are you prepared to fight?”
“I think so.” Cindy replaced the cap on the vodka bottle. “I’d rather be with you. I hate being locked up in this library. And I’ve noticed that restaurant across from us. I keep smelling burning flesh. You’re not telling me Hayden’s eating those things.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
Cindy handed him the M-16. “I think we should trade. The handgun works better for me.”
“We can’t use the guns unless we absolutely have to. The moment those things hear us, they’ll swarm us. It started with one out there, and when the thing shrieked, dozens of them came out of the woodwork after me. We don’t know much about them, but they’re smarter than they appear. It’s like they can communicate with each other. I don’t want to be here long enough to understand their way of life. I just want them dead."
Cindy clutched the Glock. “Fine. Then what are we waiting for?”
Good Cookin'
Hayden cleaned the mess he'd made in the kitchen earlier. Congealed blood stained the floor and countertops in wicked spatters. He washed the kitchen blades and sharpened them with a carving stone. After the work of sanitation was complete, his stomach growled. He was famished.
He opened the freezer to quench his hunger. The woman’s head he’d cut off tonight watched him, stealing his attention through the plastic bag. Her eyes were frozen over, but her mouth tried to shape words.
Moving on from the female corpse, Hayden removed a forearm from a plastic bag from the shelf below. The arm belonged to the burly man he killed two weeks ago. He looked to be from prison, especially from the tattoo on his back of two lesbians sitting Indian-style across from each other fingering one another between the legs.
Hayden carried the forearm to the stovetop and grabbed a skillet from the hanging rack above him. “I think I’ll eat it fried this time.”
It’s better if it’s baked, Hayden. Think heart healthy.
“I’m in the mood for junk food. I earned it.”
Hayden layered the skillet with olive oil and added sea salt and bay leaves to the mix. It was a subtle blend. It was enough to remove the off-taste to the strange meat.
He brought down a hammer against the forearm. A big chunk of frozen meat shattered into pebbles. He collected a handful, defrosted them in the microwave, and turned up the gas burners on the oven. A small jet of flames shot up from the gas head. He slapped the meat onto the skillet and mixed it together, the olive oil soaking and sizzling into the meat. The aroma of sea salt, a fresh breeze from the Maine coast, sauntered into his nose. He finished blackening the meat and let it cool.
The smells drew the same question every night. The meat he procured was from decaying bodies that modified themselves from newer tissue. How come he wasn’t suffering from bouts of botulism or diarrhea?
“I’m not camping out on the toilet,” Hayden announced to no one, "and until I do, I don’t have to stop. Why question it? And suppose I do get sick, I can’t say with certainty that I would quit. It’s just too fucking good."
Hayden gathered a plate and utensils, and when he sat down to enjoy his food in the dining area with Venus as his company, there was a clatter from the back kitchen.
Someone was forcing open the door.
Edwin Mendez
It was a set-up from the beginning, and when Edwin Mendez figured it out, it was far too late to fight back. Edwin clung to the last remnants of his life in the basement of 102 South End, one of the many residential houses inside the perimeter. He was chased from the outer gates, and the rotting fiends didn’t let up their pursuit until he was running to the end of a cul-de-sac. No choice, Edwin stormed through the front door of the closest house and took cover in the basement.
He had survived for two days.
And this was the third night.
Edwin dared to venture up the stairs once again, wondering if he could leave. Where are they, he asked after each shifting of foundation and whistle of wind sneaking through the cracked windows. There were dozens of the dead people scouring the streets for him when he first arrived, and now there were zero.
Do they know I’m here?
Upstairs, he hunted through the cabinets and refrigerator for food. Edwin survived on cans of baked beans, fruit cocktail, and sausage fingers. He ended up in this mess, he recalled, after hacking information from the state's databases: account information, credit card numbers, social security numbers, and addresses of hundreds of officers including where their direct deposit pay checks were sent. He created a private account and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from law enforcement agencies. Edwin could’ve stolen a hundred dollars a week and avoided being caught, but retirement flashed in his mind, and it drove him to steal more and more until the FBI smashed in his door, woke him and his wife, and he was arrested.
Instead of hand cuffs, a burlap bag was put over his head, and his arms and legs were bound with plastic twine. He was hog-tied and thrown into the back of a large vehicle. And then he woke on a sidewalk here without an explanation.
Edwin edged towards the opposite end of the house, curious and satisfied no one was outside. He discovered pictures of a family on the walls, namely a man dressed in military clothing with a wife and a boy and girl.
The bedrooms matched the family in the pictures. Dinosaurs covered the walls of the boy’s room, and in the girl’s room, they were pink. Barbie figurines were strewn about the carpet, their bodies laying around an Easy-Bake Oven. In the owner’s bedroom, the sheets were sodden in old blood. Torn undergarments were spread out in rivulets on the carpet. No bodies.
A strike and splinter of wood from the living room alerted him.
The things were boarding up the windows from the outside. They nailed planks across the doors and sealed every exit possible. This was a reverse barricade.
Edwin gathered up food and water and locked himself in the basement. The thud of nails and wood continued for hours until the din finally stopped.
He once again faced the horrible silence.
An hour, maybe two, the garage door opened. The mechanical whir jolted him with fear. The back door of the basement was ripped from its hinges in minutes. Blunt objects were used to batter the barrier into kindling. Six of the dead people charged at him in collaboration, still in the shadows.
Edwin tried to dodge them, but he had nowhere else to go. He was pinned up against the wall. They drove him to the floor. One restrained him with rope, and another clutched a scalpel. The glint of the weapon matched its gleaming marble eye
s.
Edwin saw the dead man up close. He could see through the open nasal cavity to the webs of brain tissue housed within the darkened nook of its skull. Its scalp was bald and sliding from the white dome in the consistency of butter. Its ears were stitched on and hanging by mere threads. The jaw looked to be stuck in place by metal staples. The figure discarded the strings and leftovers of its face, peeling them bare, everything coming off, until Edwin stared at a red-faced skeleton.
The figure raised the scalpel, the hands holding him down gripping tighter. A slit in the back of his neck and around the circumference of his scalp was created, and slashing more, slashing deeper, slashing, slashing, slashing, Edwin's skin became a ragged carving canvas.
The pain didn’t creep up until the cutter gripped the back of his neck with two hands and jerked upwards on the flesh. The tear was audible with each grain of fascia broken. Edwin's face turned warm and wet with racing bullets of blood.
The corpse raised Edwin's face, a complete mask with hair and his furrowed, pained expression.
The dead man fit the face snug over its barren features, and for a moment before slipping into deadly unconsciousness, Edwin really believed he was staring at himself.
Boyd's Memories
“No—he didn’t mean for it to happen!”
“You’re going to have to leave, ma'am. Your husband’s being looked over by the medics. Please stay calm. I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal—”
“But Boyd was trying to apprehend him. It was an accident. Why is that cop saying he’s going to be arrested?”
“Nobody said that.”
“I heard it!”
“Get her away from my crime scene right now.”
“Both the cars were barreling down the street, and they smashed into each other. I’ve never seen such a thing happen before. He just flew out of the driver’s side. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt. I saw it all happen."
“Don’t look at the body, sir. We’ve got your statement, now move on. You don’t have to tell me again what happened."
Boyd listened to the words and conversations, and they were meaningless in conjunction to the ringing in his head, the taste of bitter blood crawling down his throat, and how his neck and skull whirred in a painful migraine. He’d been jostled hard and could be suffering from whiplash, or a concussion, or both. He kept closing his eyes, and then opening them, and then drifting asleep, waking, drifting, waking, and then he was lifted up by three different men onto a stretcher. A tiny orange light was shone in his eyes. The snapping of fingers. They kept snapping, and he couldn’t speak to tell them to stop it, he was trying to sleep, and stop shining that fucking light in his eyes.
“Officer Broman, can you hear me?—Boyd, hey Boyd, can you hear me?”
“He’s not with it.”
“They both sped right through a red light. They were lucky it’s late enough there wasn’t other incoming traffic.”
“Did you see that other guy? He’s flattened. Jesus Christ. Forget the ambulance ride, call someone to hose off the pavement.”
A screaming, shrill female called out hysterical, “Boyd, are you okay?—honey, are you okay? Let go of me, that’s my husband. THAT’S MY HUSBAND!”
Red and blue lights spun from six different squad cars.
A face lowered down to Boyd's. A paramedic's. Boyd was now in the ambulance. The doors shut at his feet. The vehicle wasn't in motion yet.
“You’re going to be fine. We’re not very far from the hospital. You’re going to make it, pal.”
Boyd’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and before he went under, he heard his wife calling out to him one last time.
Night Moves
Boyd opened the back exit of the library. He cautiously looked out at the schoolyard two blocks out from their position. The playground was empty. The swings were in motion from a recent blast of wind. Confident it was clear, Boyd crept out of the doorway far enough to peer out from the edge of a brick wall. Over the barrier, a parking lot was filled with the shells of burned up cars. Nothing they could use.
“How are we crossing over?” Cindy kept her voice low. “I haven’t seen any of those things yet.”
Boyd studied the gutter on the other side of the library. “We’ll go underground. Hopefully, we'll stay unseen.”
“Then we’ll need this.” Cindy waved a flashlight. “I wouldn’t enter that trap without a light. It was inside the desk in that office.”
“That flashlight, it’s heavy duty. It could crack a few skulls."
Cindy’s face locked up. She was scared.
“We’re alive, and we're smarter than them. We’re not piecing ourselves back together, are we? Our bodies are our own. I’m here with you. It’s going to be fine. If all else fails, we run like hell.”
“Run like hell,” she repeated. “Yeah, run like hell. You know that's what I'll be doing."
Boyd led her to the gutter. He crawled down first. Boyd touched down onto the metal walkway. Boyd listened. He heard no sudden movements.
Cindy crawled down next, flashing her beam and illuminating the green and filmy orange water below them. Stacks of bones floated in the water. They were hollowed out, the marrow sucked clean, the femurs snapped in half, the vertebra shattered, the rib bones warped, the sternums bent and broken, everything sapped of worth.
This was a refuse pile.
The bones had a life of their own. It was subtle, like the involuntary flex of muscles, or was it his imagination? Cindy froze the beam on a floating skull, affirming his observation. The eyes stared them down from the sockets, moving with jelly squishes. The mandible snapped open and closed in reaction.
Boyd asked softly, “What makes it do that? It has no body. It can't harm us as it is."
“I want to shoot it. It keeps fucking looking at us. When you’re dead, you’re not supposed to be staring people down and murdering them. Let me shoot it. I'll put it out of its misery."
“You can’t; they’ll hear us. Hold it together. I know it’s horrible to look at. Turn away and move on. It's for the best, Cindy."
Boyd urged her from the horrid sight by pivoting her shoulders and offering her a soft shove forward. They headed in the direction of the restaurant. It was a straight-shot to the other side of the road. The tunnels around them were blocked and patched over with mesh wire. This was the work of someone else besides the military; these things had taken over, and this was their place to design and protect.
A burst of methane gas exuded from the back of the sewer. Cindy gasped, audibly distraught. "Nasty."
"Shhhhh."
It was hard to believe they’d only covered five or six yards. Boyd watched out for a step-ladder, or another gutter opening. What he detected on accident was a moving shadow. A hand reached up from the water, and crawling up, the rest of the body writhed onto the walkway. Its skull was completely black. Its legs and midsection was dressed in torn-up clothing: jeans and an old polo shirt. The dead man raised a broken arm bone in one hand, the tip sharpened to a point. Cindy raised the Glock to fire, but Boyd waved the gun down.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Cindy approached the thing. “No, forget it—I’ve got this one.”
She raised the blunt end of the flashlight up to its head. Before the thing could close in on her, Cindy leveled it onto its skull.
The skull-cap broke on the fourth connection. Thrown back, losing its brains, the thing flopped back into the water. Cindy trained the flashlight's beam on it. The vestiges floated with its brains spreading along the water, the gray matter dissolving. The dead man reached out to gather the soft bits, but its arms couldn’t perform the task without the proper nerve function. After a time of failure, the thing scavenged through piles of nearby bones and searched through them for something to use.
“It’s still able to function even with its brain oozing out of its head.” Cindy was startled by the revelation. “How can we kill these things?”
"We'll ha
ve to find out, won't we?"
Ahead, Boyd closed in on a shaft of light. It was another gutter. He hoisted Cindy up first, and then he handed her his weapons and followed her. They were on the opposite end of the street now. Together, they rushed to the alley of Mariatelli’s Restaurant. None of the corpses were anywhere to be seen.
Cindy waited for him at the back door. She was anxious to take cover inside the restaurant. Boyd met up with her, leveling the M-16 over the padlock. The lock came undone with a rusty collapse after only two blows. Boyd stood confused, staring at the broken remains at his feet.
“This is too easy. Why haven’t those things broken inside yet?”
She shrugged, eyeing the areas around them nervously. “Maybe they’ve given up. Who cares? Let's get the fuck inside before they show up.”
After rushing through the door and closing it behind them, Boyd stacked a heap of crates against the door to create a barricade. Secure enough, they faced an industrial-sized dishwasher and a fully-stocked kitchen.
The rank smell of cooking flesh hit them hard.
“Be careful,” Boyd whispered. “He’s in here somewhere. I know it."
Boyd edged up to the oven and happened upon an empty skillet. The stink of flesh lingered strongly. Meat, freshly prepared.
He’s never stopped being a cannibal, even in here.
Cindy opened the freezer.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“There could be real food in here. I’ve been eating shit out of cans for the past eight days. I'm dying for real food."
Boyd watched every doorway and clearing for Hayden. Nobody was coming. There was a front area for seating, a back room, and restrooms, all of which Hayden could be hiding in.