Live, From the End of the World

by William Vitka

  I poke the abomination with my boot. “That was walking?” I cough. Something warm makes its way up my throat. “How many legs does it have? I can’t tell.”

  Sean says, “Look, it was barely walking. As Ben mentioned, it couldn’t move very well. It was slow. Lethargic. What’s interesting is the inclusion of inorganic material.” The scientist uses a length of metal scrap to flip a flap of heavy muscle over. The burst head of the infected is underneath. “And the fact that it took pains to protect its weak spot.”

  “So, more mutation.”

  Ben fires at something unseen.

  Sean says, “More experimentation.”

  Ben says, “We should be hauling ass south. Not bullshitting.”

  I pop a flare. “Agreed.” Start walking. Dense diseased water drips everywhere. I hear the sound of liquid lapping in pools between rail ties. The smallest and most polluted seas in the world.

  For the first time in my entire life as a New Yorker, I don’t see a single rat on the tracks.

  Sean hops an obstacle then fires a load of buckshot at movement behind us. “Really, I think that was just a failed form. It doesn’t work the same way the stilt-walker does. There were no benefits. Could we see something new that moves efficiently in tight spaces?” Sean rests the shotgun on his shoulder. Shrugs. “I don’t see why not. But that mismatched monstrosity isn’t it.”

  I say, “It was more compact for tighter spaces. Hid its head. Fits your theory.”

  The emergency lighting in the tunnel flickers. Illumination between stations sputters. Blackness pushes in on us.

  Helene chucks a flare. It covers the walls with a blood-red glow.

  We march south on the downtown line. Resilient and terrified and desperate and angry.

  The initial jolt of fantastic drugs is leveling off in my system. I’m vaguely aware of a pain that shouts and tries to exist along my back and shoulder. But it’s so far away that I can only barely hear it.

  My fingers itch. There’s a headache still bopping around my brain.

  Darkness introduces unease to both the tunnels and we tourists who flow through it. I hear the clicking of mandibles across the tracks on the uptown subway vein—insect apparatus that searches and chews. Seeks life to sustain life.

  The stagnant underground air moves. On the other side of the tracks, a thick blanket of bugs scurries up the walls. They seek cracks in frantic fashion.

  Hints of light flicker across their shiny backs.

  They’re running. Trying to hide.

  From a heavy speeding mass, say.

  I squint. “Train’s coming.”

  We hustle outta the way.

  Light from a subway train’s headlights creep down the tunnel. The wicked whine of squeaky wheels makes its way through the air like a malignant aural zephyr. A beam of light brighter than any annoying cop’s Maglite flash burrows through the abyss and strikes our eyes. It blinks. Grows dim. Then flares into brilliance again as it passes behind the iron pillars that hold the transit system together. The piercing scream of grinding metal against the tracks sounds off.

  Helene and Ben cover their ears. Sean shields his eyes. I gawk. Immune to the torture of the uptown R train that drags itself over the line shooting sparks.

  A goddamn R(arely).

  Things are always slow as shit.

  Never come when you want.

  And yet, here you go. Have gun, have fun!

  Another sound barrels out of the blackness as the dead train approaches:That of countless infected who’re trapped and hungry on board.

  Ben says it first: “We’re dead.”

  My mouth doesn’t form the words, but I can’t help agreeing as the first car passes us.

  From the windows of the runaway R wave the limbs of the Keefs like a nightmarish wheat field. Each flayed arm ends in a bloody hand that grabs for our flesh. Unattainable only on account of distance.

  The train’s internal lights have a sick blue hue. Leaking faces grind against Plexiglas and put cracks in an engineering feat. Teeth bite at air. The cries of the infected bounce through the tunnel.

  We have the best and most nausea-inducing view possible.

  Bugs chatter outside the train.

  They latch onto the diseased limbs and pull.

  Liquid splashes down.

  Helene grips my hand.

  Shadows dance across our faces.

  The undead throw themselves at the train’s walls. The cars rock back and forth. Hungry eyes peer through the windows. Some of the parasite people drag their torn faces against the windows to see us better. Eyeless ones jam their noses through the cracks and inhale loudly.

  The creatures bray.

  Flames engulf the last car on the slow train. It ambles along the tracks. Smoking and burning. The smell is incredible. Charred hands and faces play along the windows. All of the sizzling, melting eyes yearn for just a taste of my skin and a chance to carry on the infection’s wish.

  Behind the last car, there’s a river of bugs seeking warmth.

  Sean says, “When that stops, any hope of the tunnels remaining clear will be gone. Do we all have some idea of what that means?”

  As if on cue, the train falters. Skids off the rails.

  About a dozen infected in each car. There are eight to ten cars that make up each subway train. ninety-six infected at best, 120 plus more likely.

  I say, “We need to move faster. Like now.”

  We jog along the tracks.

  Our flares bob. Cast obscene shadows on the walls.

  Unseen things crunch under my boots. Could be mice or bones. There isn’t enough light in the tunnel to see. And, frankly, I ain’t curious enough to seek an answer.

  There’s a crash behind us.

  Moans echo.

  We pause to take refuge in a maintenance shaft under some grating. Black water pours down from snow that’s gone from slush to melted muck. I look up and hold my breath. The shambling shoes of undead stutter against the grid of steel at street level.

  Each passing parasite shovels more shit through the bars. I jump back as a stilt-walker’s spear arm shoots down to the elbow and gets stuck. It barks with anger.

  Thanks to the light of flares now dying behind us and the flames of the crashed subway car, we can see movement. A spindly void of black between us and illumination. The form of something loping along the walls with frightening speed. A manic, unearthly spider.

  And it’s decided on one destination.

  Ben screams. “Stilt-walker!” He raises his weapon. Every flash of his Glock illuminates a different level of panic on Helene’s face.

  Sean tosses a flare. Pumps his scattergun. Opens fire.

  The skittering stilt-walker monstrosity digs into the walls of the subway. It plunges a bony forearm into the stonework and metal and pushes itself. The thing’s center mass dangles against gravity. It howls through the blackness.

  Another leg punches the water. Shick-thuck. Sewage splashes up. It keeps moving. Its eyes plow into my brain—bright, bloodless white orbs set atop lipless teeth.

  We’re inside you.

  The onslaught from Sean and Ben hammers ultra-white limbs. Sends off splinters of flesh. But still it moves through the gunfire. Fast. Undaunted. Closer and closer.

  Shick-thuck. Shick-thuck. Shick-thuck. Shick-thuck.

  My right hand moves down along the Colt’s sleek handle. Cradles it as gently as a lover before a tumultuous fuck. I fingerbang the trigger guard. Feel my hand whip the weapon out.

  The stilt-walker’s a quarter of a block away. It rocks above Sean’s fresh flare. It holds itself there like an angry predator taking umbrage to lower beings loitering on its turf. Red light from below paints its features.

  The skinless skull sneers. Its lance-like back legs bury themselves in the grime of the
tunnel. It throws its head back. Sucks air in. Dips forward to scream.

  My machine jumps in my hand as I unconsciously tilt it up. I don’t aim with my hand. I aim with my head. I fire. Feel the hammer fall. Feel the hammer hit the blasting cap of the bullet casing. Feel the explosion and the expansion of gases that propel the .45 slug.

  It soars true. Tears a ragged chunk outta the stilt-walker’s head.

  We had dueled, and I’d won.

  The parasite shudders. Slumps. Its back legs give way first. Gravity takes hold. The body goes slack. The corpse hovers in the air. One of its forearms still caught in the tunnel roof. It stays suspended. Dead and leaking.

  Helene leads the way south. The shadows of shambling undead crawl over the walls. Ben moves next. Then Sean. I stay to watch the stilt-walker sway.

  Helene shouts: “Poppa Bear! Move!”

  Over the heads of the walking dead, I see the red-lined shape of a second stilt-walker. It rampages along the rails with the same hellish spider speed of the first. It pushes its spindle arms into the walls. Pops its spindle legs against the floor. Almost gallops.

  A thought explodes in my head: Are the parasites really spending all their efforts to get us, or are they running away from the bugs, and we just happened to be in the way?

  I take out my phone. Snap photos over my shoulder while I run. Trying to document all this shit is perverse at this point, but I used to be a fuckin journalist.

  I slow my gait. Bring the little device around to look at what’s been captured in my phone’s memory bank.

  Shambling Keefs nip at my heels.

  The stilt-walker’s gaining fast.

  I step down hard on the back of a mutant cockroach. Totally by accident. It squeals and squirms under me.

  There’s an ocean of bugs heading toward the undead flesh feast behind me. They don’t give a shit about humans. They smell carrion. A feast.

  I check over my shoulder. The stilt-walker ducks its head down. Charges. It tramples whatever parasite kin are in its way. Skewers em as it scurries screaming toward me. It has no face. Only a form outlined by the flares. The shick-thunk of its steps grow louder.

  I run harder.

  Sean appears beside me. His grimacing face illuminated by the flash of his shotgun. A heavy load of pellets hits the stilt-walker at one of its makeshift joints. The tendons wrapping it burst. A foreleg spins off. Pangs against steel beams.

  The stilt-walker trips. Suddenly off balance. It twists. Drags arms and legs against the walls. It tumbles forward. Skids to a stop.

  I wanna watch what happens next.

  A hundred bugs flow over the stilt-walker’s inert form. They swarm. I pop a flare. Toss it at the walker’s face. Mandibles clamp down and tear dripping chunks of rotting flesh from the cannibal corpse.

  The stilt-walker tries to stand. To shake itself free from the roaches. That only aggravates the bugs. They chew harder and chirp louder. They weigh the reconfigured reanimated down with their bulk. Gnaw at its head. Every organism in the tunnel screeches. The cries of the dead, dying, reanimated and roaches echo along New York City’s yellow line.

  In the distance, the barking call of a third stilt-walker answers the shriek of the one being devoured.

  Sean and I nod to each other.

  Our single thought being: This is most certainly fucked.

  We flee. Crunch countless roaches during our panicked exodus. But none of the bugs outright attack us. We’re a less-delicious meal, it seems, than the tasty, rotting infected.

  We rejoin Helene and Ben and keep running.

  I say, “Nice new ecosystem down here. The bugs eat the walking dead.”

  Helene says, “Yeah. And probably everything else.”

  We don’t stop for the trains that are stalled along the downtown line. They’re housing unlit menageries of mutant corpses. The parasites people push their faces against the Plexiglas as we pass by.

  We see no survivors.

  Around Times Square, we pass N, R, and Q trains that hold untold numbers of former humans.

  We see a Keef that tried to reconfigure itself within the confines of an unmoving subway car at Forty-First Street. Thick chunks of its flesh grow in clumps against the wall. Sinewy strands of innards and bone hang down. Twitch. The lights within its N-train habitat strobe. It turns itself into a web of skin. Teeth chomping from a perch of precarious tissue as we peer inside. One of the parasite’s eyes loll from side to side as it tries to track my movement.

  Sean shrugs. As if to say: Fucked if I know.

  We march south toward the labs.

  There are few bugs and barely any undead here.

  But the four of us can only see what the flares show—which, for me, is everything except a stalled train underneath Herald Square.

  I should’ve been looking forward.

  Y’know. Where I’m going.

  I can help you with that.

  Instead, I smash my nose on the back coupling of a fuckin train.

  When you break your nose, it’s more surprising than dramatic. There’s a sharp pain and a dull reverberation throughout your skull as the cartilage surrounding your olfactory sensors is wrecked and pushed awkwardly in a direction it’s not meant to go.

  Human bodies are so delicate that I’m sure our frailties counter the idea of a benevolent creator.

  Anyway.

  I don’t feel the pain, but I hear everything.

  Warm blood cascades. Something prevents me from fainting or passing out. (You’re welcome.) Which I know is exactly what my body wants to do. Pass the fuck out. I’ve been awake for more than three days. If it wasn’t for the stimulants, I’d probably in some kind of delightful coma.

  No respect. I get no respect, I tells ya.

  Hell, I should be in a coma. Or at least unconscious.

  I put my hand out.

  Helene places two capsules of ampakine in my palm. I swallow em after generating enough saliva to make the task easier.

  Ben brings another flare to life.

  Sean opens up his poor-man medical bag.

  The young scientist bends forward. He reaches out slowly toward my face.

  I smack his hands away.

  If anyone’s gonna screw up realigning my nose, It’s gonna be me.

  Ben turns away.

  I made a point-up triangle with my fingers and thumbs. Plant the pad of each finger against its twin, apex of it at the top of my schnoz. I exhale through my mouth, not at all wanting to go through with it. I drag my hands down toward my chin. Pop the cartilage back in place.

  Sean nods. “Sure, that works.” He lays adhesive tape across my now slightly-off-center nose. He wipes the red from my face. Tilts my head back against the car and rams cotton up my nostrils.

  “Real shitty couple days, huh?” I say to no one in particular.

  Helene frowns.

  I light a cigarette. Inhale. Blood from my lips marks the filter.

  I’ve rested my brain for about a thousandth of a second when the train kicks. It thuds against the back of my head. Knocks me off balance. I stumble forward.Ben steadies his Glock in one hand and a sputtering flare in the other. He moves with Sean. The young scientist gets a leg up on the back of the car and pulls himself to peer through its rear window.

  Sean says, “Can’t see much.”

  The train jerks again.

  Sean jumps down.

  I say, “Fuck it.” I steady my pack and grab Helene’s hand. “No reason to investigate. We’re here, anyway.”

  Ben says, “Yeah. Fuck this shit. Let’s get topside to your lab, science boy.”

  But Sean’s already up on the coupling again. He motions for Ben to bring the flare closer. He says, “Need a good sample. The skin I have from Declan isn’t fresh anymore.”

  Sean rifles through his
bag. Pulls out a big plastic container. He cracks open the lid. Turns to Helene. “I stole this from your office kitchen. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Helene shrugs. “Not really worried about a pink slip anymore.”

  Sean climbs onto the darkened platform where he can access the subway car’s doors.

  The rest of us groan.

  Aww, dude... Fuckin... Why, man? Do we have to?

  We follow him anyway.

  The subway station is dim. We turn parasites that stumble within range into juicy mulch with bullets that spilt and crumple their heads.

  I feel around the opening of the train car door. Shit used to be automated, but now it’s a hundred of pounds of metal with inoperable machinations.

  Ben squints at me. Shakes his head. Stop.

  The train kicks again. Something dark lumbers inside.

  Ben covers his face and fires into one of the windows, weakening the glass just enough for him to kick it out. He tosses a flare inside.

  There against the red glow is a failed stilt-walker—arms too short and broken—pinwheeling back and forth against the walls. It tries to stand. Flounders. Rolls. Hurls itself with damaged limbs. It humps the seats.

  Sean says, “I need its head.” He waves his arms. “Or... You know, maybe just a chunk of its head.”

  Helene says, “You’re fuckin kidding, right?”

  Sean gives her a stink face. No, ma’am, I am not fuckin kidding.

  I say, “Okay, we got this. I got this.” I heft my crowbar. “I’ll get the doors open, and ram this through its mouth. No bitey. Then you can just scoop shit out.”

  Ben cracks his neck. “Dude, this is dumb.”

  “Don’t ‘dude’ me. Sean needs to analyze this. And if he can get what he needs, maybe he can come up with a cure. Or an inoculation.” I arch my eyebrows. “Sean?”

  The scientist nods. “Anything’s possible, but I can’t get anywhere near something like a cure unless I can understand just what’s happening with the parasite. Even then... Don’t get your hopes up. Understanding first. Cure later.”

  I think about the plan for a second. Crowbar. Mouth. Stabby. No bitey. That should work. As long as it can’t bite, we can grab the goo out of its skull, toss it in the Tupperware, and head up to the lab.