ZWD: King of an Empty City

by Thomas Kroepfl

  I stopped running a block from A shley ’s house and walked the rest of the way. I needed to catch my breath; these strong winds were biting into me and sucking the energy from me at the same time. Plus, in the driveway of the raccoon house there was a station wagon parked, backed in, the back gate dropped. The front door to the house was open. I walked around the car. From the tracks in the snow, it looked like there was only one person with the car. The hood was still hot, so they’d only just gotten there. I crept to the front porch and was thankful the steps were concrete. I crouched down at the foot of the little stairs and listened. From inside the house, there was a bumping and rattling sound like someone was trying to find something in the kitchen.

  I remembered the house’s layout. There was a living room that led to an L-shaped hallway. The short branch led to the kitchen and the long one down to the bedrooms. From my vantage point, I could see through the living room and clearly see the fridge through a small sliver of the open door leading into the kitchen. Someone moved across my line of sight and I crouched down, hoping they didn’t see me. I pulled out my hatchet and checked my grip on it, then crept across the porch. Inside the living room, I followed the single track of snow he’d trailed in from his shoes before it disappeared on the carpet.

  I’d crept probably halfway across the living room when a young guy stepped into the hallway. He was probably twenty, wearing overalls and a long john shirt. He was a big guy, built like a lineman. His round face was covered with a beard that covered his chin but not his upper lip. His cheeks were beet red from the cold. In his right hand he was carrying a large plastic yellow bucket that had some kind of greenish stuff hardened on the side from where it had once dripped down. The other hand was holding a gallon tin can like you’d buy paint thinner in. On his hip was clipped a holster that held a gun.

  I surprised him. When he stepped out into the hall, he looked up and I could see confusion spread across his face. He looked at the hatchet raised above my head and dropped the bucket and can and tried to pull his gun. I threw the hatchet at him first. The hatchet struck him square in the center of his chest, handle first, and fell to the floor. But seeing a hatchet hurled at you from ten feet away has a psychological effect. Instead of grabbing his gun and drawing, he threw his hands up in from of his face and waved them about as he squealed in panic.

  I guess I’d been killing zombies too long. After I threw the hatchet, I reached for my knife and ran towards him. In an instant I had a handful of his hair and had driven him back against the wall. My body pinned him to it and my knife was jetting in and out of him like a piston. I’d stabbed him a dozen times in the gut and chest when my mind said, “Don’t kill him, he can give you answers.” But my hands were working too fast and I drove the knife into his neck, then his head before I could stop myself. By the time I stopped, I could feel his body slump. He was dead.

  I stepped away and his body collapsed to the floor. I leaned against the wall, sliding down it, and sat next to his body, catching my breath. I’d started hyperventilating and was trying to regain control. My stomach started to do flips and I dry-heaved. I’d never just killed a man before. Not like this. Steve was a different matter. Steve, I was doing what was necessary. He’d been bitten and would have turned soon. With Steve, I was doing a favor. I didn’t know this guy from Adam and I just attacked him and killed him. He might have been a good guy. He might have had a family nearby and was just gathering paint thinner and lye to . . . who the hell was I kidding.

  I checked the body for anything useful. In his back hip pocket he still carried his Velcro wallet. Danny Lilliamson, age 20. His birthday was coming up next month. Danny must have had five hundred dollars in his wallet. I stuffed his gun in my pocket and walked into the first bedroom where the photos I’d seen with Patrick were sitting on a dresser. From down the hall, I heard something thump in the last bedroom and told myself that it was just the raccoon moving stuff around. I checked the safety on my new gun and started looking at pictures.

  I found more than I bargained for. After a few minutes, I came across a photograph of Maggie, Patrick, and Danny. Danny was younger, probably by four years; he didn’t have his beard, but it was him. They were all standing in front of a Christmas tree. They were off-center in the photo and in the background behind them you could see into the kitchen. At that angle you could see next to the fridge were stands, tubes, and burners. Meth was a family affair in Maggie Lilliamson’s house.

  A little later I came across a shoebox with a bunch of pictures and a few of them were of a fishing trip, taken, from what was scrawled on the back of one photo, only three years ago. There was Danny holding up a string of crappie while he kneeled down in front of his father, Patrick, and James, the gruff black man with the pockmarked face. Next to him was the skier who was being pulled by the black truck weeks ago. Some tall redhead with a military haircut and a shield tattooed on his shoulder and a name across his neck had his arm draped over the shoulder of the black truck’s leader, that spiky-haired bastard who tried to burn me alive. Another guy I didn’t recognize and my new recruit, my new buddy from the bathroom of Paris Towers.

  A very calm, deliberate anger boiled up in me. I went to the hallway and slumped down beside Danny. I showed him the picture. “It’s a shame I killed you, Danny. I’m really sorry about that. I could really use your help. I need to know if this is all of them, if these are all your friends with the black truck. I need to know names, Danny, I need to know who took the picture.” I pointed to my new friend. “I need to know who he is and how many others are in our midst.” Danny said nothing as I sat there thinking. I hated that I’d killed him, but at the same time, I didn’t really regret it now that I was getting a fuller picture of who he was and who his friends were.

  I sat there till the cold started creeping in on me. That was probably ten minutes. We had to identify these people if they were going to be among us. I went back and gathered up the box of photos and then any other pictures I could find and stuffed them in the box. I went from room to room looking for more. At the raccoon’s room I hesitated at the door. Something went thump on the other side and I swung the door open. The coon was going out the window and it paused to hiss at me. The stench made me gag again. I looked around the room quickly and decided any information I might find in here was a lost cause. I closed the door again and left the house.

  I went back to my house and found some more clothes. Clean clothes that didn’t fit anymore. I stuffed a dress shirt into a backpack along with Patrick’s photos and headed to Trinity Church. While I waited for Jr. to come back with Joseph and Roland, I went through the box of photos again, studying them each more closely. Nothing was really written on the backs of them except dates, occasionally a location, but they were vague. It usually said something like “lake, 09.” It wasn’t till I got tired of looking at the photos that I sat back and realized I still had on the shirt I’d killed Danny in, and it was stained with blood. I went down to the gym/auditorium where the bathrooms had showers and stepped in there to change shirts and wash the blood from this one.

  This had become such a common occurrence that they’d actually set up a “blood-washing station” in the showers. There was a galvanized tub and a table full of chemicals, bleach, detergent, vinegar, scrub brushes, and sponges. Each person was responsible for cleaning the blood from zombies from their own clothes, and that’s what I started to do.

  While I was scrubbing, three kids came in and were talking. “But they’re getting harder and harder to find. Remember two weeks ago we were finding them everywhere? How many did we find today? That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to run out anytime soon. We’re just clearing them out of our neighborhood. There's plenty in the rest of the city,” said another voice.

  The third voice asked after flushing a toilet, “Do you think they’re going to want us to kill all the zombies in town?” I recognized his voice, he was a kid named Berry. As they came around th
e corner to the shower area they saw me kneeling down scrubbing my own clothing, and they fell silent. I didn’t say anything either, just nodded at them. They stripped down to their underwear and started cleaning their clothes. Since I’d met Eddie and the S.O.L. I’d done this ritual with them several times. Most of the time, the room was filled with laughter and talk and I’d really gotten to know most of the kids. I knew one of these from several of those moments and now he was quiet. It disturbed me, but I said nothing; instead I threw my clothes in the dryer in another room off the showers and stepped into the showers for a long, hot, steaming moment. Not long after that, the kids were in the showers as well. Still silent. When I got out I toweled off and waited for the dryer to finish my clothes. I sat there on the bench in the changing area wrapped in my towel. As they came out, they checked their clothes and had to sit down and wait as well. The silence was killing me. This room was almost always filled with laughter and talking. I wanted that now. Out of the blue I told the only joke that came to mind in the hope it would break this weird silence.

  “Why do blondes always smile during lighting storms? They think they’re getting their picture taken.”

  There was some polite laughter and one of them ventured a “Good one” to me as they fell silent almost immediately.

  “Where were you guys today?” I asked.

  “Out killing zombies,” offered Berry unenthusiastically yet insincerely.

  “Come on, guys, talk to me. What’s going on?”

  The former speaker shook his head and offered me a “Nothing.”

  “I heard you guys when you came in here, you were joking and laughing about killing zombies, then you fell silent when you saw me. So, what’s up?”

  “Nothing,” said Berry again.

  “No questions?”

  “No.”

  “Curious about anything?”

  “Nope.”

  I shook my head and dressed in silence. They just sat there in their towels waiting for their clothes to dry. I felt like I wasn’t connected to them, to anyone. The image of Danny dead in the house was right there in the front of my mind and I knew killing him had put me in a sullen mood. I was really hoping talking to these kids would bring me out of that, but I guess instead I sucked them into it. I don’t know where my next words came from when I addressed them before I left.

  “You know, after we get rid of the zombies and make this place a good place to be, others are going to want to come here and join us. Some of those will come here and try to take it by force. Instead of killing zombies, you might have to kill men. I did today. I’m sorry you might have to as well.” I walked out at that point. I don’t know what affect it had on them, but I know the confession helped me feel better.

  When I got out of the shower area, I went down to the main hall. There were kids playing various games and in one corner, Mrs. Greenbaum was teaching a small class of about ten kids. I made a mental note that we needed more teachers. I applauded her one-room school approach, teaching them in groups, but these kids would need skills if they were going to make it for years to come. We’d have to teach them simple things like math and mechanics. A simple lifting job could be made so much easier if they knew how to rig the right pulley system. Hell, they could build mountains. We weren’t going to have these modern conveniences forever. Sooner or later the electrical grid was going to go out. The water pumps were going to fail and we didn’t know where they were, much less how to fix them. These kids were going to need to know about things like Archimedes’ screw, magnetic engines, steam engines, and power sources. For that, they’d need teachers to teach them fractal geometry, the building block of the universe. Mrs. Greenbaum couldn’t teach them everything.

  I asked around to see if anyone had seen Jr. yet, but nobody had. I’d give him a few more minutes before I started to worry. As I moved around the building, it seemed that everyone was keeping a distance from me. Nobody seemed to want to be around me, as if they knew I’d just murdered someone. There was a chair in the hallway leading to the area where almost all the kids were gathered in a communal room and I sat down there with my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands. The bright sunlight pouring over me felt good, cleansing, affirming. I left the chair and moved to the floor, a little closer to the door, so I could be completely in the sun as I waited. “My, how the mighty have fallen,” I thought. Less than a month ago I was king of this city, then president, and now I was a killer sitting alone on the floor waiting for a kid to pick me up. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  It was probably less than twenty minutes when the door opened and in walked Joseph and Jr. with Roland behind them. Joseph was holding a washcloth over Jr.’s face and Jr. had his head tilted back. Blood was splattered down his shirt.

  “What happened?” I asked, getting up.

  “Dumbass here can’t drive in the snow,” answered Joseph.

  “I wab dobin jes fimb,” protested Jr. through the washcloth.

  “Yeah, fine,” retorted Joseph. “He was going too fast and hit the brakes too hard. We slammed into the curb and he busted his nose on the steering wheel.”

  “I wab dollin budder den you,” Jr. said, looking up at him. Joseph was at least a foot and a half taller than Jr.; he was also older by a few years.

  “Yeah, whatever. Get your dumb ass to the bathroom.” Joseph let go of the washrag and blood poured down Jr.’s face.

  “Nanguage!” exclaimed Jr., pointing at Joseph. Then he went down the hall to the bathroom.

  “What about you, Roland? Are you ok?” I asked.

  Roland nodded. “Doing pretty good. I got bounced around the back seat, but it was kind of fun.”

  “You sure?” I asked again.

  Still nodding, he said, “Yes, doing ok.”

  “What about you?” I nodded to Joseph.

  “I’m alright. What about you, you look like someone did something to your Cheerios.”

  “Do I really look that bad?”

  “If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were one of those crazy homeless people who used to come up to daddy’s mission looking for food. Some of them…” he left off and shook his head. I looked at myself in the reflection of the glass on a hallway announcement board. I did kind of look like a wild man from Borneo. Especially compared to Joseph. Although we were living like cavemen in a modern city, he still was well groomed. His hair was cut close to his head and the lines were sculpted. His beard was well trimmed and groomed, like he was going to church at any moment. His clothing was clean and taken care of, like he’d ironed it. I compared his to mine, which looked like I’d slept in them for a month. Even my new clean shirt looked in bad shape compared to Mr. GQ here.

  He was right; I needed to do something. My hair had grown shaggy and trailed down around my shoulders. My beard and my hair almost blended into one, and looking at myself in the reflection, I half-expected a bird to fly out of my beard at any moment. My eyes were tired and sunken; hell, I was tired and sunken. There was just still too much to do right now to worry about appearances.

  “Everything ready? Did you guys get it all set up?” I asked.

  “We’re good. Everything will be ready for tonight,” he assured me.

  Jr. came back looking frustrated. “You alright?” I asked him.

  “I wasn’t goin’ that fast.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It was your first day to drive. Ever.”

  “Do you need me anymore?” asked Joseph, looking down the hall. There was a girl standing there looking back at him.

  “No, man,” I said with a grin. “See you tonight.” He patted me on the shoulder and trotted down the hall after her as she stepped into a room. “Roland, you up for more adventure?”

  Roland glanced at his watch and shook his head. “I’m hungry and I got Mrs. Greenbaum in twenty minutes,” he said.

  “Go.” I didn’t want him to get in trouble with Mrs. Greenbaum.

  “What about you? Do you have Mrs. Greenbaum?�
� I asked Jr.

  Sheepishly Jr. said, “This morning.”

  “But you were with me this morning.”

  “About that, could you talk to her?”

  “I’ll see if I can’t get you a presidential pardon. Why didn’t you tell me you had her class? I could have gotten someone else to help me.”

  “I already know the stuff we were covering today.” We walked out the door and there on the curb was the car. It wasn’t in the same shape I’d given it to Jr. in. There were a lot more scrapes and dings on it than when he drove off with it. The passenger-side door was now crunched in where it looked like he’d hit a tree. The front bumper was missing and something was dripping from under the engine.

  “I’d better drive,” I said. He kicked a pile of snow and went to the driver’s door. “I’m driving,” I said.

  The passenger door won’t open,” he said and got in, scooting over to the far side. Our first stop was the Safeway. The girls were up on the roof making lunch and we stopped long enough to grab a bite to eat. Jamie looked better than she had this morning. The two were interacting like they were mother and daughter. It was nice to see my girl like that, all mom-like.

  “What are you two going to do for the rest of the day?” she asked me as she handed me a jar of jam.

  “We’re headed over to Gaines Street by the access road to see if we can’t set up a place where we can meet the black truck people in a controlled environment. If we can control the meeting place, then I think we hold a better advantage for dealing with them and getting them to leave us alone,” I said. I didn’t bother to tell her that earlier in the day, I’d just killed one of their members. Since they’d tried to burn me alive, this whole thing had become kind of personal. But I was certain I could talk reasonably with them and get them to leave us all alone. I guess on some level I could see their actions as their way to survive this new world. It was a different approach, not the best, but different, and I was certain we could come up with a way to live in harmony or at least in a way where we never interacted with each other.