Plissken dips in the air. Turns one of his thrusters so it faces a Keef. Cooks its face. And then sings:
Low prices
Everydayyy
Suck my dick
Everydayyy…
The monsters follow him. Sheep attracted by noise and light.
I slink against the storefronts on Fifth Ave’s east side. Burned-out cars along the road provide a barrier between me and the infected routing around for another victim. Ahead, the sidewalk’s blocked by the hulking shell of an MTA X1 bus. The roof faces me. Giant windows along its side point to the sky.
Going around it means getting close to the horde.
So I figure, Hey, just climb over it.
Cuz I’m a genius, you see.
I don’t think about the thing’s structural integrity after all these years. Nope. I plant a boot in one of the divots on the roof. Hoist myself up while Plissken keeps an eye on the shambling Keefs.
I stay low. On my belly. Drag myself across the big windows.
And I tell myself not to, but I look down into the bus.
This is a mistake.
The entire passenger area’s filled with pulsing crimson horror. A parasitic tumor. An infected sausage. A red reef made from leftover people bits. Veins vibrate and shake. Flaps of flesh undulate over plastic seats and metal poles. The infected sausage has absorbed parts of the bus into its mass. Tendrils flutter up. Sniff the air.
At the edge of the flesh-reef lolls a vaguely human skull. Its eyes roll. Then focus on me.
I realize I’ve been staring at it for too long when the window I’m on starts to come loose from its frame. Me and all my equipment’s too much for it. A corner starts to go. Pops free. The rest wobbles.
Plissken says, “The window—”
“I fuckin know!”
I fall. Land with the window. It cracks as the whole assembly squishes down into the flesh-reef. The big monster sausage moans. Loud as hell.
The shambling infected turn.
I gotta stop having these bright ideas.
The sharp edges of the window I’m kneeling on cut into the tumorous parasite. It squeals. I pull my revolver and put a bullet in its lolling, skeletal head. Bits of bone and brain and blood burst. One of its teeth slaps against the wall and sticks there with a gooey hunk of gum.
But the squealing continues.
What the fuck.
I hit the damn head. I know I hit the head.
But it ain’t dead.
The flesh-reef expands. Balloons. Goddamn thing’s like The Blob now.
I jump for the opening above me. No dice. I was never Michael Jordan. And with the extra weight, I sure as shit ain’t gonna make it.
I unload into the shuddering horror around me. Another minute and it’ll engulf me. Big fat .45 slugs drill ragged canals into the monster sausage.
But this sonuvabitch won’t deflate.
So I scream for my only friend in the entire world: “Plissken!”
The bot’s already inside. He says, “I know what you’re thinking. And I told you that I cannot support the weight.”
“Can’t you just try?”
“It will structurally damage me. Badly.” He bobs. “I suggest you wait. Be patient. Don’t panic.” Plissken dips his forecurve toward the flesh-reef under my feet. “Stay on the glass.”
Takes me a second, but I get it.
I’ll surf my way up on the window.
Smartass robot.
I rise on a wave of mutated humanity. Grab the edges at the opening. Pull myself up. With a little support from Plissken—he acts like a step-ladder. Uses little puffs from his thrusters to push me over the rim.
I stay the hell off the windows now. Look over the side of the bus. Down into the street. One of the infected cries out at me. He used to be an NYPD soldier. What’s left of his uniform droops in tatters.
“Oh, shut up.” I blow most of his head off.
I climb down the bus’s undercarriage. Bit of a rush. Keef horde nearby. My hands cling to the rear axle and then the muffler. And then I’m on the ground.
Thirty shamblers all wanting a taste of my flesh. They hiss. Moan. Reach out for me with gnarled hands.
Don’t ask why they don’t all turn into stilt-walkers or other abominations. Most do. The ones that don’t... I got nothin. Maybe they don’t have enough mass. Maybe they got infected by a lazy parasite. The easiest answer, and probably the correct one, is that they didn’t need to change.
I scramble the brains of the five closest with shots from the Colt.
Reload.
I chance a glance at the monster sausage. Yep, still growing. It spills over the edges of the broken window. Like fizzy soda. Only, y’know, pulsing and vile and wanting to eat me.
I say to Plissken, “I don’t think we wanna be here anymore.”
“Agreed.”
I jog. Plissken hovers ahead. He scans for threats I might wander into.
The flesh-reef hits the street behind me. There’s the sound of Jell-O slapping asphalt.
I walk backward. Colt heavy in my grip. Can’t stop staring.
The tumor. The blob. It’s the size of the bus now. Still blowing up. Sloshing around the street. I think at first, maybe, it’s gonna pop.
Nope.
What it does is it moves. A big bloody amoeba. It rolls over the zombies. Picks em up with long, strong tendrils. Then shoves the infected bodies into itself. The skin of the monster sausage accepts these new additions. Absorbs em.
And all the while, the infected moan. Grunt. Cry out for me with clasping hands.
Those hands recede into the flesh-reef.
I’m compelled to wave.
See ya! Good luck in there! You pack your toothbrush?
The monster sausage stops. A wave shudders across its skin. It sounds like it exhales. Then it shudders once more. Its skin becomes translucent for a heartbeat. Just long enough for me to see a hundred human skulls floating around inside it.
A hundred heads. Still moving. Chewing. Moaning.
The Keefs don’t die in there. They just get weirder.
Plissken and I need explosives. Maybe a flamethrower.
The flesh-reef climbs onto the bus and slips back inside through the busted window. It slinks its bulk down. Settles. The bus rocks from side to side. Just a little. Till it lays still.
People—and what monsters they turn into—are fucked up.
* * *
We stop at Columbus Circle. The edge of Central Park’s geographic southern end. Bad as the city’s infrastructure is, this place shows the damage in hilarious new heights.
Namely: There ain’t no Columbus Circle anymore. It’s all overrun by plants. Flora I didn’t know existed. Nature did this all by itself. No help from the parasite—it can’t or can’t be bothered to infect plant life. Plissken says it’s on account of both the cell structure and the fact they don’t have any brains to acquire.
I say the goddamn parasite’ll find a way if it wants to.
It’s kinda pretty though. I sit on one of the broken benches. Grass under my boots. Thick brush around me. I look into the trees. Listen for the animals running wild in Central Park. Cigarette on my lips.
Aside from the fact that a fuckton-percent of the planet is either dead or undead and all trying to kill me, I’d say it’s downright pleasant.
* * *
The Rules.
Yeah.
Rules.
I wonder about these things all the time.
Okay, here it is, as far as I understand it:
Sub Specie Deus is a parasite. We got that.
If you’re bitten, you turn. No exceptions. Human or four-legged friend. Used to be, it couldn’t infect animals, but the parasite adapted.
It always adapts.
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If you can destroy the brain, where the parasite lives, you can destroy the creature.
There.
Those are the rules.
For now.
* * *
The rest of the way is clear.
I’d be drunk right now, but I’ve been working the booze outta my system too fast.
Plus, I’m a professional alcoholic. Takes a lot.
I gnaw on some jerky. Ask Plissken to carry my rucksack for a while. I mean, he’s the robot for fuck’s sake. I need to ease off on my aching back a bit.
Dawns on me that I’m getting old.
I say, “All these infected need to get the hell off my lawn.”
Plissken turns to me. I wave him off.
The bot says, “I need a moment to run some calibrations.”
“Rock out with your cock out.”
Plissken groans.
We stand in the fifth floor of a burned out building in Washington Heights along Riverside Drive. The place overlooks Fort Washington Park. Almost snug up against the Hudson River, near the George Washington Bridge. That big bastard bridge looms right next door. Broken. Almost in half. The twisted metal of it reaches out across the sky.
This apartment musta been a pricey place when civilization still existed.
And the Hroza’s here somewhere.
Just need to get his attention.
We’re in a kid’s room, I think. Broken pieces of action figures give it away. Arms and legs here and there. Been stomped. Crushed.
I pick up a picture from the ash-covered nightstand. I wanna know who’s place I’m squatting in. But fire’s eaten too much of it away.
A massive wave of depression hits me.
I light a cigarette. Meander into the living room. There’s a big American flag over the couch. Not the new shitty one for the United States Of Christ. I’m talkin about Old Glory.
I find this even more depressing for symbolic reasons.
So I wander over to where the windows used to be. Big gaping hole where something tore out most of the wall. Could’ve been an explosion. Could’ve been the fire. Could’ve been a flesh-tower.
I look out at the GW Bridge and I think: That’s an achievement. Before the USC military blew it to hell to stop the infected from spreading—which super didn’t work.
The struts. The welding. The precise craftsmanship. A hundred people put it together. Opened in 1931. And it carried all the traffic. It did its job. Time passed. Nobody cared. They didn’t think about it. It was just something else to be used and abused.
The journalist in me goes: Hey, that’d be good for a book.
The other part of me goes: Hey, there’s no more journalism.
Used to be, “educated” assholes like myself with white collar jobs thought blue collar folks were dumb. Or we tended to. Handymen. Plumbers. Electricians. Whatever. But how could someone rebuild an engine and be considered dumb? Answer that. And who did rich people call when some of their precious, first-world shit broke?
Yeah.
Now? Well. Ain’t much fuckin use for a writer or a journalist. We all gotta be handy. Gotta get used to working with our goddamn hands again.
I walk back to Old Glory. Yank it from the wall. I grab the corners on the left side where the stars and stripes are. Tie it around my neck like a cape. Then take a pull from the bottle of whiskey.
Plissken chirps. “Captain America.”
I hear something in the hall behind us. Clumsy footsteps approaching from one the lower floors. Gotta be a shambler. It’s easy to discern what flavor of infected you’re dealing with by how they move. In this case, slow and unsteady.
Guess my rustling woke one of the neighbors.
I get my Colt M1911 from my pack. Screw on a suppressor. Walk to the front door. Peer out.
Sure enough, there’s a Keef making her way up the stairs. An old lady.
I go to greet her. Stand at the top of the stairs.
She struggles to climb the steps.
I point the Colt at grandma’s head. Just wait for her to bump into it.
She does.
I pull the trigger.
Grandma’s head goes up like a fountain.
“Merica!”
8. The Hroza
The Hudson River looks like the conveyor belt for a slaughterhouse. Endless bodies in the shadow of the GWB. Bloated. Vile. Overinflated. Shoulder to shoulder. All of em ride the river current. Slow. Out to the open ocean.
Not just human, either. Plenty of infected and variants.
Gulls and crows feast on the carrion.
I wonder how the cockroaches are doing.
One bird perches atop a particularly putrid businessman. The crow digs its beak into the flesh—then boom. The corpse erupts. Shoots a load of guts that sends the winged dumbass caterwauling onto another body. Its wing is broken now. The bird flaps uselessly.
The body it landed on wakes up. Splashes the water. Its chest cavity splits. Becomes a giant mouth with ribs for teeth.
It eats the bird.
I arch my eyebrows. “Yeah, okay, no, fuck that.”
A car would be nice. I run from Ford to Chevy to Honda. My American flag cape billows behind me in the cold wind. I need something with plenty of gas. Most of the vehicles in Manhattan were left running as people fled. So it’s not like I can hop into the nearest ecology killer and roll out.
Plissken scans the tank of a Party City delivery truck parked nearby. Sucker’s almost full. The bot says, “There’s an infected in the cargo bay.”
I say, “So? I’m just gonna drive this bitch into that minefield of bodies and set it off. Clear the area a little. Remember! Safety first!”
“There are supplies in the back of the truck as well. They could be useful.”
I grunt. Grab the loading door handle. Throw the door up and open.
Bobo, The Zombie Clown falls on top of me.
We both go sprawling. Him on top.
I fuckin hate clowns.
I punch Bobo in his big red nose. Honk! A loud squeak. Too noisy. But I punch his nose again cuz it’s kinda funny too. Punch punch. Honk honk! Like I can make a cereal jingle from beating the shit out of an undead clown.
Then Bobo bites me. The motherfucker bites me. Doesn’t get through my leather or the carbon suit. But it hurts. Bad.
That pisses me off.
I hit Bobo in the side of the head with the crowbar. Hard enough to crack his skull. I can see where the bone’s split under the skin. Pieces moving around. I hit Bobo harder. Make a little hole. I drop the crowbar. I press my gloved fingers against the spot on his head where the skull has separated.
“Bite me, huh? You wanna bite me, cocksucker?”
I get my fingers through his rotting flesh. Push my pointer and index and thumb through. I can feel his ugly brain inside. Feel the ribbed grey matter. Then I’m fisting Bobo the Zombie Clown’s head.
Splortch splortch splortch.
Same sounds you get trying to dump a can of Chef Boyardee into a bowl.
I push Bobo off me. Clean the brains from my gloves with his clown suit.
Plissken says, “It always comes back to skullfucking with you.”
No movement in the back of the truck. It’s dark in there. Plissken hovers in ahead of me. Uses his external lights to bathe the cargo area blue.
My bot says, “There were children here.”
Were. No longer children. Just a random collection of rotted meat attached to small skeletons. Four of em. Plissken says the kids woulda been seven, eight... Ten at the oldest.
Maybe Bobo brought the kids here to keep em safe.
There’s some stuffed animals. Little plastic chairs. Battery-powered holovid player. What looks like boxes of sweets and cake.
The scene goes wrong wh
en I spot handcuffs. Bits of leather strap around the bones of the kids’ wrists. A couple sex toys.
Bobo ain’t never thought of saving anyone.
This is part of what we were. Right here. This is humanity.
How long? How fuckin long had this gone on?
Bobo has his child slaves. He offers em safety from the monsters. “Get in my truck. Nothing can get you in there.” (Nothing but me.) Four neighborhood children. He goes out for a supply run at some point. Gets infected. Comes back here. Closes the truck back up.
Then the children are stuck with him. Stuck with a pedophile going mad. A pedophile becoming a creature that’s getting hungrier and hungrier.
I can hear their tiny screams in my head.
My brain... Can’t stop thinking about the baby I never got to have with my love. Baby Bear would be about as old as these kids here. If only we’d been allowed to have the baby... If the infection hadn’t taken her from me...
Stop it. Stop. It. Stop it!
I shout. Jump out to where Bobo’s twitching. His eyes roll in his head. Not quite dead yet. Fingers squishing a brain ain’t the most sure-fire way to kill the undead, I guess.
I’m glad.
I say, “You disgusting fuck.” The monster half-alive on the ground ain’t the monster that raped those kids. But it’s as close as I’m gonna get. I strip away the clown suit in violent strokes with my knife. Now Bobo’s a fat undead guy in his forties. Naked. I grab a fistful of the bastard’s hair.
Chunks of his scalp slough off as I drag him into the back of the truck.
The body starts to thrash.
I tell Plissken to burn off Bobo’s jaw with his thrusters. I start to break Bobo’s bones. Snap fingers like celery. Stomp on feet till they’re shattered mush. Crush arms with manic blows till the hard white calcium pops through.
Cigarette between my lips, I watch the torso jiggle. I say, “Can’t do anything now, can you?”
This dark horrible conversation takes place beneath the glare of child skulls.
I know I’m starting to lose it when I see one of the skulls nod.
Yes.
A Man and His Robot Page 4