Live, From the End of the World

by William Vitka

  “Not good.” I shake my head. “Nope nope nope.”

  The first of the Keef horde hurls himself onto the hood of the car. The reanimated ratfuck locks eyes with me. His nose cracks. Teeth bounce outta his head when he collides with the windshield. The monster howls. Thick dark blood slides down the glass. Some nasty chocolate syrup.

  Ben says, “Can we shoot now?”

  I throw the car into reverse. “Please fuckin do.” I hit the gas. We peel out backward.

  Ben rolls his window down. Points his Glock at the maggot man on the hood. The first round goes wild. It hits one of the other murder machines in the leg. The second shot hits the hood of the car and blows a hole clean through it.

  I say, “And refrain from shooting our vehicle.” I watch the rearview mirror. Try to put some distance between us and the pursuant parasite parade.

  Ben’s third shot goes wide again.

  I feel the tires struggle in slushy snow. Grip the wheel harder. “What the fuck. Don’t you play video games?”

  Ben readjusts his aim. “Blow me, dicktits, this ain’t easy.” His fourth shot hits the frenzied bastard in the right eye. Head juice sprays from the back of its skull. The beast’s body slides from the hood of the cruiser.

  I whip the wheel around and turn us north. In the side mirror, I watch the mad carnival of carnivores try to catch up. The falling snow turns em into shambling silhouettes.

  My city. Covered in ash.

  Ben says, “I thought we were going to Brooklyn.”

  I shake my head. “Gotta pick someone up. You don’t like that, you can get out here.”

  “Why the hostility? I didn’t complain.” He sinks into the car seat. “I just want outta here.”

  I’m restricted to about ten miles an hour on Sixth Avenue. There are too many bodies. Cars. Snow. Too much debris for me to go balls out. It’s been a damn long time since I’ve driven anyway, so I don’t trust myself to go much faster in this weather.

  Crashing would be bad.

  On our right, Radio City Music Hall burns. Fire licks out of the lobby and singes the blue overhang a crusty black. A few of the monsters catch fire when they meander too close. They rotate their arms around like flaming pinwheels. They dance. Tumble. Hiss in the ashen snow where they fall.

  I slow down a little more. Veer around a fire truck that must’ve stopped to battle the blaze in the midst of the chaos. There’s a firefighter over our heads. No longer human. He dangles from the motorized ladder. His safety line keeps him aloft. He strains and reaches out for us. A mad marionette puppet.

  An ad drone zips by and scans the Keef. It tries to sell him an energy drink.

  Must be one of the dumber ones.

  I gun the engine and barrel through a group of about twelve Keefs at Fifty-Second Street. Their bodies clang against the cruiser. The reinforced glass holds.

  Other infected freaks gather around a resourceful shopkeeper who’s got his heavy steel store gate down. They bang on it. Struggle to get in. The shopkeeper waves for help.

  We don’t stop.

  I dodge more stalled and crashed cars. Sirens, screams and gunfire fill the air.

  There are a couple teenagers huddled on top of the LOVE statue at Fifty-Fifth. They kick at the hands and faces of thirty infected that are fighting hard to get em. Across the street is another sidewalk feast.

  Not even Sean suggests we help.

  It’s death out here.

  I can see people watching us from windows above street level. Most gawk. Their hands covering their mouths. Some wave.

  I imagine they’re waving goodbye.

  There’s a pocket of NYPD soldiers holding their own from inside a Chase bank on Fifty-Sixth street. They at least figured out the headshot thing. I can’t necessarily take credit, but I want to.

  Dozens of bodies lay perma-dead at the edges of their barricade. One of the cops takes a flare to the massive pile and turns it into a fiery moat. If a group of cops, cut off from everyone, can have that success, it makes me think others can make a stand too.

  It dawns on me that however bad we have it here, it’s probably worse on the mainland. The city’s just fighting against the tail end of the infection. Most of the bastards are heading to Jersey, the USC, and beyond—shambling toward the bigger pie.

  I ask Ben to turn on the radio. To check for a news station on the AM band so we can get some information.

  Parasite people slam into the car on my side. Sean rolls his window down just far enough to slide the barrel of a shotgun out. He aims it one of the thing’s heads. Pulls the trigger. Its skull explodes. Sean cries out in pain.

  I crane my neck to look at him in the backseat. “Shit. What’s wrong?” I’m worried he might’ve gotten bit. Infected.

  Sean winces. “Damn gun kicks hard. I sprained my wrist.”

  Shooting from the car isn’t working at all. I hit the gas. Swerve away from the infected to lose em. Make a hard right on Central Park South. The cruiser’s tires slip in the slush, but I regain control and we avoid sliding into the half-eaten carcass of a horse and its overturned carriage.

  Sean says, “Interesting. It seems that they’ll go after more than just people.”

  Ben says, “That horse gonna get up and chase us?”

  “It doesn’t look like it’s reanimating. Might be too far damaged to be of use to the parasite. Or the parasite hasn’t mutated into a cross-species form. Not yet, anyway. But I can’t be sure.”

  Infected chase down their victims in Central Park. Everything has trouble in the snow. Humans and monsters yowl in choruses.

  Ben works the radio as we drive east. Traffic must’ve been heavier here when the outbreak started. I jump the cruiser onto the sidewalk to juke between wrecks.

  The radio squawks when the tuner hits 880AM. “The assailants appear to have spread into mainland USC and the military is fighting a losing battle against the unknown, unorganized attackers. It had been believed that once the bridges and tunnels of the New York City Zone were destroyed—”

  So they did seal us off. Probably with entertainingly large explosives. All the little earthquakes from before. What a bunch of assholes.

  “—that the attackers would be easily dispatched. But due to an inability to properly identify those who showed early signs of infection, there are reports of outbreaks as far north as White Plains and as far west as—”

  Sean whistles from the backseat. “The problem is that they’re still treating it as curable, I bet. They’re probably carting victims off to hospitals. Spreading it faster. An infection with wheels.” He gets on his knees and clasps the wire between the front and back seats. “I’ll bet the armed forces on the mainland still aren’t going for headshots, either.”

  I stomp my foot on the brakes. A car spins through the courtyard of FAO Schwartz. Its rear bumper bounces off the teddy bear that once welcomed children to Toyland.

  There’s an infected hanging on the driver’s side door. It reaches in at its living dinner. The man at the wheel of the swerving late-model Honda Civic tries in vain to beat the monster away with a bloody fist.

  My police cruiser fishtails. I work to avoid the careening wreck. Turn the wheel. But I only manage to put us in greater danger of colliding with a three-car pile-up farther down the block.

  Then my tires catch, but I can’t react fast enough. We shoot forward, right into the swerving Honda. Our front ends collide. There’s a bang like a bomb as the metal meets.

  Everything seems to happen slowly.

  The flesh-biting bastard hanging onto the Honda flies from his handholds. Tumbles over the front of the cruiser. I hear its bones crunch.

  The windshield of the Honda shatters. The hood crumples like paper. The driver’s head darts forward then snaps back. It comes to rest at an angle that tells me he won’t be asking for insurance info.
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br />   Sean shoots forward. His face smashes into the wire mesh that separates the front from the back. The mesh rubs on his face like a cheese grater. It shears off a section of his cheek. Blood drips through his fingers and against the seating.

  Ben and I are wearing our seatbelts. The airbags save us from too much damage. We’re dazed, but otherwise all right.

  The NYPD cruiser is made of tougher stuff than the foreign car. Our hood folds and the windshield cracks into a frail spider web design, but it’s nothing compared to the damage the Civic takes.

  I try to start the engine.

  It coughs. Won’t turn over. I’m sure there’s some dumb mechanical trick I’m missing. Like waiting a minute. Since these things ain’t ever supposed to die.

  But I don’t have the fuckin time.

  I look out the window. Parasites are headed our way. A group from FAO Schwartz closes in. So does a second mob.

  Ben kicks at his door until it swings out. He crawls into the snow. Holds his neck with one hand and the Glock with the other. “Awesome plan, man.” A handful of loose ammunition spills out with him.

  My door opens easily. I stumble in the slush. Check the back where Sean is. I think for a split second, terrified, that he’s scratching manically at his face—but he’s sticking duct tape on the tear in his cheek to stem the bleeding.

  He gives me a thumbs-up.

  A spotlight from the sky blinds me. Some helicopter I haven’t seen or heard cuz I’ve been too busy crashing. The chopper steadies over us. I cover my eyes with one hand. Peer up. CBS2 is etched on the side. I groan.

  Goddamn media parasites.

  Ben shouts. “They’re coming, man.” He points down the street to a lumbering mob of flesh-eaters. He cups a hand over his eyes so he can see and aim.

  “I know, I know. Help Sean out of the back. Take only what won’t bog you down.” I move to the trunk. Wave to the news helicopter above us. Scream: “Fuck off, you bastards. You’re drawing more of em to us. Just fuck off or help. If you set down, we can get out of here.”

  The chopper keeps hovering. It kicks snow around us in a frozen maelstrom.

  I flap my hands at it. “Holy shit! You are not helping!”

  The big, loud whirly bird moves. It hovers above the Keefs down the block now. Gets its footage. Then leaves.

  Snow shimmers in the night air.

  It’s too cold to be outside for long, but there ain’t any options. We have to hump the five avenues to Helene’s office and head south from there. Maybe through the subway.

  I pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. Pop the cruiser’s trunk. I grab a heavy NYPD parka. Toss it to Ben.

  He hurries into the coat. Lets off two quick rounds from his Glock. One of the monsters from the leading edge of the undead flesh carpet drops.

  Sean steps out of the car. Almost trips. He’s lost a lot of blood, but his duct tape trick seems to be working. At least, his face doesn’t leak anymore. He dons a parka. Slings the makeshift medical bag over his shoulder. Offers me a shotgun from the backseat.

  I say, “Gimme a minute.” Turn my focus again to the trunk. I grab two big blue duffel bags. Stuff shit into em. Road flares. Extra ammunition. A first aid kit. Anything that’s in the trunk that might be useful.

  Sean’s shotgun calls out.

  I slam the trunk shut. “All right, all right! I get it!” I give one duffel to Ben and throw the other over my shoulder.

  The swarm’s only a block away. There’s a hundred. Maybe more.

  Sean aims. Pulls the trigger.

  The gun makes a hollow, metallic clack.

  Ben says, “Jesus, Sean. Gotta reload that shit.”

  Sean digs into his pockets for shells. “I know. I’m just... I’m new at this.”

  Ben fires into the crowd. He hits a jogging undead.

  I pry the NYPD cruiser’s gas tank cover open with my crowbar. Unscrew the safety cap. I stick a road flare partway down the intake pipe and rip the plastic guard from the top.

  Sean opens fire with Ben.

  Sean cocks an eye at me. “Bonfire?”

  “More like car bomb.” I shrug. “Don’t know how long it’s gonna take, but it should give us some cover when the gas goes.”

  I crack the top of the flare. It blooms into a beautiful red starburst.

  I run to Sean and Ben. Tap em on the shoulders. We start marching east. With any luck, the cruiser will blow in a minute and create a fiery impasse. Maybe take some of the bastards off our backs. I just wanna to be far away when it goes. I squeeze through the edges of crumpled cars that close off the intersection at Madison Avenue.

  When we’re halfway to Park Avenue, an enormous fireball lights up the streets and stretches our shadows out. The gas tank on the cruiser goes boom. Then another car goes. Then another.

  We squint back through the falling snow and see dozens of figures thrashing around on fire like drunken, animated candles. Yellow halos surround em.

  Ben says, “Burn, baby, burn.”

  I punch his shoulder. Smile.

  The infected are spread out thinner the farther east we go. Chaos dies down a little. Around Park, there are maybe fifty. The ones we can’t avoid, we take out with stealth. A machete to the head. Or a crowbar.

  Countless bodies litter the streets. People who are either too far eaten to reanimate, or cannibal corpses destroyed after the outbreak. Their blood dyes the snow variations of the red spectrum. Most of it looks brown in the streetlights.

  Another cadre of cops is holed up inside an H&M clothing store at Lexington. They’ve got sofas down across the glass entrance. And they’re taking shots at whatever infected get too close. We sneak by. Avoid the whole thing. No use getting shot by accident.

  It’d be a dumb way to end this trip.

  People watch us from the upper stories of the skyscrapers.

  Sean huffs underneath his hood. “The speed of this thing was probably an advantage and a disadvantage. It moved so quickly in the city that the NYPD just wanted to be rid of it and went for kill shots. Head shots. NYPD soldiers here likely have a better score than anybody out in the suburbs. And the horde mentality that we saw in the TV studios probably means that a lot of them followed others out of the city.”

  I shoulder my shotgun. Aim at an infected stumbling toward us from Third Avenue. It drops to its knees before I can kill it.

  Sean ponders aloud. “Outside the city, where hunting is on a more horizontal level than vertical, since they don’t have to get through floor after floor of resistance, but rather long open stretches, who knows how these things might behave. They might change their behavior depending on the geographical layout. Speed might be more important. Or perhaps height, or—”

  I hold my hand up in front of the scientist’s face. “Dude. Shut up a minute.”

  The monster that dropped in front of us heaves. It throws up. Pukes out chunks of flesh and tissue. Yellow fluid stains the snow.

  I tilt my head to Sean. “What’s it doing?”

  Ben holds his pistol out.

  The cannibal corpse spasms. It flips onto its back. Writhes. Blood and vomit geyser into the air. Come down in thick chunks. Its spine arches. Its hands curl. Become talons.

  Sean stutters. “I-I... I got nothin.”

  The infected’s neck snaps against the ground. It hurls another geyser of gore into the air. Then it lies still.

  Sean takes a step forward. Stops. Makes a noise like “Ehhhhh...” And seems to think better of taking charge.

  I nudge Ben.

  The engineer whirls around to face me. “No way, man. I’ve seen this movie. Black dude always dies first. You lead.”

  I sigh. Walk up to the repulsive thing. Put the barrel of my Remington shotgun against its temple. I prod it. The corpse’s head whips back and forth. Its tongue lashes out. Strains an
d licks. The muscle extends itself. A pink, pulsing tentacle.

  Sean jumps.

  I yelp in surprise. “That’s not okay.”

  The eyes of the corpse bulge outward. As if some massive pressure is forcing em from the skull. The monster’s wrists twist. Its hands fold backward. The Keef’s left hand shoots over in a flash. It carves into the flesh of its right forearm. Scrapes and tears at the tissue.

  Once through the layer of fat and muscle, the corpse wraps its fingers around the radius bone and snaps it forward. Cracks it. Rotates it out. Tendons and muscle cling to the bone, wriggling like worms. The corpse rocks itself from side to side. Tries to utilize the spear arm as a new leg. It takes a swing at us with its modified appendage.

  The Keef’s lower jaw clamps shut. Scissors the tongue until the heavy muscle plops into the snow. Then it bites upward. Chews a hunk from its own lip. Rends the flesh until nothing but teeth and gum show.

  Ben hisses.

  Sean blinks.

  I want whiskey.

  The monster stares at us. All teeth. Blood leaks through the tendrils of flesh that hang like the branches of a weeping willow.

  Sean says, “It’s trying to modify the body, I guess... Maybe?” He levels his shotgun at it. “The parasite could be evolving. Mutating. It’s trying to find new modes of transportation. It’s trying to reconfigure the mechanics of the human body.”

  I say, “Headshots still work?”

  Sean nods. “They should. It still needs the brain, I think. That’s why it keeps the head mostly inta—”

  I blow the beast’s cranium into individual parasite molecules. Then set it on fire with a road flare. I imagine Helene and Fred, surrounded by hundreds of these meat-hungry mutations.

  I jog east.

  My only concern is Helene.

  Ben and Sean struggle to catch up.

  We run through the snow. All three of us pant against the straps of our gear.

  Sean says, “It’ll probably keep trying to reconfigure the body until it finds something that works. Something better than just our bipedal human scheme.”

  I stumble in the snow. The weapons and duffel bag weigh me down. Make me trip. “Well, we killed that spear arm lineage, right? No more of em.”