Once again, it was as if a peel of thunder had gone through our group. I don’t know if any of the others had already considered the food issue, but I certainly hadn’t. I looked around the car and saw a few others pulling their backpacks close to their chests.
The zombies went on moaning outside, and inside, Billy kept on working.
Sometime during the early morning, the zombies managed to knock down part of the door. The sudden rise in volume woke everyone, except for Billy, who had evidently never gone to sleep.
In the dark it was hard to see what was happening, but after my eyes adjusted I saw Billy hacking away at the hands reaching through the door.
“Bring me that chair,” Billy said to Sandra and Jim. With his chin, he was gesturing at the cushionless frame of a chair at their feet. “Hurry! I need to brace this door.”
Jim grabbed the guy next to him and pushed him toward the door. “Take it to him!”
“Why me?” the guy said.
“Hurry!”
Jim could be commanding when he yelled, and the guy obeyed almost out of reflex. He picked the chair up and brought it back to Billy. He stopped well short of the doorway though and held it out to Billy like he was trying to feed a rope to someone clinging to the side of a cliff.
Billy managed to get a hold of it and jam it down into the door well, and between the chair and the handrail he and Jake had installed the day before, the doors were secure again.
“That’ll hold them for now,” he said. “But we’re going to need something else to make sure it holds.”
Brad nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “You do that. Get somebody to help you.”
Billy looked around for a volunteer, but nobody would look him in the eyes.
In disgust, he shook his head and went off to do it himself.
Around noon the next day, Tynice went into a diabetic seizure.
“Somebody needs to get her a candy bar or something,” Brad said. “Who’s got a candy bar?”
He looked around the room, his gaze finally settling on Russell Bailey, a computer programmer from UT Austin.
“Russell, I saw a Hershey bar in your bag.”
Russell pulled backpack tight against his chest. “I’m not giving her my food.”
“Russell, you have to. She needs it.”
“Well, I need it to. We’re gonna run out of food soon, and what am I gonna do then?”
“Russell,” Brad said, “this is for the good of the group. You have a lot and she doesn’t have any. You need to give her some of yours.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “It’s not my fault she didn’t bring what she needed. I have food in my bag because I had the foresight to put it there. If she didn’t do the same, why is that my problem?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Give her some of yours, then.”
“Russell, that’s not helpful.”
Then Brad motioned to Billy. “Get his food. Distribute it around.”
“Don’t,” Russell said, pleading with Billy. “Please don’t.”
“Give me the bag, Russell,” Billy said.
Russell shook his head, and Billy, wearing a look of grim determination, moved in to take it from him.
Over the next four days, we lost six people. Tynice and Gustavo both went into diabetic shock and died. The other four, weakened by a lack of food and no water, gradually shut down, and when we woke to the sunrise on the morning of the fifth day, they were dead.
Once again, Billy pushed the bodies out the window, and again we all looked away as their corpses were eaten by the ever- growing crowd of zombies outside.
It rained later that day and we were able to get more water, but the food shortage was becoming critical. We were down to a dozen people, all of whom were starving, and just one small package of beef jerky to go around.
“Well, we need to divide this up,” said Jim. “Here, I’ll do it.”
“No you won’t,” said Brad. “We decide together.”
“Oh that’s great,” said the girl from SMU. “And while the two of you argue about it, the rest of us starve. Just hand a piece to everybody.”
Brad, Jim, and Sandra went off to another corner of the train car and talked about it. When they came back, they each had a big piece of jerky. They handed some of the smaller pieces around and told us to divide it up.
“But there’s not enough here for any of us,” said Billy.
“Time’s are hard,” Brad said. “I know. I understand. But we’ll just have to tighten our belts.”
I got a piece and went off to one side to eat it. I hadn’t had anything in more than a day, and tore into it eagerly.
A moment later, Brad, Jim, and Sandra went over to Billy and whispered to him. He looked upset, but he didn’t yell. He just took his piece of jerky and tore it into three parts and gave each of them a piece. Then he went over to the far side of the car and sat down. He looked utterly exhausted and used up, but he didn’t protest.
Then they came to me. Brad asked me to give up what I had left for them. He said as the leaders, they needed to stay sharp. They couldn’t afford to go hungry.
“Can’t do it,” I said. “I’m the Press. I’m an observer. You can’t do anything that keeps me from that role.”
They reluctantly agreed and went off to get what was left of the jerky from the others.
The next morning, Billy was dead.
None of us had the energy to move. We were all starving, most of us were sick. And—always—there was the constant roar of the moaning crowd just outside, reminding us that we were not long for this world.
“What are we gonna do?” asked the girl from SMU.
“I think it’s plain what we have to do,” said Brad. He looked at Jim and Sandra, and though they didn’t want to agree with a Democrat just out of principle, they still nodded their heads in assent.
“I don’t understand,” the girl said. “What? What are we gonna do?”
“We have to eat,” Brad said.
The girl looked at him, dumbfounded, not understanding.
“Eat what?”
Brad, with his mouth set in a harsh, grimacing frown, pointed at the body of the soldier who had done so much for all of us.
Two weeks later, there were only four of us left–Brad, Jim, Sandra and myself.
Sandra was not doing well.
Actually, none of us were doing well, but she was feeling really bad. We hadn’t been able to cook any of the friends we’d eaten, and the shock of consuming all that raw human flesh was doing terrible things to our system.
Sandra was doubled over on her side, holding her gut with both hands and moaning like one of the zombies outside.
Jim was sitting next to her, stroking her hair.
“I’m dying,” she said.
“You’re not going to die,” Jim said. “You’re just sick. This’ll pass.”
She looked up at him, and there was pain and fear in her eyes, but also acceptance. That acceptance was hardest thing for me to see, for I had seen it before, on the others that we’d already eaten. And when people started to get that look in their eyes, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It was only a matter of time.
“I’m dying, Jim. I know it.”
He didn’t say anything, for I think he knew it too.
“Promise me,” she said. Her voice was weak, raspy.
“Anything,” he said, still stroking her hair.
For a moment, as she strained to look toward Brad Owens, who was sitting against the opposite wall, the acceptance and fear in her eyes changed to hatred.
“Don’t let he him eat me. I don’t want some liberal bastard eating me. I can’t die knowing some liberal sack of shit lived another day because of me.”
She wanted to say more, but another wave of pain shot through her gut and she let out a choked scream.
“She’s delirious,” Jim said to me.
But when he put his hand back on h
er face and pushed the hair out of her face, she was dead.
“Sandra?” Brad said. “Sandra, no baby, no!”
He lifted her head and cradled it in his lap, rocking her corpse gently, like a child he was trying to put to sleep.
An hour or so later, Brad came over to him with the piece of metal from one of the seats that we’d been using to carve meat off of our friends.
“It’s time,” he said.
“Fuck off,” Jim said. “You’re not touching her.”
“Jim,” Brad said. “Please don’t do this. We have to survive.”
“She didn’t want a sorry sack of shit like you touching her. No worthless Democrat is going to touch her.”
“I’ve as much right to her corpse as you do.”
“Like hell.”
I knew what was going to happen even before they lunged at each other. Jim knocked the blade from Brad’s hand and the next instant they were rolling around on the ground, their hands at each other’s throats.
I took complete notes of what happened during the fight, but I guess that really doesn’t matter now. The end result was that they strangled each other. Democrat and Republican, neither would quit until they’d snuffed the life out of the other, and now they’re both dead.
So I sat there, the only member of the Young Americans left alive.
And a short while later, I picked up the blade and started eating.
I was rescued by the Chinese Army a week later.
They hadn’t planned on finding me there. They hadn’t planned on finding anyone alive, I don’t think.
Someone told me they were looking for the train, that they had spotted it from the air and went in to retrieve it because they needed it to deliver troops across the country.
The zombie apocalypse, they told me, had been contained. For the most part. A few pockets of zombies remained, but those were being taken care of.
I was lucky to be alive, they told me, but I could tell they didn’t think much of me for it. The first soldiers to board the train had taken one look at me, and at the pile of bones surrounding me, and had turned their heads to vomit.
News of what had happened went ahead of me.
The Chinese Army put me on a cargo ship and sent me back to the States. The ship’s crew seemed to already know everything about me, and that made meal times rough. As soon as I would enter the mess hall, the others would get up to leave. No one, it seemed, could stomach watching me eat.
No one, it seemed, even back in the States, could watch me eat.
Live with that long enough, and it hardens you.
That’s why I live here, on this farm in Georgia, where I grow my own food and raise my own livestock.
I live alone, and I like it just fine.
That way, there’s nobody to turn up their nose if I like to eat the occasional steak raw. Besides, it’s nobody business but mine.
This is still the goddamned U.S. of A., for Christ’s sake.
* * *
Joe McKinney is the San Antonio-based author of several horror, crime and science fiction novels. His longer works include the four part Dead World series, made up of Dead City, Apocalypse of the Dead, Flesh Eaters and The Zombie King; the science fiction disaster tale, Quarantined, which was nominated for the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in a novel, 2009; and the crime novel, Dodging Bullets. His upcoming releases include the horror novels Lost Girl of the Lake, The Red Empire, The Charge and St. Rage. Joe has also worked as an editor, along with Michelle McCrary, on the zombie-themed anthology Dead Set, and with Mark Onspaugh on the abandoned building-themed anthology The Forsaken. His short stories and novellas have been published in more than thirty publications and anthologies.
In his day job, Joe McKinney is a sergeant with the San Antonio Police Department, where he helps to run the city’s 911 Dispatch Center. Before promoting to sergeant, Joe worked as a homicide detective and as a disaster mitigation specialist. Many of his stories, regardless of genre, feature a strong police procedural element based on his fifteen years of law enforcement experience.
A regular guest at regional writing conventions, Joe currently lives and works in a small town north of San Antonio with his wife and children.
You can find out more about Joe at his website here: http://joemckinney.wordpress.com/
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
Gregory L. Hall
Tommy fidgeted with the new flannel shirt his wife Kristi insisted he wear. It rubbed against his arm and dug into his neck. Kristi kissed his cheek as if to erase the itchiness and cardboard flexibility. She was as perky as ever, with her burnt orange turtleneck accentuating her Irish red hair and deep brown eyes. She always shined at family events. Her hand dropped below the dinner table and teased his thigh.
“So your father told me he couldn’t make it this year?” Grandma Maggie said as if on a game show, putting it into the form of a question.
“No m’am. I spoke with him last week. He decided to go to California for Thanksgiving, with his new wife to visit her son.” Tommy picked at his food as he mumbled the rest. “And Mom didn’t need to be invited since she married into this family.”
Grandma Maggie paused to smile, her way to let the subject drop. She proudly sported a hairdo that wouldn’t move, courtesy of the local beauty parlor that probably catered to every older lady in town yesterday. If there was a place left on her dress top that could display yet another piece of her jewelry, Tommy couldn’t find it.
“Well then, that’s your father’s loss, right? We’re all going to have a great time today without him. Dig in everyone! We made plenty of everyone’s favorite food. Grandpop, I already have your plate set up for you but grab some more if you want it.”
Tommy couldn’t believe the old man was still with them. It was the first time he had seen him since the hospital. If someone would have told him Grandpop would make it to another Thanksgiving, he would have doubled down on the bet. From across the table, the patriarch looked grey and frail. But it certainly wasn’t from a lack of appetite.
Grandpop piled high another greedy helping of mashed potatoes and stuffing before chomping down on a half a human leg.
Tommy’s jaw went slack and he nudged Kristi. She looked at him with a happy holiday grin. He motioned subtly with a nod. A stringy calf muscle was dangling out of Grandpop’s hungry maw. He leaned his head back like a baby bird to get it all in. Kristi looked over, then back to her hubby.
“Mmmmm. Yum Yum.” She raised her volume knowing the old man rarely turned on his hearing aid anymore. “Good eats, huh, Grandpop?”
Fresh human flesh dropped from his chin. He spat a chunk of bone out and it rang off the china. “What? Speak up, Kristi.”
“Sorry, Poppy. I said this food is good, huh?”
“Huh? My ears don’t work no more. Nothing does. But you see if you’re in as good as shape as I am when you’re eighty-six!”
Grandma Maggie patted the cantankerous coot’s hand. “She asked if you like the food. Here. Try the green bean casserole. It’s delicious.”
She moved a big spoonful over Grandpop’s plate. Without hesitation, the old man snapped at her arm, his false teeth clanking together like a geriatric shark. She jerked away and the green beans flew across the table. The children started to laugh.
“Oh dang it, Harry! Now look what you made me do. I flung this good food all across the room.”
“Not my fault.”
“Well it certainly wasn’t mine.” Grandma Maggie checked her exposed forearm. “If you were a little more patient and waited until I put the food on your plate, we wouldn’t have this mess.”
Kristi chuckled and whispered to Tommy. “Do you think we’ll be this cute when we’re married for fifty years?”
“Cute? You’re joking, right? Did you see what he just did? He’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous? It’s not like he’s behind the wheel of a car, Tom. He’s more likely to hurt himself. But at his a
ge I think he’s earned the right to be a bit feisty.”
“Are you blind? Do you see what’s on his plate?”
Kristi gave it a quick glance and returned to their hushed pow-wow with a frown. “It’s a lot of food. So what? Let him enjoy life. We’ve almost lost him once. And we all agreed to keep him with us as long as we could. It’s selfish yes but you of all people know what it means to make sacrifices. Leave Poppy alone. He’s hungry. And as long as he keeps up his appetite, that’s a good thing, right?”
Tommy watched as Grandpop chomped down on more leg. Then the old, unblinking eyes sized up the half a dozen children that filled the nearby smaller table. He wiped his chin and nodded at them like a rabid dog at a petting zoo.
“Sally,” Tommy addressed his daughter. “How do you like Thanksgiving dinner?” The old man’s gaze shot over to him with a bloodshot vengeance. Tommy didn’t back off. His focus never left his Grandpop while calling attention to all the children. “Remember kids, save room for dessert. Grandma has tons of ice cream and pie!”
The room filled with cheers of excitement. All of the adults joined in the celebration with clapping and acknowledgements of various flavors. All of the adults except for Tommy and Grandpop. They continued their staring contest. The old man waved a finger in warning and picked up his meal of lower leg. His teeth scraped along the delicate anklebone.
“You should use your silverware, Poppy. Remember your manners.” Tommy said softly as the cheering died down. Despite being deaf, Grandpop paused. He pushed the fork and knife aside in defiance and raised the meat to his open mouth again.
“Honey, are you giving Poppy more crap? Why are you teasing him?” Kristi rubbed Tommy’s hand, keeping the conversation between them. She tried to make her disapproval playful. “You know since he’s come back to us he’s just not the same. But he is eating like the doctor told him to and that’s a good thing. You know all this. So who cares if it’s with a fork or his fingers? What is your problem today? Do you feel okay?”
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