by A. J. Sikes
“¿Que? The fuck you talking about?” Chips asked.
“My old platoon sergeant. Gunny Bayles. He was always on us—”
“Man, I don’t need to hear about some pinche gringo culero who ain’t here now and wouldn’t help us even if he was. I thought you was out anyway, homie. The fuck you talkin’ about that dude for? He gonna come save your ass? That what you think?”
Chips had gone through the kitchen to the next room. Jed went in, ready to give Chips some shit for lighting into him like that. Chips was on his knees. He’d pulled up a floorboard and was digging around in the space below. The room, like the kitchen, was bare bones. Nothing in it but dust and dirt, and his friend. Except Chips wasn’t looking like much of a friend now. His hair was slick with sweat from their run, and every time Jed met his eyes, Chips held his face in a wince, like he couldn’t wait to get clear of Jed.
“Dude, chill. I was just remembering, okay?”
“Yeah, you was remembering. Well remember who got your back, Jed. Remember that, huh? Here, take this.”
Chips held out a black pistol with a square slide, all boxy like the one Jed’s parole officer used to carry.
Jed accepted the gun from Chips and hefted it in his hands. It felt thick in his grip, even more than the M9 he’d held once.
“That’s a Glock, homie,” Chips said. “You gotta watch—”
The gunshot clapped in Jed’s ears and he nearly lost his grip on the gat. For a second he was back in Iraq, remembering the one time he’d heard gunfire close up that wasn’t on a shooting range. His ears rang with a steady hum that grew and then slowly went quiet.
“Yo, Jed,” Chips said. His eyes were wider now. “You cool, man?”
Jed felt cool. The bullet hole in the floor told him different, but at least he hadn’t shot Chips. “Yeah, m’cool. I’m just a little wired up is all. Ain’t held a piece since the sandbox. And this shit outside man. I don’t know—”
Chips put a hand out to take the gun and Jed passed it over. He watched while Chips cleared the weapon. He passed it back to Jed.
“Like I was sayin’, you gotta watch the trigger. That chingadera right there. That’s your safety, homie.”
Jed looked carefully at the weapon and saw the little half-trigger poking out from the real one.
“Okay, man. Can I have the ammo back?”
Chips tossed him the magazine and Jed slotted it home. He was about to rack the slide to charge the weapon, but Chips gave him a look.
“Yeah. Better safe than sorry, huh?”
“You speak true, cabrón,” Chips said. He stood up and went to a hallway that led out of the room. “We can go out the front door. It got a lock on it.”
“Cool, but hey, man, I gotta take a dump. The toilets work in this heap?”
“Over there,” Chips said, pointing to a door that hung half off its hinges. “Make it quick, amigo. We gotta get back to my place. Make sure my little brothers are okay.”
Jed went to the bathroom and heard Chips walking into a room at the front of the house, saying he’d be waiting for him by the door.
In the bathroom, Jed put the Glock on the counter by the sink, next to a roll of toilet paper with just enough on it for his needs. He dropped his pants and flopped down on the seat, wrapping his arms around himself. He felt the scar under his left arm.
Jed remembered the burning sensation against his ribs. And he remembered the cigar that his squad leader held pressed against a hundred dollar bill that he’d laid up tight against Jed’s skin.
That was Jed’s first night in Iraq. He’d been assigned to a platoon that had lost almost half their men the week before. They were at that fucking Camp Baharia place . . . .
They called it Dreamland when he got there. Everybody said he’d spend every day wishing he could just wake the fuck up back at home. Jed blew it off, saying he’d been waiting for a chance to show Al-Qaeda how he felt about what they did to New York.
But the other guys were right. Jed didn’t get twenty minutes at Dreamland before he wanted to leave.
The platoon was picking up newbies. Jed and ten others guys. They all got in a line and the squad leaders picked them one by one. Jed and one other guy were in 3rd Squad. The other guy was a bible thumper, and he looked like an all-American kid from next door. All square chin, blond hair and shit, praying every night and probably helping old ladies cross the street before he signed up.
The blond kid with the chin got in easy. Everybody liked him right off. But the squad leader had a test for Jed, to prove he could be a Marine like the rest of them.
Just a way to give a man his cred. Fucking assholes.
Jed figured he was wearing the uniform, so that was proof enough. Hell, he’d signed up for the suck just like they all had. But the other guys wanted to test him.
“Okay, Welch,” the sergeant said. “You keep it there until the cigar burns through, you can have the c-note.”
Funny motherfucker. Jed went along with the bet, thinking it wouldn’t take that long. Most that might happen is he’d get a little red mark and then he’d be a hundred bucks richer and be done with the proving himself bullshit.
But money don’t burn like that, do it? It don’t burn if you don’t let any oxygen get behind the bill. Just hold it tight to your brother’s skin and watch him squirm until he can’t take it anymore. Then you laugh like a bitch while he goes looking for the burn ointment.
“Funny motherfucker,” Jed said to himself, remembering how everyone had laughed at him. After that, Jed figured a bad conduct discharge was his only ticket home. Either that or a long black bag with a zipper down the front.
Chips is right. Those assholes wouldn’t have my back if shit went down.
Chips’ voice broke in on Jed’s memories.
“Yo, Jed. Pinch it off, cabrón.”
Jed finished his business and flushed.
When he heard Chips screaming for him to hurry, Jed nearly fell over his own feet trying to get his pants on and grab the Glock at the same time.
“Jed! Get the fuck up here. We got trouble—”
Then he heard gunfire from the front of the house and felt his heart jump into his throat.
South Jamaica, Queens
Meg refused to watch what was happening below her hiding place. She wasn’t worried about being seen, though. If the monsters could still think at all, they would find her. Her end would come just as quickly as Tim’s had. She sat back, landing on her hip and sliding away from the window, no longer thinking about getting Tim to a hospital or about anything other than how unfair it all was.
I could have helped. It didn’t have to be like this.
She had lost her husband. He was dead, gone forever and replaced by a horrific monster. But as far away as she moved from the window, she couldn’t escape the growling and sucking sounds that mixed with cries and moans coming from the street outside.
Tears flooded Meg’s vision and she clapped her hands over her ears to hide from the horror show that her world had become. In her mind’s eye, she saw monsters roaming the streets, and leaping like demons from cars onto walls and rooftops. The beasts smashed their way into homes and dragged the innocent into the streets to be broken and devoured, and Meg could do nothing to stop it.
Her heart beat a staccato against her ribs, and the pummeling sounds from below kept ringing in her ears. The blows came to her in a steady punching rhythm. Chop-chop-chop-chop. Pop-pop-pop. Chop—
Meg wiped at her eyes. That was gunfire. It had to be. A second later, and Meg was moving cautiously back to the window. The sounds had stopped. Now she heard shrieks, but also shouting.
A lot of shouting. Men giving orders in between bursts of gunfire. Meg risked a look outside but stayed back from the window in case the one on the wall was still out there. Smears and sprays of blood decorated the street. The dead police officer lay on their lawn, but she saw no sign of Tim or the other monsters. Shaking, and half afraid that one of them would crash in to at
tack her, Meg leaned close against the window. She tried to get a view in every direction she could.
The street seemed empty. She couldn’t hear any of the tell tale scraping or clicking sounds that signaled the monsters’ movement. And the only shrieks she heard came from further down the street. In a split second, Meg was back at the heavy boxes and pushing them out of the way. She shoved them aside, not caring that they slammed and banged against the boards.
Meg breathed in deep and put her feet at the edge of the plywood covering the hole she’d come in through. With a quick shove, the board moved and Meg whipped her legs up and away, rolling to her side in case one of them was down there.
She came up against more boxes and scrambled to get a good position to defend herself with a kick in case anything popped up from the bathroom below. The room was still dark below her. The bathroom door was still closed.
Something moved inside the house, though. Something big, scraping along the wooden floors.
What if it’s Tim? What if he’s come back for you?
Nothing moved in the hall. No shrieks of recognition, nothing to signal that prey had been found. Then the house seemed to go quiet altogether.
It’s gone. It’s gone and you’re good. Now go!
Meg shook herself. She couldn’t allow for the luxury of worry or fear. People needed help out there, and that meant she had to act. Meg moved to the hole and dropped slowly, setting her feet on the vanity first.
All the noise she heard was from outside the house. Meg opened the bathroom door and stepped into the hall. The house was quiet. And it felt empty. She moved to their bedroom at the back, to the sliding glass door. Glass littered the carpet everywhere, in splinters and shards as big as her arm. Biggins was nowhere to be seen, but there wasn’t any blood either. She hoped he’d gotten away.
Meg grabbed a towel from the linen chest beside their bed and used it to pick up the most sword-like piece of glass she could find. It might not save her if she were attacked, but it felt good to have some kind of weapon in her hand.
The backyard was quiet as far as she could tell. Nothing seemed to be moving out there. Meg stepped to the broken door and kicked out the remaining bits of glass that might cut her if she had to get back in quickly. When she’d made a clear path for herself, she looked left and right quickly before whipping back inside. She hadn’t seen anything, but better safe than sorry.
You’re good. Everything is okay.
Meg chanted her grandmother’s comforting words in her mind as she went back to the doorway and stepped outside. For the first time she caught the reek of rotten fruit and realized she’d been smelling it as she made her way through the house. It had been faint inside, but out here it came to her like a wave of funk from a dumpster on a hot city day.
Gunshots peppered the neighborhood around her, along with the occasional shriek or squeal of the monsters. Meg didn’t hear any more human screams, though.
If she could find the police, maybe they could get her somewhere safe.
And somewhere she could start to help.
Meg winced when she heard a scream of terror from across the back yard. Their neighbors had never been nice people, but they didn’t deserve this. Nobody did. The screams continued and then stopped abruptly. Were they dead? Were they like Tim? What if they were just hurt? If Meg could get to them, maybe she could help.
Or maybe you could get eaten alive.
She let the piece of glass fall from her hand and shatter on the patio beside her feet. Tim was dead, he had to be. And so were the neighbors. Ripped apart by monsters that shouldn’t exist. What the hell was she supposed to do now? Who could she help when even that cop and the guy with an assault rifle weren’t able to defend themselves from these things?
Meg heard gunshots nearby, and more shrieks from the monsters. They sounded inhuman, like animals, but not any kind of animal Meg had ever heard before. She glanced at the neighbors’ place. Through their patio door she could see bodies on their bedroom floor. Splattered blood dripped from the glass door. As Meg watched, a spray of blood covered the glass, and then another. Meg reeled away and ducked down behind the shrubs that divided the yards. More gunshots came from the street outside, and shouting that sounded like someone from the army was out there.
“Corporal Parvil! Take Sims, and Olafoe. Clear that side. High and low, watch the rooftops. Cantrell, Jackson, on me. Clear this street and rally at the trucks.”
Meg heard a chorus of grunts that sounded like agreements. Should she go out and ask for help? What if they thought she was one of the monsters and shot her?
Her grandmother’s mantra came back to her again. “You’re good.”
With a shaking hand, Meg reached for the broken glass again. But it was all little pieces now. Useless as a weapon unless she was going to use it on herself.
No! You’re good, Meg. You’re good.
She stayed hidden. Then she poked her head out from around the bushes and pulled back fast. She hadn’t seen any soldiers on the street or in the neighbors yards. Or any monsters. But she could hear them a few yards over. And they were in her neighbors’ house just behind her.
They are monsters now. They’re not your neighbors anymore.
Meg stepped out of her hiding place, keeping her hands in front of her and flicking her gaze to either side as she moved. She lifted her foot for one more step when she heard shattering glass from a patio door nearby. A shriek cut the air and gunfire followed. Meg ducked down and ran, following the wall of their house. She kept her head down, but tried to get a look at where the soldiers might have gone.
She moved down the driveway and spotted the soldiers across the street. Meg kept moving, looking back the way she’d come and then quickly at the street again, until she came to a stop behind their garbage cans. Three soldiers moved on the other side of the street, crouched low and with their weapons aimed up and at eye level. They switched their aim as they moved, up and down, at the rooftops and back to their level on the street. One of them raced up to a door that had been broken in and shouted something into the house. Then he lifted something from his belt and threw it inside.
Seconds later Meg flinched as an explosion sent glass and dust flying out of the windows of the house. The soldiers all rushed inside and Meg heard gunfire. Flashes of light flickered in the windows of the house. She was so transfixed she almost missed hearing the scraping and clicking sounds behind her. Meg spun around. Tim was clawing his way toward her.
But he wasn’t the man she used to know. Not anymore.
Tim’s once bronzed flesh had gone almost chalky white. His fingers had grown into claws that scratched on the concrete, and his face–
Oh, God, what happened to you, Tim?
Elmhurst, Queens
Up at the front door, Chips was popping caps at something outside. He fired through a little square peephole that was cut into the door. The window next to the door was boarded up, but it had a panel, about the same size as the hole Chips was shooting through. Jed went up next to Chips and opened the panel. One of the zombie things was out there, snarling and spitting. It had blood all down its front, and its clothes were shredded, like it had been locked in a bear cage.
But its face . . . Jed couldn’t get the image out of his mind, the sucker mouth dripping with spit and blood, and those little needle teeth.
Chips kept busting rounds out the peephole in the door but he couldn’t get a good bead on the thing outside. It moved so fast, all jerky and quick, and with its joints clicking and popping like a socket wrench. In a flash it jumped forward and slammed against the door, knocking Chips’ gun out of his hand. He ducked down to grab it and yelled at Jed.
“Fucking shoot it! Shoot it!”
Jed slotted the Glock into the hole in the board and tried to line up the monster in his sights. It was still right up on the door, scratching at the wood with its claws. Jed could see the thing’s pale white skin, and its muscles stretched tight like cables around its freaky joint
s. Every time it moved an arm or a leg, it made that same sickening clicking sound. Jed angled the Glock at it and got off two shots that only pissed it off, just running furrows across its back. Chips was back up and aimed through his peephole. He put one into the monster’s head right over its left eye. The head snapped back and the thing went over onto the front walk.
Jed’s ears were ringing like mad. He could hardly make out what Chips was saying. His mouth was moving, but all Jed heard was something like Go shit. Then Chips had a hand on Jed’s shoulder and was spinning him aside. Chips closed the peephole Jed had used and then looked out the one in the door again.
After a few minutes of watching the street, Chips closed his peephole. Jed’s ears were settling down a bit, but the steady hum lingered in the background.
“Fucking shit, man,” Chips said. “Fucking shit. We gotta get back to my brothers, man. You . . . Yo, Jed!”
Jed was just staring at the peephole in the door, afraid that any second it would come busting in and one of the monsters would chew his face off.
“Yeah, man. Yeah,” he said.
“You wanna get with the fuckin’ program, homie? We gotta go.”
Chips reached for the doorknob and Jed automatically raised the Glock to cover the entrance. His ears were still ringing bad, but he felt something kick in right then. They’d trained on clearing buildings back in the Corps. He knew what to do.
“You ready?”
“Yeah, man. Go on three.”
Chips counted and wrenched the door open on three. Jed swept the Glock left to right, but the street was empty. The dead thing on the front walk was still dead. Jed forced himself not to look at it and just keep his eyes on the street outside.
“Looks clear man,” he said.
“You go first, homie. What’s that called? Point?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. You on point.”
Chips patted Jed on the shoulder and stepped back so he was in line with him. Jed felt Chips’ aim over his right shoulder, so he kept his eyes on their left as they stepped out of the house and around the dead thing on the walk.