Grave New World

by S. P. Blackmore

  “Eagle,” Dax said.

  “So you can shoot?”

  The Blood Nut eyed the guns. “Uh…if I had to, I guess I could…”

  “Good. You guard the building. Vibeke and I are going shopping.”

  “What?” we both yelped.

  “Why does she go?”

  “Why do I have to go?”

  He donned a worn leather jacket and stuck one of the pistols into the right pocket, then poked through the selection of rifles. “Someone has to stay here and guard the Fairway. Vibeke doesn’t know how to shoot—”

  “You don’t know that,” I said hotly. I had visited the shooting range exactly two times in my life, but letting Tony McKnight get the last word irked me.

  “—and I’m not leaving the girl who can’t shoot alone to guard the place.”

  “So go alone,” I said. “I don’t want to go out there.”

  “That store won’t be good for long. We’re getting two carts of stuff.”

  The only man who had ever won an argument with Tony was Clive, and for all I knew, Clive was bits of radioactive ash on the wind. So I pulled on my sturdy sneakers, tied my hair into a ponytail, and donned the only Rock Weekly sweatshirt that really fit me. Tony held out one of the gas masks. “Don’t forget Sally.”

  Sally tasted like rubber and the filters from my roommate’s air purifier. The masks didn’t come with any instructions, so Tony and I just fiddled with the straps until they felt snug around our heads, and let me tell you, they don’t feel good at all. The goggles cut off my peripheral vision, and the straps dug into my scalp.

  “This sucks,” I announced.

  Dax actually smiled. “Soon you’ll be more machine than man.”

  My breath did sound kind of Vaderesque. “Dax, I am your father.”

  Tony’s mask amplified his sigh of disgust. “That food won’t steal itself, Vibby.”

  Armed and passably dangerous, we headed outside.

  The asphalt still stuck to my sneakers. It made faint sucking sounds as we walked, and the zippers on Tony’s jacket clinked softly.

  It’s too fucking quiet. Our breathing and footsteps were the only sounds as we passed the long row of office buildings on Industrial Road. Now and then we passed lumps in the road—lumps I stubbornly refused to look at. Don’t look. Don’t look. They aren’t people. Weren’t people. Let’s go.

  Through the haze, something red blinked on and off. “Ribbon Street,” I said, once the streetlights came into view. “There should be a supermarket…”

  “Right on Ribbon, two miles down.”

  As we crawled along Ribbon, we saw the first signs of life—or at least an indication that people had lived here once. Cars had skidded to halts in intersections or plowed into storefronts, and here and there a door hung open. I imagined the drivers climbing out, watching the meteors streak by overhead—or worse, gaping at the inferno that had consumed South Harkin.

  Now they were silent, ash-covered relics.

  “No,” Tony said when I drifted toward one of the cars. “If anyone’s in there, he’s dead.”

  “But—”

  “No.” He quickened his pace. “That lieutenant shouldn’t have told us everything he did. Something spooked him.”

  “I can’t blame him. I’m spooked.” I glanced back, but saw nothing but our perfectly formed prints in the ash.

  “Not just this. The whole thing didn’t make sense.”

  “What didn’t make sense?” Sally made my voice sound stronger. Maybe I ought to wear her all the time.

  Tony stopped long enough to look at me, not that I could see much of him through his mask. “If they were worried about illness and radiation, they’d wear biohazard suits,” he said, and there was a grim undertone to his voice I hadn’t heard back at the Fairway. “They just had guns and more guns. That wasn’t a mercy mission, Vibeke. That was an extermination party.”

  ***

  The supermarket on Ribbon Street stood in an empty parking lot. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have assumed the place had been condemned; with the thick layer of ash coating everything, it might have been uninhabited for years.

  And here we were, ready to spoil what remained of its innards.

  “This feels wrong,” I said. “Shouldn’t we be stealing something more exciting? Like a plasma TV?”

  “We can hit Best Buy later, if you want.”

  I stopped to adjust my mask, and that was when I heard the sound. It rose and fell, wavering across the parking lot and bouncing off the abandoned cars and buildings on Ribbon Street. “What’s that?”

  Tony didn’t answer.

  I’d been to enough stadium concerts to identify thousands of voices in chorus, but they weren’t singing anything I could understand; just howled words strung together, drifting over to us from the edge of South Harkin.

  From the impact site?

  “Is that…people?” I asked in a small voice. That’s all they could be, but I’d never heard people make that sort of noise.

  Tony stared off into the distance, as if trying to see through the heavy air. “None that we want to hang out with.”

  We trudged through the layer of ash. Tony held out a hand and stopped me, then pointed to the right. Sally had blocked my peripheral vision, but when I turned my head I saw the dog.

  A thin, filthy golden retriever whimpered at us from twenty feet away. A purple leash trailed from her matching collar. “What’s she doing out here?” I asked. I snapped my fingers and she wagged her tail, but didn’t come any closer.

  Tony grunted noncommittally. “Air can’t be that bad if she’s breathing it. Just tastes like shit.”

  The dog whined and backed away several steps, turning around to look at something near the building. Two solitary figures stood by the corner, and Tony drew his pistol. “Walk into the store, Vibeke. Just walk into the store. We aren’t here to make friends.”

  The figures left us alone, content to loiter at the corner. The dog followed us to the shattered sliding doors, picking her way across the broken glass scattered on the floor. Fully half the lights seemed to be out, though enough of the overheads still worked to give the place a diffused sort of light.

  “Let’s make this quick.” Tony reached behind his head and undid the straps, and the gas mask unsealed from his face with a loud sucking noise. Tony yanked it away and pulled in some air, then all but doubled over. “Christ!”

  I pushed my mask up over my forehead and got hit with the same stench. Four days without power hadn’t done much for the perishables, and the pungent odor of rotten meat, fruit, and dairy had settled over the entire supermarket. I pulled Sally back down in a hurry.

  Tony waved a hand at me. “No, no, leave it off,” he said between gasps. “Give me something nice to look at before I keel over.”

  There’s really nothing like misplaced gallantry. “Remember that time you hit on me when I accidentally went into the men’s bathroom? This is arguably weirder.” Nevertheless, I steeled myself and took off the mask. A little rot never hurt anybody; if anything, it’d prompt us to shop faster. I shoved a cart in his direction, then grabbed one for myself.

  Tony dumped his mask into the forward section and leaned heavily on the cart. “You came into the men’s room,” he reminded me. “What the hell was I supposed to do? Pretend you weren’t there?”

  “I’d just gotten LASIK. I didn’t know up from down.” The canned goods aisle still looked relatively intact. We must have been way ahead of the looting curve. “And what the hell were you doing on the second floor, anyway?”

  “Came to smell your candles.” He started pulling cans off the shelves. “Take what you want.”

  I tried to pick stuff with a decent shelf life. The dog trailed along behind us, whimpering all the way. “Something’s bothering her,” I said, tossing cans of stew into my cart.

  Tony loaded his cart with noodles and sauce. “She hears the rioters.”

  “Rioters?” He’d quickened his stride,
and I hurried after him. “Since when are they rioters?”

  He turned down the cereal aisle. “You always get rioters after disasters.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Tony inspected the nutritional facts on a box of Lucky Charms. “The world’s over and they’re probably irradiated. Might as well set some cars on fire.”

  A giant ash cloud, frequent earthquakes, no chain of command, and now radioactive rioters. This apocalypse got better every hour.

  We hurried through the supermarket, grabbing anything that wouldn’t sprout mold within the next few days.

  “Help!” The man in the ratty Lakers sweatshirt burst around the corner, clutching his upper arm. I dropped the bag of beef jerky I’d snagged. “Help! He bit me!”

  Tony drew his pistol “Stop right there!”

  The man jerked to a stop, his hand still clamped over his bicep. “Please. Dude bit me, it’s bleeding...”

  Some cool, workmanlike part of my brain clicked into place. “Let me look at it,” I said, walking over to him and sizing up the situation. Lots of blood…he may go into shock soon. “Someone bit you?”

  “Dude grabbed me. I thought he needed help…I grabbed his shoulder and he just…bit me…” He removed his hand, and more blood pumped out of the wound. Ah, shit. I hadn’t seen something like this for a few years. “Okay, I need bandages and antiseptic, maybe soap and water—”

  “Vibeke,” Tony said sharply. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “This’ll only take a minute.” Well, I hoped it would only take a minute. I wasn’t going to be able to do much if he bled out.

  I led the Lakers fan to the cleaning aisle. My first order of business was to stop up some of the blood, so I ripped open a package of paper towels and shoved a wad of them against the wound. “Hold that there. I need to clean it out.” Soap and water would be best, but I couldn’t find any soap, liquid or otherwise, in the aisle. “Stay here, I’m going to check the bathroom.”

  Tony was waiting for me at the end of the aisle. “We don’t have time for this.”

  “He needs help!”

  “We don’t even know this douche.”

  I couldn’t believe we were even arguing over it. “This isn’t up for negotiation. The guy needs help.”

  He reluctantly stepped aside. “A woman who isn’t scared of blood…I like it.”

  Is he seriously hitting on me? It seemed neither the time nor the place, but that rarely seemed to matter to men. This is the apocalypse. You have more important things to do than wonder if he’s hitting on you.

  Like head for the restroom to find soap for the guy bleeding all over the aisle.

  “Get back here!” Tony barked. “Goddamn it, Vibeke, you don’t know what’s back there!”

  The dog accompanied me, baring her teeth at the unisex door. I eyed the leash. “It’s okay, girl,” I said. “Move over, I need to get some soap.” As far as I knew, supermarkets used industrial-grade antibacterial stuff—and that might help the Lakers fan more than a regular bar of Irish Spring.

  She threw herself against the door, her nails leaving long rents in the paint. Her whimpers turned into full-on barks. Damn, the dog might have been thin, but she had plenty of vocal power left.

  “C’mon, puppy.” Maybe she had rabies. That’d just put a feather in my cap.

  No, she’s not foaming at the mouth. I grabbed the leash, but the door snapped inward under her weight and carried her—and me—in with it.

  “Ow!” I landed heavily on my left side. Wood splintered into my arm and hands, my ankle creaked, and fire rushed up my spine. Shit, that’s gonna bruise. “Oh, fuck! Ow!”

  “Goddamn it, Vibeke!”

  The dog howled.

  I pushed myself up on my knees and dusted off my hands, but only succeeded in driving the splinters in deeper. God, the stench in here. Rotten meat and...something else...

  Bile gurgled up into my throat and out of my mouth, and the remains of my breakfast splashed onto a grimy pair of workboots. Wiping away tears, I got one leg underneath me. Doesn’t seem broken…good.

  Then I realized the boots were attached to legs.

  I’d just puked on someone.

  Oh, I’ve hit a new low.

  The dog kept on howling. I made myself stand up.

  I had retched on someone named Tom, according to the nametag sewn onto his blue shirt. Tom smelled worse than the meat section, as though he’d bathed in a tub of rancid cheeseburgers. “Hi, Tom,” I whispered to the nametag, trying to will the dog to quit her noise. “Nice to meet you. Sorry about the barfing…”

  I looked up.

  Tom obviously hadn’t eaten much over the past week. His yellowed, cracked skin stretched across his face, and dried blood dripped from his mouth. Is this what scurvy looks like?

  Tom’s mouth hung open, part of his foul odor doubtlessly coming from his bloodstained and broken teeth. Yep. Definitely scurvy. That might also explain the gaping black holes in the middle of his face…

  …oh. Tom had no eyes.

  The bile came roaring back up, splattering whatever remained in my stomach across his midsection. I gagged, the last of it rattling around in my throat. Oh God. I needed a toilet. And mouthwash.

  The dog kept right on wailing.

  I wanted to wail, too. I’d just barfed on a dead person.

  “Vibeke?” Tony sounded closer. Shit, I’d never hear the end of it.

  The dog rocked back, then dove for Tom’s leg. I made a feeble effort to grab her, but her jaws snapped shut around his calf.

  I fumbled for her collar. “Leave it!”

  Hands landed on my shoulders. My voice spun wildly into a shriek as Tom lurched forward, mouth curling back into a horrifying, impossible snarl. The chipped and broken teeth chomped together, and I tried to back away.

  Tom went with me, his blackened tongue slapping over his lips.

  “What the fuck—”

  BANG!

  Thick, cold fluid sprayed across my face as his head vaporized into a cloud of brown fizz. Tom’s hands abruptly released my shoulders, and the body wavered before it toppled to the ground.

  The high-pitched sound continued for several seconds, until I realized I was screaming.

  I took a breath, and the place went silent. Well, except for the dog, who paced back and forth, whimpering.

  I turned around, tears or possibly blood running down my face. Tony stood framed in the doorway, the pistol still held out in front of him. “Just what I need,” he said, scowling at the body. “The living dead.”

  FOUR

  I guess it’s not the end of the world without the living dead.

  I was still standing there gaping at the body when the Lakers fan skittered over to us. “What’s wrong?” He backed away when he saw the blood on my face. “Oh, shit. What is this? What the hell is this?”

  I need to clean his wound. “Here, I found soap...”

  He sprinted away screaming, leaving splatters of blood in his wake.

  “Wait! You need to clean the—”

  “He’s got the right idea.” Tony hauled me back to the carts, grabbed the dog’s leash, and pulled us out of the store. “No booze left,” he muttered. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Fuckin’ dead are rising. I’d be drunk, too.”

  The two figures that had been loitering at the corner were waiting for us at the door. Tony stopped for a second. “Vibby. They look healthy to you?”

  I stared blankly at him.

  He shoved my shoulder. “Vibby! Tell me what they look like!”

  Open, festering sores decorated their faces and exposed skin. My first thought was radiation, but their pale, glazed eyes suggested something else. “Dead…they look…dead…”

  The taller one’s mouth opened as it shuffled toward us, issuing a low, guttural growl.

  Tony popped them both in the face. “Think Hammond had a hunch? He did tell us to aim for the head.” He had tied the carts together, and dragged them both through
the parking lot with his free hand. The Lakers fan had disappeared.

  We ran down the street, where the unearthly bellows from North Harkin suddenly took on more meaning. “Is that noise—are those—”

  “More of Tommy. Come on.”

  A good yank on the leash was all the dog needed to convince her to run. We sprinted down Ribbon Street, passing the newstand, the abandoned gas station and an adult bookstore. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something shuffle past the window.

  The dealership. The bookstore. The supermarket. The poor sap stumbling through the alley across the street. All dead? Dead people lurching around, looking for a free meal?

  My lungs burned, but my legs kept moving—my legs kept moving because I had no doubt that Tony would leave me for those things at the first sign of weakness. Down the street, away from businesses and warehouses. Away from the awful noise of people dead but not dead. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t think. I just ran.

  We spilled into the Fairway. “Dax!” Tony yelled. “Dax, towels, soap, now!”

  Dax almost fell down the stairs. “What’s happening—Vibeke?” I must’ve looked really terrific with the blood and bits of bone stuck to my face and hair. He looked from me to the dog to Tony, clearly uncertain which to address first. “You got a dog?”

  “We saw dead people.” Tony wrestled the carts inside, locked the door, and punched in the alarm code. “Get her cleaned up. I’m going to get more guns.”

  “Dead people?” Dax yanked off his sweatshirt and held it out to me. I couldn’t even reach for it. “Did you guys run into the Ventras?”

  “Dead people,” Tony said again, and sprinted up the stairs.

  The dog barked at us, then wagged her tail. I assumed that meant the immediate danger had passed.

  Dax obviously didn’t get it. “What’s that gray stuff in your hair?”

  I seized his arms, digging my fingernails into the flesh beneath his T-shirt. “Dead people,” I growled, “dead and alive and not dead and walking!” I could still taste the stomach acid in my mouth, could still feel it eating away at my throat.

  He just stared at me. I shook my fists; how else could I explain this?