by Dayna Ingram
After that zombie comes scraping into the store, his limp steps dragging over the sensor in the floor that causes the mechanical buzzer above the automatic doors to announce his presence—dong!—everything happens so slowly, just slowly enough to feel unreal, almost slowly enough to feel escapable. The sound of Renni’s heart slamming inside her chest next to me, her hot breath against my neck as we both strain to keep still and quiet, is louder than the scraping zombie mere feet away from us, who almost doesn’t even exist but for an intermittent suck-swallow sound that I assume he makes with his mouth (neither of us pokes our heads out to sneak a peek from behind our leather and wood shield). Since the fluorescent lights still burn bright above us, the zombie casts no shadow as he ambles about; the only way I can triangulate his position is by trying to hear his scraping, his sucking, and by stealing glances at Cherry and Brad, who are just visible at this angle, crouched low behind a register desk. If the zombie circles around this side of the loop, they’ll have to duck back, but for now they have a better bead on the thing’s location, and instinctively Cherry communicates this knowledge back to me by mouthing single words. “Post,” meaning he is near the load-bearing column by the front door that marks the start of our mahogany end-table collection; “Water,” meaning he has reached the water beds; “Coffee,” meaning he has wandered back into the inner circle of the tiled moat near the coffee tables, like the one I bumped into only minutes ago, trying to get to my new customer, who is now my partner in hiding.
The wind picks up outside and blows a chill into the store, and an odor: coppery and sour, the smell of the old man’s moldering thigh. From the parking lot I think I can hear sounds of motors turning over or turning off, car doors slamming, maybe a person screaming, maybe a siren wailing. Maybe someone out doing their early morning Sunday shopping before church has seen the aftermath of the carnage, or witnessed the attack themselves, and has called the police. I briefly considered this tack myself, but the second I moved my hand to dig into my khaki pants pocket for my cell phone, the zombie’s scraping stopped and that sucking sound started. I’m afraid he can hear the faint whispers of my fingers brushing against the fabric of my pants, maybe he can even hear the muscles or tendons flexing underneath my skin, or the joints creaking in my body, and he stops to suck at the air, like a snake, trying to sense what direction these impossibly soft sounds are coming from. So I’ve stayed still, kept my ears open, my eyes on Cherry, the backs of my knuckles resting slightly against Renni’s knee, and am hoping something happens soon to resolve this thing—the police show up, someone outside makes enough noise to distract the zombie into a chase, the zombie gets bored and leaves, something.
When something finally does happen, I’m reminded of that little nugget of condescension masquerading as wisdom espoused by parents across the nation: “Be careful what you wish for.”
From the back room comes the sound of the toilet flushing. The zombie’s scraping feet pause, and the air slick-slooks out of or around or into him. My body tenses up as my mind screams, “No!” I know Renni is thinking something similar because she clasps the back of my t-shirt near the belt of my pants. Over in the hub, Cherry and Brad exchange an anguished look, and then Cherry turns to me and mouths, “Biff!”
The latch of the back room door clicks and the hinges squeak as it opens. Almost immediately upon entering the floor, Biff is speaking loudly, slapping his hands together like mush, mush. “All right, kids, we got an unexpected delivery of slightly irregular recliners out back. The delivery guys are new, didn’t know to come around front, and are now refusing to budge, so we gotta work with them. Come on, guys, let’s— Cherry? Brad? Something fascinating to you two behind that desk I should know about?”
He’d been walking toward the hub as he spoke, so that Cherry and Brad’s position had been obscured by another register desk, but now they are exposed. I can see Biff now too, tail of his button-up cauliflower-blue shirt—assistant manager’s special—flapping against his butt where he’d failed to tuck it in all the way; small square of moist toilet paper clinging to the heel of his Payless black work boots. From their hiding place, Brad and Cherry frantically wave at Biff, mouthing the word “Run!” so urgently it almost comes out as a hiss. I still can’t see the zombie, but a low, wet rattle swells from his general direction, until it becomes a deep moan.
“What is going on here, you two?” Biff demands. “Where is Devin? What— Oh my God!” Biff’s face registers shock, but not fear, as he finally spots the zombie. I rock forward on the balls of my feet, preparing to spring into action, expecting the zombie to launch its attack, but the zombie doesn’t move, and Renni’s hand steadies me.
But Biff does move. He makes the same mistake I almost made earlier, but being Biff, he actually follows through. “Oh my God, sir—” he steps toward the zombie, arms out, seeking to comfort, to help. “Are you hurt? What happened? Let me help you.”
And this part moves slower than all the others. Biff’s right leg bends and lifts into one final step; the zombie crinkles into view on his broken legs. His arms rise up, calling to Biff, and then I rise up, literally calling to Biff by screaming his name with my mouth and workable larynx. Biff’s eyes shift over to meet mine, flashing some kind of emotion I don’t have time to read before the zombie, through some bizarre surge of strength and speed, lurches forward and attaches his jaw to Biff’s neck. I hear the crunch of skin and bone breaking together, like the sound of a thousand competitive eaters chowing down on a swimming pool-sized bucket of fried chicken wings. I watch the blood spurt from him like a malfunctioning fountain, and Biff’s face contorts in a way no face should contort. His body goes slack, and the zombie lowers him to the floor with surprising gentleness, like a lover.
My focus zooms out from this action to take in Brad and Cherry, who have leaped out of hiding. Brad’s stringing obscenities together to form some new language even a Yale linguistics professor wouldn’t be able to decipher; Cherry’s mascara streaks down her face with her tears, her mouth alternately sucking in and spitting out the dripping makeup through gasps as she screams.
And Biff on the floor, silent under the zombie’s deafening mastication.
The only other sound I hear before my own scream and pounding of shoes on linoleum tile is Renni’s urgent whisper, “Don’t.” But I do. I run toward Biff’s prone body, and kick the zombie in the ribs.
His flesh is softer than I’m expecting, giving easily beneath the force of my kick so that I can feel his insides sliding around on the arch of my foot. The zombie makes no sound, but he rolls off of Biff, and I grab at Biff’s shoulders. They’re too slick with his own blood for me to get a good grip.
“Come on, Biff,” I hear myself shout at him. “Come on! You’re a bear, goddammit! Biff, you’re a bear, get up!”
I guess, looking back, that’s when the stupidity took over. Or it may have been this: Renni Ramirez shouts into my ear, “Devin, stop,” grabs at my flailing arms, and I—caught up in the desperation of the moment, lost in the pale emptiness of Biff’s half-closed eyes and swimming in his blood—I elbow Renni Ramirez in the face.
Her blood stains the dry skin of my elbow, warm and sticky. She stumbles back, my eyes register—before my brain fully comprehends—what I’ve done. I start, “I’m—” thinking to apologize, and that’s when the zombie takes me down.
He slams into me like an overzealous linebacker who’s finally seeing Astroturf after twenty straight games on the bench, wrapping his arms around my shoulders so that my own arms are pinned to my side, and pitching me onto the floor beside Biff’s expanding pool of blood. The zombie’s stench overwhelms me, the hot wet garbage stink of the homeless mixed with the coppery sweetness of Biff’s blood and vital organs, a piece of which dangles out of the zombie’s drooping mouth as he looms over me. He moans from deep inside his throat, his own personal brand of salivating now that his glands have stopped working. Now I can see—and hear—that the slick suck-swallow sound wasn’t emanating
from a smacking of lips or tongue, but from a hole the size of my fist in his neck, exposing black and dark crimson tendons and other tissues, fresh blood running into it, something inside moving up and down, up and down, in time with the sucking sound—as if this zombie were breathing. Impossible.
But I can’t get caught up in the mechanics for too long because the zombie has picked out some tasty real estate along the shore of my carotid artery and is about to make a down payment. I’m thrashing, and he’s inches away from closing escrow, when the blue porcelain lamp shatters against his crusty forehead.
The impact halts him but he doesn’t move as the shards rain down around him and onto my face. I tilt my head back and look to see Cherry, scooping up lamps from side tables in the bedroom displays. She chucks them at the zombie, mostly missing, lamps exploding like tiny pipe bombs all around us. Brad holds the back-room door open, desperately calling for everyone to move their fucking asses and run already.
The zombie might not be moving, but he is distracted. I knee him in the crotch once, feel the improbable give there, and remember what I’m dealing with. I shove the thumbs of both my hands into his eyes and push until they pop and ooze—disgustingly easy—and I’m touching socket, or maybe brains. The zombie falls back long enough for me to crab-scramble out from under him, and then Renni Ramirez is lifting me from under my armpits into a standing position.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She sucks blood and air in through her already bruising nose and says, “Make it up to me later.”
From behind us, Cherry shouts, “You guys, run over here!” She tosses one more lamp in our general direction before spinning on her heel and darting over to Brad at the open back-room doorway.
And that’s when it happens. Fifteen feet from safety, my hand swallowed by the warm and nimble fingers of Renni Ramirez’s hand as she leads me away from the still-fresh tragedy. I feel the individual points of the zombie’s teeth puncture my calf like stings from a swarm of bees. I kick back without looking behind me, without even stopping in my sprint, feel his rotting face give out under my heel, his teeth bursting from his mouth, his moan muffled. I’m in the break room, door slammed shut behind me, before I register any pain.
“Out of the way!” Brad waves us away from the lockless door, overturns the plastic break room table in one clunky move, and lift-drags it in place in front of the door.
“Brad!” Cherry shouts at him, not yet able to lower her voice to match the calm and quiet of the break room. “Bradley, stop!”
A thud crashes against the door, causing Cherry to yelp and the rest of us to jump. Another thud follows, then another.
“Quick.” Brad starts pointing at anything movable in the room—the chairs, the microwave, the mini fridge, the dish rack. “Help me move this fucking stuff, for shit’s sake, that thing’s trying to get in.”
“Bradley, no,” Cherry restarts her protest.
“Cherry, what the fuck kind of death wish you got? Fuck.” Brad rips the microwave from the wall and stacks it at the bottom of the door, against the table, then goes back for the chairs.
“But, Brad—”
“But your ass, Cherry, grab a fucking chair.”
“—It opens out! The door opens out!”
Brad stops, one folding chair clutched under each arm. The thudding against the door continues at a predictable clip as the zombie, now blind, repeatedly throws its body into it.
Brad says, “Shit,” and lets the chairs clatter to the floor. Cherry covers her face with her hands and starts crying loudly.
I raise my hand like I’m back in Sunday school, but I don’t wait for anyone to call on me. “Um, guys? Could someone get me the first aid kit, maybe?”
All eyes turn to me, and I figure this is as good a time as any to collapse against the wall, so I do. Instantly, Renni’s arms are around me, easing me to the ground, which only reminds me of how gently—how tenderly—the zombie lowered Biff to the ground. Tears sting my eyes, and I try to tell myself they are only there because the pain in my calf has finally caught up with my brain, and it hurts worse than passing kidney stones, which was the worst pain I’d ever experienced up until now.
“I broke my arm in three places when I was thirteen,” Renni Ramirez tells me as she maneuvers my upper body to slip off my blue Ashbee’s vest. “That was my worst pain. At least I remember it as the worst.”
I hadn’t realized I’d said the thing about the kidney stones out loud. My head feels hot, heavy, and sweat has begun to seep from my brow. Renni wipes it away with the back of her hand. Then Cherry hands her a fifth of Kentucky’s Best Bourbon.
“For me?” I ask, smacking my lips.
Renni laughs in that way of hers and I almost forget about my leg injury. She uncaps the bottle, scrunches up my vest in her hand, and pours the whiskey over it. “Sanitizing,” she says. “Saw it in a movie once,” and she winks at me.
Brad comes back into view, kneeling down beside Cherry, and sets the first aid kit by my knee. I personally know that thing hasn’t been replenished since 1983, so that all it contains at this point is an ice pack, a box of circular band-aids, a tube of Neosporin, and maybe some Advil. Which, truthfully, I wouldn’t sneeze at right now.
“Hope you didn’t love these,” Renni says. She tears my blood-soaked khakis along the seam, starting at the ankle and stopping at the knee. She uses the drier part of one of the flaps to wipe the blood around the wound, and then, without warning, she pours some bourbon on it. It stings too much for me to even cry out. I close my eyes and bite my lip and pee a little but hopefully nobody notices.
When I open my eyes again, Renni is stuffing the wound with the alcohol soaked rag, and wrapping an ACE bandage around my leg and the rag, pinning it closed once it’s all wrapped up. I guess Biff did do a refill, after all.
“Brad, right?” Renni addresses him. She bites down on an individual packet of Advil and tears the foil open with her teeth. “Get her some water?”
This is when Brad finally realizes that the woman giving him instructions is Renni Fucking Ramirez. I can see it in his face, which goes slack in surprise, and then tightens back up in disbelief. But he doesn’t say anything. He gets to his feet and seconds later I hear the faucet running.
“Oh, that makes sense,” Cherry says, in a distant kind of way I’ve never heard from her before. Her mascara has created a river of makeup down her face, and as her tears dry, the river cakes into dirty clumps. Maybe it’s the fever, but her look is crazed, her eyes wide, pupils dilated, irises vibrating. She’s looking at Renni, trembling fingers pressed to her lips. “It’s all a dream.” She laughs a little, a hummingbird trill. “Of course. That same dream I always have about coming to work naked, meeting Renni Ramirez, and watching a zombie attack my friends. Yeah.”
“It’s not a cock-licking dream, Cherry,” Brad says sweetly as he holds the cup of water out to me. Outside, the zombie continues its thud-thud-thudding assault on the defenseless door.
“You’re not naked,” Renni says, pointing out the flaw in Cherry’s dream logic. I can’t hear well enough to know if she sounds disappointed about this.
“Oh. Right,” Cherry concedes.
“Here, swallow these.” Renni drops two Advil caplets on my tongue and tilts the cup of water against my lips. Before the water enters my mouth, I have a split second to taste the remnants of Renni Ramirez’s hands on the chalky pills on my tongue. They taste like she smells—a spiced musk, like a fresh-baked specialty bread only served on Sundays.
I swallow the pills. The zombie thuds. I think about Carmelle. Brad says, “I’m calling the police.”
Cherry knocks Brad’s cell phone out of his hands. “You can’t! There’s a zombie out there! The police aren’t equipped to handle a zombie.”
“Goddammit motherfucking Devin needs a fucking doctor, Cherry.”
“So we’ll take her. It’ll be faster than waiting for an ambulance anyway. It’s just off the second highway exit.”
“What if there are more of them?” Cherry says, working herself up. “Have you ever heard of one single zombie traveling alone?”
“I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with that shit-swallowing hole out there,” Brad says, getting up to look for his phone. “But he wasn’t no fucking zombie.”
Cherry gets up to follow him and debate with him on this point. I straighten up and lean over to grab the first aid kit. I find the ice pack, break it over my knee, and hand it to Renni.
“It really doesn’t look too bad,” I tell her, and I’m being honest. I mean, the nose is clearly broken, but the bruises and the swelling, even the blood, just deepen that mean-sexy look she’s known for. Her smile kind of throws it off a bit, but I don’t mind.
She holds the ice pack to her nose. “I can get you to the hospital,” she says. “I’m parked out front.”
“No!” Cherry overhears Renni. “No one else is risking going near that thing, whatever he is. He’s already killed two people. We’ll go out the loading dock. There’s a delivery truck there, remember? We’ll have them take us to the hospital.”
I do vaguely remember Biff saying something like that before…. Well. I nod at Cherry. “Solid plan.”
Renni puts her hands under my armpits again and lifts me up. I kind of wish she would stop doing that because I’ve been sweating so much since the attacks started, I must stink really badly under there, not to mention how damp it must feel, and now that stink and that dampness is getting all over her hands, but Renni doesn’t seem to mind. I lean against her, testing weight out on my injured leg.
“We’ll scout ahead,” Brad offers. He and Cherry disappear out the door that leads to the loading dock, closing it behind them.
The steady rhythm of the thudding zombie keeps Renni Ramirez and me company as we wait for them to return.