Tabitha's Zombies: Part 1

by Carla Rossetti

  His place has no end. No boundaries. My eyes fixed on The Blob, I’m jumping back, back, and back, and . . .

  I hit a wall.

  It’s over. I breathe huge before realizing: No, I’m over.

  A smile on his face. Then a smile on mine. I turn, wall to my right, and I run with all my strength.

  “AHHH!” He roars from behind. But that roar is not because of a renewed chase. It’s from pain. I look behind me as the haze closes around him, and barely see a cleaver, buried deep into his head, topping it like a mohawk.

  “You little scum!”

  “I didn’t do it!” I yell. “What the—?”

  The Blob is on his haunches, waving hysterically, as if bees are attacking him. Jewels of blood fly through the air. It’s too difficult to see the cause. The culprit. The . . . Billy!

  There he is, slicing away, spraying monster juice everywhere, getting much of it on his clothes and face and hair. Chop, chop, chop. Remnants of that awful sound, of a fellow student turned into packing meat. The sound is transforming into a sweet serenade.

  “Where have you been?” I ask with glee, as Billy continues his exercise.

  “Gee willikers! Give me a minute.”

  I giggle. He’s breathing hard, so it’s best to let him finish. No rush. It brings me joy to see our bugbear bite the dust. The roar, which started at a deafening height, has died down to a whimper. The last bit of brains is leaking out now.

  “Whew!” Billy lets out. “Had to jump like Michael Jordan to reach this sucker. Thanks for distracting him.”

  “Oh, no problem. You’re the one who deserves thanks. I was in his crosshairs there.”

  “He wouldn’t have caught you,” Billy says. “Your tires lit once you got back to the wall. Never saw someone run so fast.”

  Not too long ago, I thought there wasn’t a wall. I only had to stop looking where I went. When I tell him this, Billy doesn’t look surprised.

  “This stuff,” he twirls his finger in the air, “would make a blind man king.”

  “Anyone with amnesia would feel quite at home as well.”

  “You forget something?” he asks.

  “Yeah. Everything. I didn’t even recognize her.”

  Billy raises his eyebrows in question.

  “My sister,” I explain. “I saw my sister, Jessica. Not really my sister. A horrible likeness of her.”

  “Sounds like what happened to me. My old dog, Valiant, came to me, wagging his tail. I knew he shouldn’t be here. He died years ago. But I got so desperate for him to be real, my guard went down, and then he . . .”

  Billy shows me the teeth marks. They line the outer edge of his arm, and look pretty tame, given how bad it could’ve been.

  “You need to get that cleaned up, to avoid infect—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Billy says, rolling his eyes. “Least I don’t have to worry about rabies.”

  “Ha! You wish. Never know where something like this has been.” Even now, after The Blob has become a lifeless bag of goo, there’s a residue of peril while I stand in his presence. He’s laughed his last, yet that rumbling echo stays in my ears.

  “And he sure knew how to make a kid feel special. Wasn’t sure I’d ever see Jessica again.”

  “She—?”

  I answer quickly, “Yes.”

  “Sorry.” He even looks sorry. Astonishing. He just went through the ringer trying to take down a mountain, but he can still squeeze out empathy for another. Billy is one of a kind. And a complete mess. He could audition as bowl of guacamole in a chip commercial.

  But I decide not to tell him this.

  “What next?” I ask. “Do we stay and have a picnic, or do you have some grand plan for getting us out of purgatory?”

  “First thing’s first. Happens I found these. They beat the heck out of a letter opener.” The cleaver he waves with a flourish. Then he reaches for his back pocket and produces a virgin butcher knife, ready for its first kill.

  “Hope that didn’t poke your butt too hard.”

  He smirks. “Pain is just a state of mind.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” I hold out my hand for the butcher knife. Billy gives it over, and, for once, in a long while, I feel safe. “What peace of mind a hunk of metal can give ya, huh? I never thought of stabbing a person—or thing—before.”

  “I found them close the exit.”

  That perks me up. “You found the exit?!”

  Would it be too awkward to hug him?

  Opting for the high-five instead, I watch skittishly as Billy slaps my hand.

  “But, why didn’t you leave?”

  He mulls that over for a few seconds before landing on, “It would’ve been wrong to leave you here.”

  “You didn’t have to do that. No shame if you’d made a break for it.” Which I might have done. “Thanks, Billy, I mean it.”

  There’s a goofy smile weaving through the specks of green and black blood on his face.

  “I know.”

  NINE

  We take one last look at our foe’s decimation. His rank entrails are slowly but surely getting worse, and my nose can only take so much putrefaction before going on full sabbatical.

  Billy shows the way. We stick to the wall like magnets. He goes a step further by constantly leaving his hand on it. The haze hasn’t let up, and the rotting corpse behind us isn’t changing that. Alive or dead, it must be exuding this stuff. Billy describes it as a lure, similar to the scent released by Venus flytraps. “Losing our memories, that’s the best sort of snare,” he explains.

  “Yeah, but our memories aren’t so bad anymore.” My stomach growls. “Ah. Maybe hunger triggered me back,” I joke.

  “Kudos,” Billy snickers. “Your base instincts to the rescue.”

  “Nothing like an empty gut to shock you out of reverie. And a giant hit to the face.”

  We soon arrive at the exit, and it’s just as glorious as I imagined. A perfect match with The Blob’s facsimile, down to the green sign and the stern warning, EMERGENCY ONLY.

  The emergency happened. I’ll take my leave right here, thank you very much.

  “Ready?” I ask.

  Billy nods, but holds firm as a statue. He’s clearly nervous. Me as well. All this time trying to find a viable portal, and we’ve given little thought to execution. The fact remains that anything could be out there, patrolling the perimeter, or guarding the outside of the door itself.

  “You want me to do it?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Gosh! Look at you. One minute you’re landing a sequoia, the next you’re shaking in your boots about a door.”

  “It’s not just what’s behind the door that bothers me,” Billy says. “It’s what happens next. Are we going stay together, or what?”

  “What makes you think otherwise? Is it likely I’ll find another knight and shining armor—better with bigger muscles?” Playfully, I squeeze his arm. He exhales, his whole body a deflating balloon of negativity and doubt.

  “We’ll do it together. Slowly. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Our hands, next to one another, push against the bar. As you might have guessed, we forgot one little thing: the alarm. Emergencies tend to be followed by annoying sounds, the effect of which is similar to shoving nails into your eardrums. This is the best part, because, while Billy is waving and shoving me forward, toward the sweet open of wilderness, I can’t hear the blood-curdling cries of heinous ghouls.

  Billy is behind me—again. But, this time, I aim to look back now and then to make sure he doesn’t slip into the dark. Thank goodness, he’s keeping up, but skipping fast, showing a limp. He twisted his ankle when we got jolted.

  My hair floats off my back as breezily as it would in a speeding convertible.

  Look back, and sprint! Look back, and sprint!

  My hearing returns. I detect the muted shout of something, not Billy. He’s flapping a hand into the empty air, ordering me forward. We’ve gotten far eno
ugh the lamp light no longer casts our shadows, but I’m sure at least one of the zombies has seen us.

  Past the mowed lawn, wet with recent sprinkler action, we make the cover of forest. Neither one of us can stop, I know that, but Billy’s in obvious pain.

  “Wait a second,” I tell him. “Catch your breath and I’ll check if we’re being followed.”

  Head shaking, he tries to drag me by the arm. I happen to get a good gander at our trail before he yanks me further into pitch black. The wobbling smudges of far-away objects, moving ridiculously slow, are indeed coming after us.

  “Hold on,” I urge. “Let’s figure out where we’re going first, or we’ll get lost. And, believe me, this is the last place we want that to happen.”

  As I said before, wolves are a big problem here.

  “Stay close to the open, then,” Billy says. “If we do that, and steer clear of the light, maybe we won’t be seen. But we need to make it to the gas station. From there, we can head into town.”

  “And if town is infested like the school? Where do we go?”

  “We’ll need supplies. Food and water, clearly; but weapons also. Proper weapons. Not these.” He flops the cleaver back and forth in his grip.

  A dissonance of gravelly bawls sends chills up my back. We start moving again, and I whisper, “Guns, you mean. You know a place we can get those?”

  “Uh-huh. My Dad’s a collector. He keeps them in a safe.”

  “With a combination?”

  “Give it a rest, Tabitha. Yes, I know the darn tootin’ combination!”

  “Shhh!” I have to remind him. He yelps when his foot runs into a massive rock. A few more of those and he’ll be out of commission.

  “Here,” I say, and wrap his arm around my neck. Propping him up isn’t easy; he’s a lot taller and heavier. We stumble together along the edge of the clearing, up the driveway, towards Jiffy, the gas station. Mr. Johnson has owned it for sixty years, and, as he would have it, for another six hundred.

  “What do you think Mr. Johnson’s going to think about our story?” I ask. “Assuming he’s alive, that is.”

  “He isn’t,” Billy assures me. “He loved his grandkids,” meaning the Johnson twins; two wild and robust hellions in sixth grade who’d launch mash potatoes from their mouths at lunchtime. “He would have orchestrated a full-scale siege of the school. No . . . we’re the last ones.”

  “The last kids in the town?”

  “They prefer young flesh. That much I gathered from our big friend.” Billy pants his words as he sweats all over me.

  “What a stockade, us all in one place, ready to devour.”

  “Ready process and ship. That’s what he was doing.”

  “But where are the bodies? He must’ve been fetching them from some place. They weren’t in the freezer.” Here comes the image of Billy, frozen, hair sticking up in deadly spikes. It’s a spectacle The Blob helpfully provided. The brute.

  “I don’t know. Elsewhere. Maybe outside.”

  “And let them spoil?” I say dubiously.

  “I’m not Nostradamus, for cryin’ out loud!”

  He’s making a bad habit of giving away our position. I smack him on the head, but the damage is done. A noise is closing in on us. It’s a quick rustle of leaves and sticks. Either it’s the zombies’ cleverer cohorts—the slick, greasy-looking ones—or the wolves have finally come to play.

  “Turn around! Get Ready!” I order.

  Billy does a lousy job pivoting on his good leg, but he manages to lean against a nearby tree, his stance protective. I jump from him and crouch as if ready to pounce on a gazelle.

  A question flutters to our ears: “Who are you two?”

  Neither one of is stupid enough to answer. Where we are, it’s plenty dark, and the lack of visibility can buy us important seconds.

  “Are you students?”

  I try to trace the voice, which is resonant, but not quite adult. There’s an adolescent bullishness to it.

  “I saw you running from the school. I know you came from there. And I know you’re running from . . . them.”

  About a hundred yards away, an uncontrollable screech severs the night like a cannonball.

  “You hear that?” the voice asks. “They’ll be hanging over your corpses if you don’t answer me.”

  Billy is the first to give in. “Why does it matter who we are? We definitely aren’t one of . . . you know.”

  “Them,” repeats the voice.

  “Yes, yes, the abominable them,” I flare. “Yoinks! You both can give lessons on beating around the bush. The zombies. And, yes, they’re coming after us; and we’d very much like to decline their invitation to dinner. So, for the sake of brevity, let’s agree that we aren’t zombies, and you, mysterious stranger—you aren’t a zombie either.”

  Knock on wood.

  The voice is silent a few seconds, then, when another screech reaches us, this time from much, much closer, he coughs nervously and shuffles. I can hear the crunch of leaves at his feet.

  “We need to get out of here,” he finally says.

  “And go with you?” I ask. “We don’t know who you are.”

  “I’m Mark,” he replies. “Mark Quintin. I go to the high school.”

  That’s almost five miles down Highway 77, past Mr. Johnson’s Jiffy, near the outskirts of town.

  Mark moves closer and brushes against my sleeve. When he reaches it, he runs his hand down my arm, and finds my hand.

  “Nice to meet you.” We shake with a quick bounce, and he stands back, waiting for me to return the courtesy.

  “Maybe I can say ‘nice to meet you’ when we’re not standing around like idiots. Now, is there a faster, better way to the gas station down the way, or are we on the right track?”

  “You’re on the right track, if you want to die. They have a lookout there.”

  “Gripes,” I say. “What did you have in mind, then? You said we needed to get out of here. I assume you came from someplace less treacherous?”

  Sure,” he replies, me sensing a smile on his face. “Does he need help? It’ll be a bumpy hike.”

  “I don’t need your help, thanks!”

  Darnit, Billy! I’m gonna throttle you!

  Letting out a huff, I walk to where I left Billy and put his arm around my neck.

  “After you, Mark.”

  He comes forward and touches me again, gently tugging my arm in the direction he wants us to go. But what really helps us navigate is the sound of his footsteps. We go further into the forest, and it gets darker, where the silhouettes of trees are no longer distinguishable. Billy is hurting. His leg keeps banging into things.

  “Not so fast, Tabitha.” He fights to tell me this under his breath. Mark’s presence seems to have stifled his complaints, or rather their volume.

  “Mark?” I begin asking the phantom before me. “Perhaps you can tell us where we are heading?”

  “To my house.”

  “And how far is that?” Billy asks with a tinge of frustration and, I detect, concern.

  “Not far. We should be there in half an hour.”

  Billy takes a gigantic breath and holds it.

  “It’s a long tunnel, buddy-pal,” I warn him, and he releases the air, reducing the size of his stomach by a third.

  “Thanks for this,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I dorked up my body.”

  “Don’t mention it. You’d do the same for me. Actually, you’ve done more.”

  Hearing our chatter or not, Mark chimes in: “You two been together since the beginning?”

  “Something like that. We found each other in a classroom, after the school was attacked.”

  “Hm,” is Mark’s only reply.

  “And what about you?” I query. “You must have been at the high school when all this happened. Did people die there too?”

  “I wasn’t at the high school.”

  “Oh, so you don’t know . . .”

  Silence.

  “Are there
others, like us, who are alive?”

  “Yes.”

  Very chatty, this one. Part of me is unsettled about that.

  “And they’re at your house too?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you have food?”

  “Yes.”

  [And do you do you dance the Funky Chicken in your grandmother’s dress?

  Mark: Yes.]

  I should ask him that, shouldn’t I?

  “Do you have guns?” There’s Billy. Blunt, blunt Billy.

  To that, Mark is not as quick to answer. It’s a simple question, one to which the stalwart “yes” would be applicable, unless he didn’t have guns. Then, unfortunately, the answer “no” would break his cadence.

  “I see your dilemma,” I offer. “How can you possibly say yes when you should say no?”

  “Why would I say yes when it’s not true?” replies Mark.

  “You do have guns? Or is it one gun? One gun’ll do the trick.”

  “There are no guns,” Mark says definitively.

  “Shucks,” Billy blurts. “We’ll have to remedy that.”

  Mark laughs. The contempt is clear, but I hope Billy doesn’t notice. All hope is lost, however, when he tightens the muscles in his arm. It’s a bad start to a new and, as fate would have it, necessary relationship.

  TEN

  The walk goes on for as long as Mark indicated. Really, a smidgen longer, because Billy and I have to play a three-legged freak. When we arrive, the break from the forest comes at us with a forceful punch of clear air and uninhibited foot space. There’s no artificial light, from the porch or any other place. The house, as we can see it, basking in moonlight, is a brick bungalow in a neighborhood of one; next to it a couple rusty trucks, and piles of debris decorating the lawn like redneck garden fixtures. The usual suspects: old microwaves, a blown-out oven, bald tires, and a broken rocking horse. Mark’s family hasn’t yet upgraded to a TV with its screen shattered into a million pieces. That would really bring everything together.

  “You live here?” I ask, trying my best not to seem snarky.

  We can see Mark’s figure better now, the frame of an athletic male, over six feet, with ruffled hair. Some features on his face bleed out as well. His nose is long and chin narrow.