by Mark Clodi
“Third floor, the top. It has great views though, worth it.”
“You mentioned roommates? How many? Any girlfriends that stay over or pets or anything else that might be moving in there?” asked Max.
“No, nothing. Here you take the shotgun, if my roommates are, are undead I might hesitate, you won’t ‘cause you don’t know them.”
“Makes sense. Safety off? Yeah? Okay, lets go in.” in a stage whisper, he continued, “It had to be the third floor.”
Tom stage whispered back, “I love you too.”
They got to the doorway on the third floor and it was cracked open, there was blood on the landing and some footprints had been tracked through the blood, going both into and out of the apartment. Max took the lead and softly pushed against the door with the barrel of the shotgun. The place was dark, very dark and the twilight from the rising sun was not good enough to shed any light into the house. A soft blue glow turned on behind him and as he looked back at Tom he saw that he was holding a small key chain light and trying to use it to push back the darkness in the apartment. It helped, but only a little. Cautiously Max stepped into the apartment, whispering to Tom, “Turn on a light, not a bright one if you can help it, or maybe open the fridge. I don’t know where I am going here, whoa!” as he said the last part Max stumbled into something on the floor, it felt like a long pillow weighed down with a lead weight. As he caught himself on the couch Tom brushed by him and shined his light on the floor.
“Oh God! Oh God!” then turned aside and started throwing up on the carpet. He also took his hand off the light plunging them from gloom into total darkness once again. Tom’s sobbing cries grew louder and Max hissed at him, “Pull it together Tom! You gotta pull it together, whatever did that could still be here!”
“No, no you don’t see you didn’t see. Here take this.” with that he grabbed Max’s hand and shoved his key chain into it. Max fumbled for a moment before finding the light and then turned it back on and shone it upon the body. One dead person, a man with severe head trauma. Oh. Oh, no, not good. He was not bitten to death or munched on anywhere so far as Max could tell, just beaten about the head. “I see it Tom. I see it, who would have done this?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, it is so…so…” retching sounds again as Tom once again voided his stomach., “Oh God I gotta pull it together. Peter Hambran, that was one of my roommates, him and Gray, we called him Gray, his real name was Gene. Gene Tandry. They shared one room, I took the other.” Tom stood up and Max heard him make his way into the kitchen, where it sounded like he was turning on lights and opening the refrigerator door. Nothing was happening.
“No lights, no power.” Said Tom.
“Any flash lights anywhere?”
“Er, I keep one in my bedroom on the nightstand, we have some candles though, it was Gray's birthday last Saturday, hold on a sec.”
After fumbling through some drawers Tom struck a match. In that light he watched Tom approach the stove, a gas stove and then Tom light a burner. “Well that works, now for the candles.”
A short time later two burners and four birthday candles were burning, casting the main room of the apartment in a dancing light of shadows. Max shut and locked the door to this light. He then grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch and spread it out over the late Peter, obscuring his corpse from view.
“Well probably anyone, thing, else would have been out here by now. Four doors down the hallway. Two bedrooms, a bathroom and a closet?”
Tom nodded, “My bedroom is on the right. The last door on the right.” Tom got up and headed to the hallway. He peeked in the closet first, nothing. Then swung the partially open bathroom door open, his candle light was enough to determine nothing was in there. He hesitated and went to the left door. Max approached with two feet, watching both doors with wary eyes. Tom swung the door open, letting a wave of foul odor out as he did so. So many things happened at once that Max once again felt like he was in a slow motion movie. First he saw the remains of a man on the bed. Then he saw the man’s hands and feet were tied to the bedposts. Movement. He turned to see a naked man, no a zombie fling himself towards the door. Tom dropped back onto his butt. The zombie seemed to hang in the air, Max raised the barrel of the shotgun while keeping the butt against his hip, he fired and struck the zombie’s neck and lower face. Tom screamed as the headless corpse landed on him. The zombie on the bed had his, it's, hands tied to the bed posts above his head, his feet were similarly tied to the corner posts at the foot. Tom was screaming. Max took a moment to let his eyes readjust from the flash of the shotgun blast. Someone was yelling for Tom to shut up. 'Oh it is me.' Max thought, trying to quiet down, then he turned to help Tom up, saying, “Shut the door Tom, shut the door man!”
Tom complied shutting them in the hallway and blocking out the scene in the bedroom. Max wasted no time opening Tom’s door, he was surprised to see a bald headed young man pulling on a shirt, barely visible in the the glare from the parking lights through Tom's window. “Freeze!” Max shouted, and it worked! He thought to himself, 'I always wanted to do that, now I think I know why some police like their jobs.' The man pulled his head through the opening and looked with bleary eyes at Max, “Who’re you?” he demanded in a scornful voice, “The cops? No you ain’t a cop, you got no light.”
While Max was pondering that bit of language, the man continued to pull on his shirt. Max then said, “I said freeze asshole! No I ain’t no cop, I’m the guy with the shotgun! Fucking stop moving, right fucking now!”
The man, let out a sigh and soft “She-it” then stopped reaching for his pants, which lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. Max started to ask a question, but Tom beat him to it, screaming, “What did you do? What did you do? What are you doing in my fucking house, you asshole!?”
The man recoiled a bit, enough for Max to see he was not wearing any thing from the waist down. Good. Men without pants oughta be easier to control, right? The man gathered the covers around him and stared at Tom and Max and said, “Nothing, you ain’t nothing, I got nothing to say to a couple of queer boy fagots. Go fuck yerselves.” He then proceeded to stand up, blatantly drop the covers and stoop to get his pants on.
Max reached forward and swung the shotgun barrel at his head, “I told you not to fucking mo-“ BOOM, the sound of the shotgun going off was louder in this room than it had seemed moments before in the other bedroom. The bald man, pants half on fell over backwards clutching the side of his head and bleeding profusely. Max’s face registered surprise and instinctively he reach forward to help the man up, catching himself only when he realized what he was doing. 'Oh fuck!' he thought, 'I just shot a man!'
“Okay, o-fucking-kay! Goddamn it, don’t shoot me again! Shit! Shit! Shit on your Jewish-fag asses!” He still struggled with one hand to pull up his pants while clutching the side of his head with the other. Max pointed the gun at him and said, in a shaky voice, “I said: Don’t MOVE, you goddamn stupid fuck!” The bald man stopped moving, an awkward silence then ensued the man continued to bleed and Max could hear the dripping of his blood onto a magazine of some sort that was on Tom’s floor. “Tom, get your stuff. Now Tom.”
Tom scrambled to move to his closet, opening it he pulled out a backpack and started tossing clothing onto his bed, lastly he threw on a sleeping bag. Finally when the pile was finished he lifted up the foot of the bed and fumbled around underneath it until he came up with a black backpack, with a small metal plate that had the word ‘Port’ written on it. The smaller backpack had a durable looking rubber grip on the top and Tom set this pack by his legs as he stuffed the larger pack with his clothing. To Max he said, “Make him tell us what happened or kill him. I gotta get some stuff outta the bathroom.” Tom walked out leaving both doors open while he rummaged around in the bathroom.
Max looked at the bald man and said, “Talk. Now.”
The bald man began, “Nothing much happened, I came up here looking for a place to stay, there are zombies running
all over everywhere and this place looked safe enough, I bedded down he-“
Tom came back in with contact lens solution, glasses cases, a tooth brush and other personal items which he put into a pouch on the side of his pack. “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. No way you woulda stayed here with a zombie in the next room and a body outside in the living room. My roommate’s body you asswipe.”
The guy started again, “Fags. I knew it! You're goddamned fags. Just like Billy Jo and his butt-buddy there. You want the real truth queer? We busted in here to protect this place, this whole place and your butt-buddy friends told us to go to hell. See what happens when you don’t want our protection? This”, he waved his hands around, “happens. Dumbshits.”
Tom leaned over his bed one more time, fumbling for something alongside it and came up with an aluminum baseball bat, he stood up and leaned over the bald man, saying between clenched teeth, “You did this. The zombies did not do it you lying fuck.” He pulled the bat back and Max yelled, “Tom!” at the same time that gunfire erupted outside.
Chapter 27
Jimbo guided Fred towards suburbia; a car sped by as they had left the parking lot, a few minutes and a block later another car sped by in the pre-dawn light. Jimbo thought a minute, he was not really that good at thinking just yet, it took effort and usually required that he stop moving. After figuring out that two cars went by, well maybe if that bitch Nancy and the gang were not dead, and he could feel it in his bones that she was not, they might, just might come looking for him. After all they only went back to the building for Fred in the first place. Jimbo pushed Fred faster along the sidewalk, following it as it became a bike path. He peeked out the other side and spotted where the path diverged into two directions, one path led towards more office buildings and stores, the other looked to run between two houses into a residential area, about a quarter mile away. Jimbo shrugged his cold shoulders and said, “I’m a little stiff this morning.” Laughing a dry, husky laugh he grabbed Fred by the hand and pulled him towards the houses as fast as he would go.
Surprisingly no four wheel drive suburban jumped onto the bike path to run them down, the most excitement they had was when they flushed a rabbit out of the bushes. Once they were in among the houses Jimbo stopped to evaluate the situation. The first couple of houses had broken windows, even a corpse in the back yard. No good. He needed something still locked up. 'Kind of like a Twinkie.', he thought, 'If you can see the cream filling it probably means someone else has already bitten into it.' So he had to find the Twinkies that were still all yellow. He scanned the houses from the back, looking, looking, yes; there were several options, almost a six pack of them in visible range. That one, the one with all the kid toys scattered all over the yard. That meant mom and dad had a kid, more than one to look at the place. Jimbo felt a momentary twinge of guilt, then it passed, after all a man’s gotta eat. Anyway a mom, a dad and two kids? Maybe three? Maybe they were Mormons or Catholics, four kids? Oh yes the day could hardly get better than that, he led Fred up to the gate surrounding the house and pushed on it, it was locked. He could not get it open, 'Stupid, fucking gate!' he thought as he moved Fred next to the fence. He pushed Fred onto the ground, where he immediately started to get up again, but Jimbo was faster he hopped onto the other zombie's back and tilted himself over the fence. Then he turned and opened the gate and grabbed Fred who had gotten to his feet again.
Pulling the gate shut he latched it, no need to make it easier for anyone else after all. He led Fred up to the back patio door and tried to open it. It was locked. This delighted him. Locked doors met someone had locked them. He looked around and saw a flat cinder style block under the water faucet near the house. Fred was wandering the back yard and Jimbo reflected that it was good that he had latched the gate after all. He reached the faucet and pulled up the stone, then brought it back to the patio door where he threw the rock through the window. Then he reached through the glass to unlock the door. In he went, the glass crutching under his reliable old work boots. He heard movement upstairs and smiled, the Twinkie had not been bitten into by anyone else…
Chapter 28
Nancy and the girls circled the business park in the van several times and found no sign of Fred or Jimbo. Nancy was becoming increasingly irritated at their lack of results and was not paying attention when they turned a corner a little too sharply and hit the corner of a purple-ish Hyundai which seemed to be parked in the middle of the street. The Van lurched sideways and over the rear bumper of the smaller car before righting itself and barreling into another car near the median of the road. Nancy took a hard punch to the chest as she slammed into the steering wheel, the other girls were pulled forward into their seat belts before the van stopped completely.
“Fuck. Yeah, fuck. Well it was not that much faster anyway, all these dumb fucking cars everywhere. I mean did all the zombies decide, ‘Hey lets go grab the people in cars’? Dummies. Out girls I need protein now and V is still looking famished, lets head for the houses over there and see what we can find.”
The gang stumbled out of the van and into the suburban neighborhood where Nancy was happy to see the power was still on. As they stood at the end of a driveway the garage door started opening, not one to waste an opportunity, Nancy motioned to Trish and Julie to get into the garage while she and V moved sideways off the driveway. The opening door was stopped as Trish scampered under the door and broke the connection between the electric eyes designed to prevent the door from squishing small children, pets and do it yourself garage door hangers.
“Oh good God Trish, that was a brilliant move!” she whispered, “C’mon V, we gotta get in there and help if we need to.”
They moved up, following Julie under the door, which was stopped about two feet off the ground. Trish had a passenger side door open and was pulling a screaming woman out of the car by her hair, a man in the car had a handgun and as they watched he pulled the trigger several times, hitting the woman and Trish, nothing fatal for Trish and Nancy hoped the same could be said for the woman. Two kids, in car seats strapped in the back were screaming, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommeeeeeeiiiiiiii!” Nancy approached the driver’s side door and wretched it open, surprisingly it was not locked. She lurched in and grabbed the man’s arm just below the elbow, then brought it forward into the steering wheel hard enough to shatter his wrist. The man punched her in the face, hard. Nancy staggered back, but, as always V had her back and stepped in and clocked the man with a punch of her own, sending his eyes rolling into the back of his head. Nancy got up and told Trish, “Finish that bitch Trish, all the way, no keepsies, share her with Julie.” Turning to Veronica, she said, “Well V, it is your lucky day, I get him, you get the kids, okay dear?” Grunting with effort she pulled the man out of the Subaru and lowered him onto the ground, where to start?
She started on one arm, the non-broken one, the man regained enough consciousness to start to struggle again, and when he eyes took in the scene of his garage he almost got away. However when the first of his children stopped screaming “Mommy!” the fight went right out of him and Nancy was able to enjoy her meal more. She made sure to tell V not to make any zombie babies either, before she drank in the last essence of the man she had. She gorged herself on him and the other were done long before she was, she stood up and looked at her posse, once again all restored to almost full health and beauty marred only by their distended bellies. Veronica looked sullen and pouty.
“What? Out with it V.”
“That was fucked up, eating kids, I mean I am a fucking monster!”
“You didn’t have to eat them, you could have gone without, your choice. Don’t get all moral on me now missy. In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“Stop that, stop it. These could have been OUR kids! You have kids? I don’t. Julie? Trish? None of us?” Veronica let out a sharp, ironic laugh, “What a bunch we make, designed to give life only to be the ones who end it even for the smallest child.”
The three other women did not sha
re Veronica’s view point, that much was obvious from the way they were looking at her. Veronica could see any more comments would be more nails in her coffin and said bitterly, “Alright, I can see I am not going to win anything with any of you. I give in, but I don’t want to eat any more kids or babies.” Turning towards Nancy, “Is that okay with you?”
Nancy weighed the options a bit, she knew she could still reasonably force Veronica to do whatever she wanted, but she would rather have her as a willing partner than an unwilling one, so she said, “V, you are right. I am sorry and I won’t force you to do that again. I won’t force you to eat anyone you don’t want to eat. You know we can’t let them go though, right? I mean if we come across more families and the choice is to kill them or leave the kids alive, we will kill them all, right?”
Veronica nodded sadly, “Yeah I know, I know. I get it: us or them. What will we do when the food runs out Nancy?”
Nancy, looked sagely around at her group, “Well I don’t know. I don’t really feel all that hungry right now, I think I could control myself if we found another human around here somewhere, we could control them and pen them in for later consumption maybe, raise them for food? I have not thought that far ahead, but Veronica you are going to force me to think further than our next meal aren’t you? I tell you what, lets hole up here and see how long it takes us to get hungry again then decide what to do. Trish, Julie as junior members of the posse you guys have to clean up, roll the remains into the driveway and close the garage door, that way any other smart zombies will know this house was already taken. The dumb ones we can handle ourselves.”
The girls did as Nancy said while Veronica turned off the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Nancy went into the house and wandered around a bit, then noticed she was dripping blood everywhere and headed back to the kitchen, where she washed off as best she could. She held up each girl as they came into the house and made them strip off their soiled clothing and clean up a little before making more of a mess in the house. She then told them to get their things into the wash, take showers and get cleaned up. While they were exploring the upstairs and getting in line for showers Nancy started a load of wash on Cold, using the fine array of stain removers to work on the stains. Probably they could make due with the clothing the woman had left them, or one of her neighbors could provide a suitable garment, but just in case she ran the load anyway. As Veronica had said, what would they do with the food ran out? And that went for clothing too, what would they do when all the clothing they could find was blood stained? Go nude? While a good distraction, clothing provided some protection and in point of fact some warmth, Nancy was cold, always cold now. It was a strange feeling, almost more than human really, starting the stove she rubbed against the electric burner until it became too hot for her to touch it. After the burner heated to a glowing cherry red she forced herself to touch it with her left pinkie finger. It burned. It burned and hurt, but she forced herself to continue holding her hand against the burner. The smell of sizzling meat filled the air.