I squeeze her hand.
She smiles. Gathers more things into her heavy purse. “I’m with you. No matter what.”
She should probably be in charge.
Fred says, “I don’t like this. This is stupid. We’re good here. You want us to walk thirty blocks so Dr. Whatthefuck can diddle around with a microscope?” Fred gets red in the face. His hands reach for the cross around his neck. He twirls it in his fingers. “We can ride this thing out. There’s no reason for us to risk it.”
“You made it outside before.”
“That was like seven blocks! And it wasn’t as bad out as it is now. The more time passes, the worse it gets.”
Whiny fuckin...
Nope. Don’t say it. Don’t go down that road. Stay cool.
I just wanna be somewhere else. Helene’s willing to go my way. Ben’s slowly nodding his head in agreement with Fred. Sean seems to be ignoring the whole ordeal.
I say, “Okay, look... Let me talk a little with Sean. He hasn’t been wrong yet. Gimme five minutes. I promise we won’t go off half-cocked.”
Fred twirls his cross. Walks down the hall. Initiates what I assume will be a long series of anxious paces.
Ben follows him.
I turn and snap a quick picture of Sean’s shadow. I walk to him. Put my hand on his shoulder. “You doing all right? Haven’t, uh, moved in a while.”
Sean inhales and exhales. “I’m fine. I just... I keep hearing something. Like a weird bark or a howl.”
“Dogs. No reason they wouldn’t be running around leash-free at this point.”
“No, it’s not dogs. It’s drawn out. Reverberating longer. It’s something bigger than a dog.”
I pull my hand from his shoulder. “My mom used to have Borzoi. Russian Wolf Hounds. They were pretty big and let me tell you—”
Then I hear it.
Fuck me.
It’s not quite a howl. It’s something like a condensed whale song. It starts at an extremely low pitch and rises to higher frequencies.
The Keefs in the street react to it. They adjust their direction. Shift to where the sound seems to be coming from.
I bite my lip. “They talking to each other?”
Sean says, “I don’t think so. Hang on, it’s close.”
A group of humans stalk through the street, west to east. Only three of em. I can’t tell if they’re big or strong. Young or old. But they’re making their way through pretty well.
Most of the group’s kills come from melee attacks. A flurry of hits from baseball bats and heavy pipes when an infected gets within reach. I almost wanna get their attention, but staying under the radar is smarter.
In an apocalypse like this, there ain’t necessarily strength in numbers.
The musical howl sounds again. More infected arrive.
Sean says, “Very close now.”
We wait.
Watch.
Two shapes trot up First Avenue from the south. Both weird amalgamations of distorted flesh. Distended human forms that walk on all fours. Stilt-walkers in a parade. Another evolution of the infection. Maybe the end result of what that writhing undead started on Third Avenue.
They’re elongated humans. At the center of each is a bleeding torso. The head is filled with angry, hungry teeth.
These mewling, crying, screaming horrors on stilts smile with their boney skulls. Thanks to their long legs and arms, they have no problem marching through the foot of grey snow.
Imagine a skinned, ten-foot-long dog that barks through a stripped jaw. Something built for speed. Greyhounds from hell.
Stilt-walkers.
The skull is taut. Skin pulled back to accommodate the body’s new length. The human eyes haven’t changed, but they stare blazing and bulging. They never blink.
The stilt-walkers move faster than the others.
The ragged group of three humans doesn’t stand much of a chance. Especially since their appointed marksman (Mr. Shitty Shooter) can’t hit shit.
A stilt-walker hops forward. Punches its twisted foreleg through the stomach of one group member. Bullets impact along its side. Necrotized blood pours from it in hissing fountains, but it doesn’t stop.
The unfortunate man in its clutches squeals. He struggles to keep his organs inside his abdomen.
The mutant parasite throws its head back. Howls. Its lower jaw drops as a snake’s might and wraps around the man’s head. It gnaws and rends the flesh of his skull until the screaming stops.
Mr. Shitty Shooter finally scores a fatal headshot. The first stilt-walker drops hard into the snow. It flexes its elongated arms in little death throes.
The second stilt-walker rears back on its hind legs. It rushes Mr. Shitty Shooter. The gunner fires until his pistol clicks empty. The bug-eyed flesh-eater spears him through the chest.
Its smiling teeth dart for his face.
The third and final member of the group scurries down the street, crying for help. He panics. Doesn’t look where he’s going. He runs right into an oncoming horde of Keefs. Gets torn to pieces before he reanimates, limbless. Just a gyrating, moaning torso in the street.
The stilt-walker drops the gunman after it’s sucked the eyes and skin and muscle from his upper torso. He reanimates blind. Stumbles toward nothing but what he can smell.
The stilt-walker sings its song again. It strides elegantly up First Ave. It leaves behind a gore-spattered snowy street teeming with undead.
I turn toward Sean.
His mouth is open and his eyes stare.
Down the street, a spotlight splits the shadows.
I think it might be another news chopper.
Wrong.
It’s an ad drone. Its little impulse engines sputter and puff clouds of exhaust. I can hear it gibbering. Scanning. Trying to talk to the lumbering Keefs.
It has a very stupid AI unit.
The undead swat at it.
The drone dips. Dodges. Says, “There is no need to be rude!”
It flutters up around another group of cannibal corpses. Tries to engage em. And gets smacked.
Sean and I don’t think to duck.
I mean, really, with all this other shit going on?
The drone hovers up to our floor. Floats outside the window. It takes our bioreadings and starts chirping. “Hello, healthy shoppers!”
It’s loud.
Really fuckin loud.
Sean steps back.
He’s either broke or scared.
I tap the glass. “Go away!” Then throw the rightmost window open. “Go away!” I make shooing motions with my hands. “You horrible little afterbirth.”
The drone says, “A response at last. I am delighted! I have tried speaking with thousands of customers today. I have not had any luck. This is wonderful. I am very excited!”
I try to be just loud enough so that the drone’s microphones can pick up my pissed-offedness. “That’s cuz everyone’s dead. We don’t want anything.”
“Oh, I do not think they are dead. I detected movement. Meat does not move when they it is no longer alive. They are merely unsatisfied customers.”
This machine’s making too much noise. “Yeah. Sure. Why not. And I’m unsatisfied too.” I pull the heavy .45 Colt from its home on my thigh and aim it at the drone. “You need to leave now or I am gonna put a few grams of metal in your CPU, you hovering whore bucket.”
“This advertising drone is property of Walt Disney, stock symbol DIS on the NYSE. Any intentional damage caused to this mechanical device by a person or persons will be considered in violation of—”
A bony appendage shoots up through the shiny frame of the advertising drone. It spears the poor AI precisely where I wanna put bullets.
The drone cries out in a tiny, tinny voice that skips and hiccoughs like a bad digital
audio file.
The stilt-walker below hasn’t rearranged itself the same way as the others. Its arms are longer. Thinner. Its stretched flesh has the resiliency of old leather. The reconfigured Keef brings its arm down. Moves the sparking, crying drone to its mouth. It bites down on hard metal. Succeeds only in snapping teeth from its skull like Chiclets jounced from a package.
The stilt-walker shakes the drone from its lance arm. It’s almost cartoony. The frenzied movement reminds me of a dog trying to get mud off its paws.
I back away from the window.
Slow. Quiet.
Hush, now, dear stilt-walking undead prick. I mean you no harm and I am certainly not a delicious human snack-a-doodle.
The long arm of the spindly Keef pounds on the window sill. It strains and scratches the frame. It feels for what it can smell. The arm slaps. Excited. It knows something’s there.
I turn to Helene.
She’s wide-eyed. She zips up her jacket and balances her bag of supplies. Shakes her head. She shows me a hand, fingers in the shape of a gun.
Bang bang?
I mouth: Fred.
I mouth: Go.
Helene nods. She creeps down the hall after our other two companions.
Sean follows her and gets his own gear together.
At the window, I hear more scraping.
I turn.
The stilt-walker presses its bleeding face against the center window. Tendrils of torn lips swayed back and forth.
It seems to smile.
Chapter 14:
The Extinction Event Horizon
To shoot or not to shoot.
That is the question.
A bullet’ll turn the stilt-walker’s head into chunky chowder. But the noise will announce dinner to every leaking shitshambler in the area.
The stilt-walker bangs its forehead into the center window. The glass wobbles. Cracks. Breaks. Shards clatter down around it. They sparkle. Ice in moonlight.
The Keef barks.
My gun barks back. It’s a shorter bark, but it’s much stronger and much louder and much worse. The big fat .45 slug hurtles toward the reanimated walker in the window.
Its head doesn’t just split. It explodes in a thick spray of liquid putrefaction.
The bone arm of the spindly somnambulist shivers. Goes slack. Headless, the parasite machine shrinks back through the window. I hear a wet thud. Then moaning from the Keefs that’re gathering outside.
Rain black with carbon and junk minerals blows in through the busted window.
Headshots still work. We know that. We’ve got a chance. Get underground. March to the lab. Then march home. Then—fuckin fuck! That thing climbed up three stories. It can spear shit like an evil aborigine. No, no, calm down, Mr. Bang Bang.
Just be cool.
Helene touches my arm. I jump.
Ben, Sean, and Fred stand behind her. Gear on their backs. Weapons in hand.
Helene says, “Shall we?”
I snatch up my pack. Lead the way.
Helene takes my hand near the front doors. She squeezes it hard enough to make me wince. I meet her eyes. We don’t speak.
The first reanimated to greet us is a failed stilt-walker. It wriggles on the doorstep. Either it hasn’t got the formula down, or it hasn’t wrapped the flesh correctly, or the people meat it’s working with is substandard.
Corrupt data.
It stares with hungry eyes. Mewls like a wounded cat. Tentacles (fuckin tentacles?) whip on its back.
I crush its head with my crowbar.
We file out. Slalom between groups in the parasite parade.
Fred and Ben let loose with the Glocks. Fred can’t hit shit, but Ben nails four bastards.
Ben says, “Step it up, bro. What’re you, a faggot?”
Fred fires three more rounds and brings down two parasites. “I am, actually.”
That shames Ben into silence.
I shout and wave my arms at the others behind me. “We are leaving!”
I grip Helene’s hand. We hustle west. Dodge monsters too slow to grab us.
Sean’s shotgun rings out. We turn around. He’s lagging behind, trying to thin the crowd.
Fred sees him. Hops back a few paces and tugs at the scientist. He pushes Sean to catch up, “Come on, Dr. Who, we need to move faster.”
Sean says, “Why does everyone keep calling me doctor?”
We jog back by the Bloomberg tower. The people who’d been waving before ain’t there anymore.
Nobody is.
Block by block, the survivors I’d seen before are gone. Either they left, ducked outta sight, or are being gnawed on quietly in the dark corners of a dead city.
Half the buildings we pass are on fire.
It’s been less than twelve hours. In less than twelve hours, the strongest city in the solar system has been reduced to spasms and death throes.
My city. My poor, poor city.
We hit Third Avenue. I wonder how the trapped undead are faring in that store. I wanna see how the zoo’s coming along—
“Wake up, baby,” Helene taps my shoulder. “You’re zoning out. Something up ahead.”
—I’m curious about whether or not they’ve become stilt-walkers. Or something else. A few of em must’ve changed. Sean says they all will at some point. Right? But how long will the shambling ones stay shambling ones?
I cough. My heart jumps. Acid shoots into my throat.
Does the infection dictate the shamblers’ lifespan? Is it all some awful remnant of that thing that woke up under Brooklyn ages ago? Is it really just a matter of time until the stilt-walkers change into—
Helene slaps my head.
I stop. Look at her as though she just kicked a crippled kid.
Well, you sorta are crippled. Emotionally, at least.
She raises her index finger to her lips to keep me quiet. Shhh.
Ben, Sean and Fred duck down behind a shitty Chevy van parked at the southern corner of Sixty-First and Lexington. Ben points toward the subway entrance I wanna to get to.
The weather changes again. The air warms. The black rain gets heavier.
Ben and Sean shed their parkas.
Helene grabs the hood of my hoodie and presses her lips against my ear. She says, “Listen.”
Takes me a minute, but I finally hear it through the not-so-gentle rat-a-tat of heavy precipitation: People are singing. Not just singing. There’s a chorus of voices belting out... Well, it sounds like church hymns.
We move to a ubiquitous Duane Reade store on our left. Don’t wanna meet the new neighbors just yet. Smarter to get out of sight.
I crawl through the melting snow. Press hard against the store’s automatic door that’s no longer automatic. I’m greeted by darkness. And the sound of feet shuffling toward me. A low groan fills the air.
Mr. Crowbar, meet Mr. Customer Service Representative and his manager. I dispatch em. Listen for more. Nothing. Silence. I tap the glass and give a thumbs-up to Helene and the others outside. They gather around me. We crouch near the display window inside and wait. Watch the street.
The chorus gets louder, but it’s still indistinct. Too many voices. I lean over Helene. Tap Fred. “You know any of this, Catholic boy?”
Fred strains to listen. “That’s Latin, dude.” He strains again. “Me immundum munda tuo Sanguine, something something. Uh... Salvum... Me? No, save me? Save us...Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.”
He smiles. Proud.
Helene cocks an eyebrow. “The fuck does that mean?”
“It’s all about blood and sin and guilt. Thomas Aquinas shit. He was allllllllll about sin. ‘I’m unclean, Lord. Cleanse me with your blood. Save whatever. Purge the world of guilt. Blame the sinners.’ Yadda yadda yadda. It’s very Aquinas.”
; Helene frowns in the weak blue light from the street.
The singing changes. Ululations filled the air. Sounds Middle Eastern.
Fred shrugs.
We all look to Ben.
He rolls his eyes. “Oh, fuck you assholes and that racist shit. I was raised Baptist. In Georgia.”
Fred, Helene and I chuckle. Feels good to laugh. Memories of The Thing float through my head. I wonder if it’s still standing. Could use a drink.
Sean says, “Guys, guys. Shut up.”
The rising and sinking wail of Islamic prayer precedes a ridiculous congregation. Heavily armed men, women and children walk hand-in-hand. Before em they hoist patchwork flags emblazoned with the symbols of the world’s three Abrahamic religions. Muslims, Christians, and Jews unified in...whatever.
Nothing like an apocalypse to bring together the crazy fucks.
The Muslim prayer dies down.
These new pilgrims shout in English.
“We are your sword, Oh Lord. We are your instruments.”
Fred stands up.
Helene tugs at his pants. “What’re you doing? Get down.”
Sean pulls at Fred too. “The best course here is to let them pass. We don’t need any hassles. Or bullets—you know, in our brains.”
Fred watches. “They’re cleaning shit up. Look at them. They’re killing the infected.”
Some members in the group carry bundles of heads. Either they’re taking out the parasites and keeping souvenirs, or they’re killing “sinners” and keeping souvenirs.
Doesn’t look like a party I wanna join.
Fred says, “It’s okay. These are the good guys. Trust me. I’m Catholic. Ben’s Baptist. That’s like an automatic ‘in’ for all of us.”
I say, “I’d rather take my chances with the cannibal corpses.”
You can see where this is going.
Fred moves toward the door as the last of the fifty-plus congregation passes. Three of the men in the back haul massive crosses. And those three are flanked by five more toting shotguns and automatic weapons.
Crusaders.
Fred’s out the door before I can punch him in the dick and talk some sense into his thick head.
We all follow. At a distance.
Live, From the End of the World Page 15