by A. J. Sikes
Tito spun away to Jed’s right, stumbling and landing on the couch. He and the old man both wiped at their eyes, but in seconds the wiping turned into scratching. Then both men clawed at their faces as they shook and howled about things Jed couldn’t see.
“Get ‘em off me, Tio! Get ‘em off of me, please!” Tito shouted.
The old man screamed in Spanish and swatted at the air around his head. In a heartbeat, he went still, with a look on his bloodied face that told Jed the man was losing his mind. His eyes bugged out and seemed to follow a fly or a mosquito, but Jed didn’t see anything buzzing around the room. Memo had gone down on all fours. The backpack landed behind him with a heavy thud. Chips had his gun out, but tears streaked down his face as he watched his brothers and uncle twitch and convulse on the floor.
“No, no, no,” Chips said, shaking hard and only half-heartedly lifting his gun. Finally he got the muzzle up, but he didn’t fire. Jed looked left and right. His Glock was on the couch next to Tito, but Jed wasn’t about to go near the guy. Not now. Not with all that blood and shit leaking out of his mouth. Tito tumbled off the couch and wretched. A stream of thick blackish liquid spilled onto the carpet by his face. The old man was shaking again, and grabbing at the air like he was fighting a ghost.
Chips aimed his gun right at Memo then. “I’m sorry, hermano. I’m so sorry,” Chips said. He looked away as he pulled the trigger. Jed jumped when the gun went off.
The bullet just went into the floor by Memo’s hand. Memo reared back and shrieked at Chips, then spun in place to look right at Jed. The kid’s face was a mess of pulsing veins and twitching yellow eyes. Blood ran from every hole in his head, and his mouth was already a horrific sucker. Jed could see Memo’s teeth crushing together behind his puffy, bloody lips. As he watched, a set of needle-like teeth pushed up from behind his normal ones, and some of those fell out to land on the carpet in a pile of bloody goo.
“The fuck is this? The fu—Chips, man. Your brother’s—”
Another gunshot cracked and Memo’s face exploded, spraying blood and brains onto the carpet. Jed heaved his guts, adding to the mess. He staggered to the side and tripped over Tito’s, landing on the couch. His hand found the Glock, but he nearly fumbled it trying to get away from Tito’s clutching hands.
A hiss got his attention. The old man was on his stomach now, with his legs bent all wrong, like his joints went backwards. Then his arms clicked and popped and he reared up from the waist, pivoting on the carpet. He went back and forth, first looking at Jed and then at Chips with those sickly yellow eyes and a sucker mouth full of needles.
“Jed, hermano. You gotta do it. I can’t—”
“Chips, man, this ain’t the time to go soft. Not now, man.”
The old man shuffled in place and aimed his face in Chips’ direction. Jed lifted the Glock and fired, right into the old man’s back. Then he put one into Tito who had started whipping his arms and legs up and down, making these crazy popping sounds. Jed finished the job with one to the head for each of the men.
Another gunshot split the air and Jed snapped a hand to his stomach. But he hadn’t been shot. He’d just felt it, like it was supposed to happen. But if it wasn’t him . . .
He looked into the kitchen to see Chips sliding down the fridge with his gun stuffed under his chin. Chips’ brains covered the freezer door. His arm flopped loose and the gun fell out of his grip to clatter on the kitchen floor. His body followed it and landed with a thump.
Jed held a hand over his heart and kept the Glock up and ready as he watched Chips die.
“Stupid motherfucker,” Jed said. “Why’d you have to do that, Chips? Why’d you—Shit.” Careful to avoid the blood and gore that seemed to cover every surface, Jed went up closer to Chips’ body. “Why’d you have to . . . Shit, man. Shit.”
He used a kitchen towel to collect weapons off Tito and the old man. They had their gats stuffed in the back of their pants, and were still face down. The guns didn’t seem to have any blood on them, but Jed knew he had to be sure. He lifted Tito’s out with the towel and held it up, checking for any blood. When he didn’t see any, he tossed the piece away from the bodies to a clean part of the floor. Then he did the same with the uncle’s little snub nose. Memo’s gat was tucked into his waistband in front, so Jed left it there. He went back to the kitchen and grabbed Chips’ gun out of his dead hand. He didn’t worry about the blood because he’d seen how the man went out.
You weren’t sick, man. You didn’t have none of Memo’s blood on you. Why’d you have to do it?
Jed found a couple extra mags in Chips’ pockets. He emptied one and used the rounds to reload his Glock before he went through the apartment looking for something to carry his gear in. He didn’t find anything but funky smelling mattresses in the bedrooms and some old clothes.
He got back to the front room and heard sirens outside. They were far enough away that he didn’t worry about them. He knew that something big was going down. If he did run into any 5-0, they’d probably give him a uniform and some extra ammo before they gave him a pair of handcuffs.
Yeah, bullshit. They’d take me down just like always. This here’s the Jed show now.
Jed looked at his dead friend and the other dudes.
“Guess maybe you saved yourself some hurt, Chips. I’ll see you on the other side, homie.”
Jed grabbed up the backpack that Memo had dropped. He hefted it and felt something boxy inside. Jed unzipped the largest pouch. It was full of ammo, boxes of 9mm and some .40 caliber. He stuffed the other pistols into the bag, zipped it up, and put it on. He kept his Glock in his hand. He’d have to get a holster for it soon.
He was about to leave when he thought about the money in his pocket. Jed went back and rifled through Chips’s pants. He came up with a thick wad that he stuffed in his pocket, rolled up tight. It wasn’t a bank roll, but it was a start. If he played it right, he could probably get his own place when it was all over.
Finally stop living in grandma’s house.
Jed went to the door and lifted his gun. He opened the door slowly and looked outside. A boy and girl sat like hunting cats on the other side of the pool area. The girl chewed on a human arm that had been torn off at the elbow. The boy seemed to be thinking about doing the same thing and kept dancing closer to the girl, but she swiped at him with her claws and he backed away. Jed gasped and they turned to look at him and hissed. Then the girl shrieked and they both charged, leaping around the ends of the pool like wild beasts. Jed fired three quick shots that went into the ground. He aimed better and fired again. The girl went down with two holes in her stomach and half her face missing. The boy nearly got to Jed before he pivoted left and fired his last few rounds. They hit the kid right in the chest. He went down and slammed face first into the front stoop.
Upper East Side, Manhattan
The truck rumbled under Meg’s back, picking up speed at times, lurching and jerking at others.
“Can you let me up now?” Meg asked the soldier whose foot was right by her ear. She was tired of worrying if he was going to suddenly kick her the next time the truck lurched. The other soldier, the woman, made a uh-uh sound, but the first soldier leaned down and looked Meg in the eyes. She’d stopped crying. Tim was dead, gone and never to return. Whatever was happening, it was huge, and he wasn’t the only husband who was lost. Wives were probably dying. And children, no doubt.
“People are going to need my help when we get to the house. I can help faster if I don’t have to unwind the knots in my arms and legs first.”
“Okay, ma’am,” the soldier said. He set his gun aside, laying it on the bench beside him. Then Meg felt the other soldier move from her bench. Hands went to the straps on Meg’s arms and ankles. Finally she could move again and slowly stretched her limbs as the truck rumbled on. By the time they pulled up in front of her station house, Meg felt limber and warm and ready to get to work.
The soldiers motioned for her to wait while they looked ou
t the back of the truck. Meg could see another truck behind them with two soldiers in the cab. Some hand signals went back and forth and the female soldier gave Meg the okay to get out. The woman shifted to sit on the bench again, holding her gun up and looking at the surrounding buildings like a monster might drop from them at any moment. The soldier’s tight features and grim posture told Meg this was more serious than she’d imagined.
“What’s happening? What are they?” she asked.
The woman grunted again, but the man answered from behind Meg. He’d moved to sit on the opposite bench.
“Some kind of monsters. We don’t know, ma’am. But— Don’t let ‘em bite you or get any of their blood on you. And if you see anyone get bit, do ‘em a favor.”
“A favor—” Meg started to say, but then realized what the soldier meant. She looked back and forth at them for a moment, taking in the man’s young features. He looked scared, she could tell, but not ready to give up. The woman wasn’t much older than him, but something had aged her recently. Meg had seen the look before, on people who had been there on 9/11.
“Thank you,” Meg said. She hopped down from the truck, catching the eyes of the soldiers in the truck cab behind them. One of them raised a hand and Meg waved back. She said, “Good luck,” turned, and said the same to the man and woman who had rescued her.
☣
Meg stepped into the chief’s office, closed the door behind her and turned the deadbolt. The street outside had been quiet, but the house seemed deserted. The chief’s desk to her right was a scattered mess of papers and pens. Just like it always was. His coffee cup was upended and a brown ring on his desk blotter showed where it used to sit.
In front of Meg, the secretary’s desk sat quiet and empty, behind the low reception counter.
Nobody’s here? Why did they leave the door unlocked?
She tensed when she heard a soft scraping sound from the app floor. Meg stepped around the chief’s desk. Through the doorway into the app floor, she saw Eric and Rex coming up the basement stairs carrying cots. They had their turnout pants on and boots. The echo of the receding military truck engines faded away outside as Meg stepped onto the floor.
“Meg!” Eric shouted when she came in. He ran to her and held her tight for a moment, and she returned the embrace. Tears sprang to her eyes again when she realized how afraid she’d been that she’d never see him or the house again.
“It’s okay,” she said, pulling in a sob as they stepped apart. Rex came up to them.
“Good to see you again, Meg,” the big man said and held his arms out like he’d hug her. Meg gave him a quick embrace, slapping him on the back and stepping away just as fast. “Glad you made it,” Rex said, patting his hands on his pants. “We’re getting the triage set up. Dispatch called the engine and ladder out about an hour ago. Then it was call after call. Non-stop. But . . .”
Meg looked at Eric. His face went into a tight frown. “The engine and ladder have been gone too long. I’m afraid we might be on our own here.”
“What do you mean?” Meg asked. “The streets are almost empty. Can’t they get back?”
Rex and Eric traded a look that threatened to put Meg back on the ground, curled up and in terror. But she let her anger at the situation get the upper hand.
“If we’ve lost them, and we’re all that’s left, then we’d better get to work.”
Eric gave her a smile and went the basement stairs. “I’ll get more cots. We’ll probably need them.”
“We should be safe in here,” Rex said, still standing there like he was waiting for something from Meg.
“I’m not worried about us, Rex,” she said.
A banging on the shutter doors froze them in place. Eric had just come up from the basement with a folded cot under each arm.
“What’s that?” he asked.
The banging repeated, moving along the shutters, in the direction of the entrance. Meg went to the doorway to the chief’s office and looked at the glass front door. A man leaned up against the door, holding someone close to him. The man looked scared, and clearly in need of help. But he wasn’t a monster.
Not yet anyway.
Lifting an axe from the wall beside her, Meg stepped into the office, staying behind the front counter. The man shouted and his muffled voice came through the window.
“We need help! There’s a whole line of us out here. The Army left without us and you guys weren’t coming. We need— We need help.”
Meg nodded at him and tried to smile. “Okay,” she shouted back. We’ll help you.”
The man sagged against the door with what looked like relief, and Meg nodded at him. She was going to ask if anybody outside had been infected, but her eyes were drawn to the secretary’s desk behind the counter. The phone was lit up with every line flashing.
“Eric!” she called back to him. “The phone’s going crazy. Why isn’t it ringing?”
“We turned off the ringer,” Rex said from the doorway behind her. “It wouldn’t stop, and we couldn’t go anywhere anyway. The Army guys said we had to stay here in case people started coming to us. Looks like they have.”
Meg looked up at the door again. The man was still there, holding his arm around whoever he’d brought with him. It looked like it might be a young girl. Meg could see other people milling around, huddled together, some looking like they were about to fall over and others turning their heads left and right like scared rabbits. It was a big group, at least twenty or more.
The man in front of the door clutched an arm around his companion, and she hung onto him tightly. Maybe it was his daughter? Meg thought she could see long blonde hair under a coat that was covering the person’s head and shoulders. Rex was still in the doorway behind her.
“Rex, will you—”
In that instant, Meg felt the world slide out from under her feet. Dizziness whipped her head to the side and she fell against the counter. She only kept hold of her axe because she had the head hooked over the edge of the counter.
Outside the door, the crowd of people screamed and ran in different directions. The man by the window stayed put. And he changed. His eyes grew a sickly yellow. Blood leaked from them and from his nose, like he’d just gone ten rounds with a prize fighter. The person next to him, under the coat, shook and staggered back a step, so that she was out of view for a moment.
Then the person stepped back into view. It had been a woman once, maybe a girl, but not anymore. A monstrous face of pale white flesh pressed up against the window. The woman’s skin was criss-crossed with scratches and thick blue veins, and her mouth had grown into a bulbous sucker, just like Tim’s had. Needle-like teeth stuck out from between the puffy, blood-stained lips.
The infected man fell backwards, giving the monster room to fill the window. The creature reared its head back and then slammed it forward, splitting the glass into shards that fell out of the frame. She did it again, not even noticing when slivers of glass sliced into her cheeks and forehead. The creature let out a horrifying shriek.
Elmhurst, Queens
Jed juked down an alley between two apartment blocks, moving away from the screams and looking for a hiding place at every turn. He had to get to his grandma’s place. It was the only safe spot he could think of, and he still had a couple doses of cotton tucked away under his mattress.
Small crowds ran down the street with cops and soldiers around them. Jed hid from them all. He knew the cops would take him down for what he had in his backpack. Safety in numbers was one thing, but right now Jed was only thinking about Number One.
After what felt like an hour of playing cat and mouse with the cops and all the screaming people running around the city, Jed was finally near his grandma’s place. Up ahead, the low balcony hung from the side of the apartment building. The fire escape was down. Jed went for it, climbed up quiet, and put his hand under his shirt to lift the Glock when he got to the top. He was careful not to touch the trigger.
Learned that lesson like
a damn fool. But I learned it.
The balcony was off the kitchen of his grandma’s apartment. Jed looked through the glass door. It looked cool inside, nothing crazy like he’d seen in them places back near where Chips lived. The furniture was all where it was supposed to be, and he didn’t see any blood. The pictures were still on the wall above his grandma’s pink sofa. His own smiling face stared back at him from the biggest picture. He’d been eight years old when it was taken, hanging out on the subway with his grandpa right after his dad died and his mom sent him up to New York.
Jed tried the door. It was open, and right away he knew something was wrong. His grandma never left the doors unlocked. He slid the door open slowly. The place smelled like shit. Jed put a hand up over his nose, waited, and listened. He kept the Glock up and ready.
Weapon at the ready. Clear the room and move on.
Jed poked his gun around the corner of the door, aiming at the kitchen. He kept his finger alongside the trigger, just not on it. A trickle of sweat ran down his arm under his shirt sleeve and tickled his wrist. He had to slap his other hand around the Glock to keep from dropping the thing. A wave of funky stink came to his nose and he gagged, but he kept his stomach down. He gave a quick shake of his head and let some of that bullshit from the suck go through his mind, get him pumped like the drills told him it would back in Boot.
He poked his head into the place.
The lights were all off, but the sun was sneaking down into the alley and lighting everything up. Jed could see the kitchen better now. There was a frying pan on the stove, all covered in dried egg or something disgusting and yellow. Flied buzzed over the mess and around the sink. Jed gagged hard when he checked the sink and threw up a little in his mouth. He spit it out and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
The sink was full of some funky shit, like chewed up sausage, with dried blood all over it.
He flinched when he heard a clicking sound, like someone drawing back the bolt on a weapon. The sound came from down the hallway off the room with the sofa. Jed spun around to see his grandma come into the room on all fours. She was fucked up, turned into one of the zombies, and Jed felt his guts try to let go in his pants. He kept it in, but backed up until he was leaning against the sink. His grandma crawled forward on her stomach, but her arms and legs were all crazy. She moved like some kind of spider. Blood leaked out of her eyes and everything. And her eyes—