Eat Your Heart Out

by Dayna Ingram

  I don’t know how long we would have stayed like that, but it feels like we could do this forever, if it weren’t for the water abruptly shutting off. The lights go out half a second later. We pull our heads back from each other, but keep our bodies close.

  “What the hell?” Renni says.

  It’s pitch dark with no windows in the locker rooms. I can’t even see the outline of anything. I tilt my head to listen but only hear the faint sound of leftover water dripping from the shower head. I feel Renni’s heart picking up speed against my own.

  “Power outage,” I breathe. “We should find the others.”

  We find each other’s hands in the darkness and slowly make our way out of the shower room, following the walls back to the lockers. We grope around until we feel the pile of folded clothes. It’s quite a circus act, trying to dress in the dark, feeling for shirt tags to make sure they’re on right side out, measuring waistlines of pants to make sure we’ve grabbed the right ones before putting them on, following the curve of a shoe with our fingers so we don’t don two lefts or two rights. Renni scoops up a few of her weapons, and I grab my knife and handgun from my old jeans. Finally, we make it out into the gymnasium.

  The lights are out here, too, and no one is milling about, as far as we can see. There’s a little bit of light shining in through the small square windows in the doors leading out into the hall. We follow this beacon and exit out into the hall. Our hair is still wet and sticking to our faces or all tangled and fraying out, we look ridiculous. Despite my best efforts, I’ve put on my shirt backwards. I pull my arms into the shirt to turn it around, and that’s when a young, skinny blonde dressed in the requisite black uniform comes around the corner.

  She lowers her rifle when she sees us. “The boss sent me to find you. You okay?”

  We only nod in response. “What’s going on?” Renni asks.

  “Power outage,” the woman says, confirming my theory. “Don’t worry, we’ve set up a back-up generator, but it’s not powerful enough to extend through the whole school. Come on, the boss is waiting for you in the cafeteria.”

  We follow her around a few bends in the halls to the cafeteria, even though I could easily lead the way with my eyes closed. My locker was on the second floor, near the computer labs, surrounded by all the other quiet outcasts and A/V geeks. The popular kids, the ones who played sports or instruments or went to parties, all seemed to have lockers on the first floor, nearest the cafeteria. I would walk by them only twice a day, at lunch time, and be completely ignored. I couldn’t decide, at the time, if this was better or worse than being picked on.

  Now the halls are empty, the lockers standing alone and innocent near the cafeteria entrance, no one to turn their combination locks, no one to lean casually against them while they test out the flirtation techniques they picked up in the latest issue of Cosmo over the weekend. We pass them swiftly, and enter through the inward-swinging double doors of the cafeteria.

  Most of the rectangular plastic tables have been upended against the row of windows that faces out into the quad. As I suspected when we drove into the parking lot earlier, the windows have been blacked out, though it looks like they were just directly painted over with a few thick coats of black paint. The doors that lead out into the quad are similarly blockaded, and there’s a stocky woman stationed there as a guard, peering out into the darkened concrete yard through a hole in the paint only big enough to fit one squinting eye.

  The other tables have been set up in a hard-edged circle in the center of the cafeteria, surrounding the lone circular table at which now sits our very own Nick Fury. There are a few people eating at the other tables, keeping their conversations low and private, not even looking up as we enter the room. Nick Fury eats alone. He spots us coming in through the doors and waves us over.

  “What will you have, ladies?” he asks, sweeping a hand over his own tray, which is piled high with microwaved pizza and pudding cups. “We have an absolutely stunning array of frozen pizzas and a fair bit of lasagna. A few vats of Tater Tots. I’m leery of the pre-packaged cheeseburgers, however. They’re a mite over their expiration date.”

  A man draped in a white apron comes out of the kitchen, carrying two trays piled high with what looks like a sample platter of all the foods the school’s industrial freezers have to offer. He passes between the outer circle of tables and places the trays gently on the table in front of Renni and me, nods once at each of us, then heads back the way he came, disappearing into the kitchen.

  “Ah, well,” Fury says, patting the edge of one of the trays. “Why decide when you can have it all?”

  The smell of the reheated food suddenly has me salivating, and I dig in. The taste of the various spaghetti sauces erases the trace flavors of Renni’s mouth, which is regrettable, but I keep on eating. Renni doesn’t touch her food. She lays her weapons on the chair next to her and starts in with her questions.

  “Who are you?” she begins the interrogation.

  Fury wipes his mouth politely with a small square of paper napkin, making sure to dab especially at the wiry hairs of his beard closest to his lips. “I’m just a man,” he says, “trying to protect his family.”

  Renni looks around at the people eating at the other tables, the others standing, checking the doors, marching along the perimeter with their guns. “These people are your family?”

  “You’re looking for an origin story? All right.” He pushes his tray of half-eaten food to the side and retrieves a half-smoked cigar from his chest pocket. “I was produced inside a lab. My mother, for all intents and purposes, was a turkey baster; my father, a Petri dish; my nanny, an incubator. My genes were culled together from a vast array of history’s most perfect warriors; I believe you can trace my heritage back to ancient Samurai warlords, to medieval Romans and the shirtless Greeks, back to even Christ himself. I am the result of centuries of genetic tinkering, of splicing and reordering, of failures and near-misses, to produce the perfect, the most diligent, the most focused, the most single-minded, intuitive, relentless, fearless killer of zombies.”

  I swallow a chunk of soggy pizza. “What?”

  “Me and mine were all created in labs by government scientists to protect the populace in the event of zombie-centric catastrophe, such as the one we find ourselves entrenched in now.” He opens his arms to indicate the people all around us in the cafeteria. “These are my genetic brothers and sisters, each created, to varying degrees of success, for the same purpose. We’ve been living, breathing, eating, shitting zombies since before you were conceived, since Christ was a corporal, since—”

  “Wait,” I interrupt him. “Since Christ was a corporal?”

  He waves his fingers at me, brushing it off. “It’s a figure of speech.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It simply means a long time ago.”

  “Do you mean ‘corporeal’?” Renni asks. “Since Christ was corporeal?”

  “Oh,” I exclaim, slapping Renni’s shoulder. “That makes so much more sense.”

  “Right?” She says. “Like he’s able to be touched—”

  “Because he was human at one point,” I finish her reasoning for her, “instead of now being like a spirit or whatever.”

  “Right,” she nods.

  I look back at Fury. “I think you meant corporeal, definitely.”

  “Definitely,” Renni echoes.

  Fury slams a balled fist onto the top of the table, knocking food off all our trays. “That isn’t even the point!”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, picking lasagna noodles off my shirtsleeves. “Keep going with what you were saying.”

  “You and your siblings were created in a lab,” Renni repeats, trying to get him back on track. “By who?”

  “Who do you presume?” he asks snidely. He produces his revolver-shaped lighter, and almost immediately the kitchen doors swing open, releasing the ten-year-old boy with his blue bucket extended excitedly in front of him. He runs u
p to our table, all smiles, and patiently waits by Fury’s side as he sucks on the freshly lit cigar. Its smoke smells like bad breath and Cheetos, but I just try to breathe through my mouth.

  “Our very own American government,” Fury goes on. “Why create an entire race of zombie hunters when there are no zombies to hunt? The zombie virus, which only infects dead tissue, was initially conceived as a biological weapon during World War the Second. But, due to some bureaucratic bullshit, was never fully launched. Sure, they field-tested it on a few corpses, but that’s as far as the project ever got. Until now.

  “Me and mine were created as a fail-safe, in case the virus ever backfired or got out of control, or fell into enemy hands. All in all, we are only a small army, about two hundred and fifty of us. A mere fraction of that followed me in my defection, thirty-two soldiers and this little fellow here.” He pauses to once again tousle the kid’s shaggy hair.

  “Defected?” Renni prompts.

  “When the alarm first sounded in the subterranean levels of Fort Wagner Air Force Base two hundred miles from here, where our numbers reside, I knew something was amiss. The attacks hadn’t even started yet and we were being called up, instructed where to go and what to do. They pointed us to this town on a containment mission, procedures for which we had been rigorously drilled on for the past few weeks. I found this curious. An advance team of us arrived two days ago, and waited. I had a lot of time to think and form theories during that holding period, and the theory I struck on, the theory that stuck, was that the government got bored, waiting around for another Great War to unleash their newfangled weapons. They got tired of controlled field tests, experiments involving no risks and zero variables. So they released the virus on the unsuspecting public, on this town, on you. And sent us in to clean it up.”

  My appetite has completely left me at this point, and the smell of all the greasy food in front of me makes me sick. Renni squeezes my knee comfortingly underneath the table.

  “So the government did this?” Renni asks, her voice a rasp of rising anger.

  “That’s my theory,” Fury says, sucking on his cigar. “And I don’t like it. Our people shouldn’t be the guinea pigs in this, innocent Americans confronted with this much trauma. It’s not right. I don’t want any part in this little experiment, but I also want to take down zombies. Old habits die hard, as they say. I did get that saying right, didn’t I?”

  “The Army is set to invade this city at six a.m,” Renni says. She looks at the numerical clock mounted on the wall above the cafeteria entrance doors. “That’s in three hours.”

  Fury nods. “Right. Since we defected, effectively abandoning the project, the brass have had a lot of problems on their hands, trying to contain this incident. The second wave of zombie hunters has probably already arrived, but they’re still planning. I have no doubt they’ll march in here, prepared to take out anything that moves, be it zombie or human. They won’t risk infection.”

  “So that’s real?” I ask him, trying not to sound too scared. “If you get bitten or something, you become a zombie?”

  Fury looks at me gravely. “Afraid so. The virus mutates from its original state, which attacks the dead tissue, essentially bringing it back to life. Once it passes from one system to another, it becomes a contagion, spreading through living tissue and deteriorating it, killing the afflicted host. Once the host dies, the virus re-launches its attack on the dead tissue, and brings it back to life, so to speak. It’s cyclical.”

  I make an involuntary whimpering sound in the back of my throat. Renni says, “How long does that process take?”

  Fury looks back and forth between us, his eyes narrowing. “Has one of you ladies been bitten?”

  Thankfully, we are saved from having to answer by a commotion at the cafeteria doors. A group of five black-attired militia guys—elite zombie-hunting soldiers, we now know—comes marching in, forming a very military style V-shaped formation. Everyone at the other tables stop their conversations and stand up. The V marches through the outer perimeter of tables and approaches our circular table. The little boy with the bucket sinks back a little, his smile erased. Nick Fury does not stand up.

  He looks at the militia guys with some mild disdain. “Report,” he commands.

  “Sir.” The tip of the V steps forward and salutes. “We’ve collected a specimen, sir.”

  Fury’s eyebrows perk up. He takes the cigar slowly out of the corner of his mouth. “Fully intact?”

  The militia guy nods. “Fully intact, sir.”

  The excited gleam in Fury’s eyes cannot be contained. He tosses the stub of his cigar carelessly behind him; the little boy has to dive painfully onto his stomach to catch it in his outstretched bucket. Fury stands up. “Is the lab set up?”

  “Being prepped now.”

  “Let’s go,” Fury pushes away from the table. Renni shoots up from her seat and grabs his arm at the crook of his elbow. He eyes her, and the four militia men aim their rifles at her.

  I stand up slowly, cautiously, sending worried glances at the gunmen, then at Fury, then at Renni, finally back to the gunmen.

  “You have some sort of objection?” Fury asks, his voice sounding bemused, but his face looking stern, angry.

  “What’s going on?” she demands, seemingly unfazed by the danger she’s put herself in by not letting go of the commander’s arm. “What’s he talking about, a specimen?”

  Fury smiles then, inviting yet sharp. All at once, he reminds me of a bear, the way Biff Tipping reminded me of a bear; big and scary on the outside, soft and warm on the inside, but unpredictable. “But of course,” he says through his large teeth stained brown from tobacco. “You ladies are invited along to observe.”

  Renni doesn’t seem to want to let go of his arm. I reach out and touch her arm. “Come on, Renni,” I say, softly. “He’ll explain on the way.” I look at him. “Won’t you?”

  Fury salutes me with three fingers, like a Boy Scout. “On my honor,” he says. Renni reluctantly releases his arm.

  The gunmen lower their rifles. “This way, Mister Machina.”

  We follow them out of the cafeteria. As we’re mounting the steps to the second floor, I ask Fury, “Mister Machina?”

  He smiles tightly. “Ah, you’ve discovered my true name. Deus Ex Machina. It’s Greek. But I like your name for me better. I prefer it.”

  We walk through the dimly lit halls of the second floor until we come to the closed doors of the chemistry lab. Two women stand guard like sentries on either side of the door. Fury instructs his men to remain in the hall and ushers us inside in front of him.

  In the room, we are immediately confronted with a bit of that trauma Fury was lamenting our exposure to just moments ago. A zombie lies prone atop a lab table, his clothes tattered and torn, his exposed limbs, which have not quite attained the greenish hue of prolonged death, strapped to the table by yards and yards of duct tape. In fact, his whole body is crisscrossed with it, even his neck, so that he can only lift his head a few inches from the table. When we enter, he looks at us with those deadened, glass-like eyes, opens his mouth, black with other people’s blood, and greets us with a low, rattling moan.

  “Jesus,” Renni breathes, grabbing hold of my arm. We both stop in our tracks and just stare at the zombie. The smell is atrocious, the view even worse. From the corner of the lab, a man in a white lab coat, lower face covered by a white paper mask, approaches the table, brandishing a bone saw.

  “Mister Machina,” he greets our commander, who has come in behind us and circles to the head of the zombie lying on the table. He appears neither shocked or concerned to see this zombie lying here, but rather quite eager.

  “Doctor,” Fury says, returning the greeting.

  “Shall we begin?” the doctor asks, tapping the dull handle of the bone saw against the fingers of his latex-gloved hand.

  “By all means,” Fury says.

  “Stop!” Renni shouts. The zombie’s moan grows to match the volume of
her voice. “You promised us an explanation.”

  Fury sighs, and turns to us. “Of course, ladies. My apologies. I forgot myself in light of this exciting development.”

  “Exciting?” I shiver, and move closer to Renni.

  “I realize it must seem fairly macabre to you both,” Fury says, stepping in front of the table so that the upper half of the zombie is blocked from view, but we can still hear his long, continuous moan. “But believe me, our experiments here will benefit not only you both, but all of the survivors.”

  “There are other survivors?” Renni asks.

  “Of course,” Fury says. “That’s why we defected in the first place, to help the survivors, get them out of the city before the government comes in to collect their own specimens, infected civilians, like you.” He looks at me when he says it. My fear catches in my throat. “We’ve collected a small group of survivors, awaiting instructions in the library downstairs. We plan to help them escape at the very last moment, when the government’s soldiers, our comrades, launch their first sweep, the maneuvers of which we are all aware from our training drills. We’ll get them all out, no doubt, but some have been infected and we don’t know what to do for them. Not yet.”

  He steps back to reveal the zombie, extending an open palm to him, like he’s a prize on display for some game show. “This unfortunate individual will help us discover a cure for the infection. I’m certain the government has one, but they won’t use it, not for this mere trial run. All your lives are expendable to them. But not to me. You’re Americans. My sisters in nationality. I refuse to lose a single one of you. Of course, we were all bred to be soldiers, killers, not exactly scientists. But we’ll do our best. Now that we have a fully intact specimen, things should run much more smoothly. Do you understand?”

  “Not entirely,” Renni admits.