It never raised a hand to block the blows with its nylon idiot mittens. Just kept stumbling back and back as he pummeled it again and again, driving it into the wall and making doorknobs rattle halfway down the hall.
By the time the shrink-wrap snapped and the septic contents exploded outward, he could barely swing the bat. His lungs vapor-locked, knees went wobbly, but he couldn’t stop until the medpak in its skull cracked open, sprayed a little drugstore everywhere, and it finally spasmed and keeled over.
Sherman fell down hard on his hands and knees next to the bloodless corpse, blowing goat cheese in the beyond-septic waft, streaming snot and tears.
The door behind him clicked and hissed open. Wiping his eyes, Sherman saw a very old, very drunk man in a plush bathrobe hanging on the doorknob as he scowled at the mess. “Was ist passiert? Ist alles in Ordnung?”
Why was everything in the real world so fucking hard?
VIII.
The Black Zone party was down by Golden Gate Park, at the end of Haight. Less than ten minutes out of the Red Zone, as the Eagle flies.
A universe of difference, by any other standard.
But every so often, Pizza Orgasmica would get an urgent call from one of the outlaws who had managed not to melt in the post-human hinterlands, or had snuck back into town after Black Flag Day. There were enclaves dug in all over the City, more than anyone knew. And they loved pizza, too.
These streets were not clear, so Eagle ducked and dodged between the cars: glad the Moots was good on rugged terrain, and thinking about how sweet it was to be seeing some long-lost friends.
If you were a bunch of college dropouts living in an empty metropolis, you would probably think it was the best idea in the world to hole up in the Haight-Ashbury Amoeba Records.
The front windows were boarded up, but a guy waiting on the roof with an M16 shouted, “Pizza man!” and buzzed the front door for him.
Eagle rode into the open floor of the record store. It was an impressive setup. Anywhere else, it might have even had a chance. The front counters were fortified with thick plexiglass from a bank. A portcullis made of wrought-iron spikes was hoisted up to let Eagle in, then dropped behind him.
The ground floor of the record store was still a mess, but someone had been restocking the CDs. Along the far wall, a bunch of young guys and a couple girls sat on stationary bikes wired to car batteries, pedaling and watching cartoons as they kept the lights on and powered the big club soundsystem on a dais in the center of the store, where a pale guy with black dreads and a droopy mustache spun a deepdish dubstep mix. He saluted Eagle as the pizza guy parked and popped the hotbox on the back of his bike. “Hey, Tweak, you got any real music?”
Tweak flipped him off and tapped the sign on the decks: NO GRATEFUL DEAD––PLEASE DON’T ASK.
The second floor was a loft where the DVDs were stored. The new occupants had replaced the old staircase with a cantilevered drawbridge.
A couple semi-feral kids came hopping down the stairs to meet him, chanting, “Pizza! Pizza!” Black circles under their eyes. Bleeding gums. The adults looked worse.
Eagle dropped the stack of pies on the table and immediately wished he’d brought more. Fourteen hungry people converged on the boxes, making noises like Ernie’s broken worker.
“Dude, thanks for coming out,” Lester Wiley rolled over and pumped his hand. “You’re a lifesaver. I don’t have one of those pen things…”
Eagle sat on a milk crate next to Lester’s wheelchair and passed him a fat joint. “No sweat. You got the Sly Stone and Hendrix catalogs on vinyl?”
“If the kids haven’t burned ’em. Little Philistines melted most of the classic rock to make into swords and throwing stars and shit…” Lester’s eyes glistened as he watched his people eat. “Really, thanks for coming out, man…”
“It’s just a couple pizzas, Les. How’re you guys living out here?”
Lester lit up and took a stupendous hit. “It’s not easy, but when was it ever? At least the traffic’s gone.”
“Haven’t seen you in ages. When did you come back?”
Lester sketched out the last year and change since he and his gang left the City to try a commune in the San Joaquin Valley. “Everywhere else was worse, so we came home. But we’re not going back in the Green Zone, man. Don’t know why you stay.”
“Because it’s safe.”
“Nowhere’s safe. At least out here––”
“You’re not safe out here.” You’re not safe from them.
“We’ve been here a couple months, and it was working out pretty good… There’s a cistern in the park, behind Kezar Stadium, and we had gardens on the roof under pressurized tents––”
“What do you mean, you had gardens?”
“Last night, somebody burned us out.”
Gracie took Eagle up to the roof. Rows of burst bubbles and black crops. Gracie spat in the ashes. “Whole thing went up before we got up here. Chimi was on guard duty, but he was huffing something last night. He said he saw––”
Eagle said, “Toy helicopters.” He ran back downstairs.
Lester followed him, passed him the joint. Eagle stubbed it out. “You guys gotta get out of here today. Now.”
Lester coughed. “No way. We’ve got everything we need here. If they’d just leave us alone––”
“They can’t leave you alone. They need you––” He stopped. “Did you hear that? Turn down the music!”
It sounded like thunder.
It was dark in the back of the garbage truck. Soothing miasma of rot inside, pushing out bad thoughts. In the dark, in the stench, #24 couldn’t see the new recruits, couldn’t smell their freshly welded metal and plastic new-corpse stink.
The Commander’s voice recited a litany in his ear, over and over. The pre-engagement medpak spikes made him restless. When that happened, #24 got bored, and he started to picture something else happening, and remembering it, or imagining it. Wishing…
“Hold and contain. Wait for the gas to clear. Target center-of-mass. No headshots. Don’t screw your Dungeon Master, kids…”
On and on. Over and over, like teaching a parrot to talk. If something else happened, anything, it would be better.
One of the Raiders moaned, a low, hungry sound in the dark. The others took it up. They did it every time. The drugs and the voice in their ears wound them up, so they must be getting close.
A flat, deafening boom lifted the truck and stood it up on its back wheels, then dropped it on its side. The Raiders were thrown into a pile. #24 was on top, but he couldn’t move. Static chewed his ears.
The rear hatch hissed. Jerry the handler pried it open with a crowbar.
“Motherfuckers,” he kept saying, like a parrot. Blood streamed from his ears and hundreds of cuts all over his face and chest that shone like rubies––half-melted glass embedded in his skin. “Used our own fuckin’ mines on us, Tooz…” Woozily, he punched #24 in the shoulder. “Fuck ’em up, O-Town!”
“What is the fucking situation out there, over?” The Dungeon Master screamed in their ears. “Gordo, Jerry… where are my dogs, goddamit?”
Jerry sat down in the street and lit a cigarette, started coughing. Blood squirted out of the holes in his neck. The Raiders spilled out of the trash truck. Three of them rushed Jerry and tore him apart. They looked funny to #24, trying to stuff gobbets of steaming meat into their toothless mouths and into their rubber food-tubes.
“Raiders! Sound off, you cocksuckers!”
#24 growled at the PDA duct-taped to his forearm and tapped the touchscreen. Green dots on the map were friends. The red spot on the edge of the map was hot. Move closer, get warmer. Feels good. When you were hot, you got to fight.
“#24, you’re my quarterback, baby! Are you the only one left? Fuck… The transmitter in the truck is toast, I’m rerouting through here. I can’t see shit on the satellites, and my air support is a fuckin’ noob. And I’m pretty much talking to myself right now, huh?”
“OK, helmet-cams are live… Fall in, bitches, it’s medication time!”
As one, the Raiders jerked to attention. Their medpaks whined under their helmets, pumping drugs and barrages of electroshock to jump-start sluggish, decaying synapses. Shreds of Jerry’s septic gut dangled from the facemasks of the three backsliders, but they shambled into the huddle.
The new guys were stripped. Slim green metal tanks jutting out of their chests, stuffed with C4 bricks.
They marched in staggered formation along both sidewalks, hugging the scorched brownstone townhouses and concrete lofts that lined Haight Street.
On their screens, the meaningless map glowed red in the direction of west. #24 took point with a sixty-caliber SAW in his hands.
The Dungeon Master spoke in his ear, coaxing them around piles of wrecked cars and booby traps. “Okay, you’re coming up on the park, go left, you’re getting warmer…”
#24 didn’t need directions. His brain glowed, pulsing in time with the Red Zone on the map. The light from the intense shocks sparked behind his dull gray eyes and through the bulletholes in his black and silver helmet, making him look like a wrathful, dick-swinging god of the underworld.
The mix downstairs rudely cut out, and Bob Marley’s “Iron Lion Zion” shook rat turds out of the record store’s rafters. It was their burglar alarm.
The pizza feast disbanded with fire drill discipline. Even the kids grabbed guns. Tweak pulled a metal chain to drop the steel curtains in front of the store, but something roared out in the street and burst through the plywood and plastic windows. It burst in midair before crashing at their feet. A canister flooded the loft with yellow smoke.
Eagle pulled on his mask and pushed Lester’s chair away from the gas. Gracie herded the kids and the pedal-pushers towards the rooftop stairs, but she dropped dead before she could say the words.
Eagle shouted, “Masks! Get your masks––” Most of them had masks or filters around their necks, but the gas rolled over them before they could spit out their pizza. Half a dozen of them died in a sprawling pile at the foot of the stairs. A kid rolled on the floor clawing at her mask, drowning in her own vomit.
Lester slid out of his chair and tumbled to the floor.
Eagle took his gun out and looked for something to shoot. His goggles were fogged up. All he could see was smoke. The white stuff that killed everyone thinned out into cotton candy streamers oozing down the stairs. Black smoke came from the roof. Shooting from outside, but almost all of it was hitting the building.
Eagle charged down the drawbridge stairs just as a car crashed through the portcullis and plowed into the electronica section. Nobody was driving the burned-out Subaru wagon, but four Oakland Raiders were pushing it.
The second the Subaru crashed through the wrought-iron gate, a ring of claymore mines on the cashier’s counters popped up like sprinklers to shoulder height before exploding. Thousands of steel ball bearings flew out like a multiball monsoon in a tight, utterly devastating radius.
Two Raiders stumbled into each other as their perforated heads drained like dribble glasses. Tweak capped a third with a shotgun, but the headless Raider self-destructed and doused the DJ with flaming jelly.
The fourth Raider had dozens of steel pinballs embedded in its armor, but it gamely came over and climbed the stairs. Dragging a huge machinegun on one arm like John fucking Wayne, #24 clomped up the steps as Eagle tried in vain to figure out how to raise the drawbridge.
He looked at the pile of people behind him. Dead kids with guns and pizza in their hands. The roof stairs were on fire. He put away his gun and picked up the last pizza box. Olives, artichoke hearts, and anchovies, less than half-eaten. Why did nobody appreciate anchovies?
“Hey, Sherman, hold up, man! It’s me, Eagle. The pizza guy.” He waved his chipped wrist at the approaching zombie Raider. Like he deserved to live, while these chipless nobodies deserved to get gassed in their own home.
As if the Dungeon Master, looking at him from behind his game console, would see a human being at all.
#24 lifted the gun to Eagle’s head, then froze, looking down. Eagle felt shit pushing at his sphincter. Sweat popped out of his forehead.
“I’m not fighting you,” he told #24. “Nobody here wanted to fight you. They just wanted something to eat.”
#24 scanned the loft, from the neat pile of bodies by the stairs to the harmless, hopeless pizza guy standing in its way. Looking back at the dead bodies for a long moment, it finally turned to Eagle and raised its gun.
“Hey, big guy, you want a slice?” Eagle held out and opened the box.
And he wanted to say, Please, in the head, if you have to. Which was to say, Please, I don’t wanna come back.
Looking past the camera goggles, stared straight into #24’s runny gray eyes. Just pouring his soul out. Being human. The only thing he’d ever been.
#24 gurgled, and a rope of spittle dripped down from its steel-plated jaws.
“Huck… anchowies…” it said.
And Eagle was running even before the barrel dropped, running and laughing with tears in his eyes, thanking God in whatever form it chose for this awful moment of mercy and grace…
…as the Dungeon Master went click click click, stomped his feet. Went click click click again. Repeating it over and over.
Staring furiously at the game that utterly failed to obey him.
Betrayed, with every click.
Fifteen minutes later—as he click click clicked—a text window popped up on his primary screen. MUCH IMPROVED.
Good news. Was good news. It was good to be useful. He got recognition, bonuses and perks all the time. He deserved them. Because he was the best.
And yet, with his free hand, he grabbed at his straggly goatee and tugged until the pain cleared his mind, then reached out and grabbed the joystick again, squeezing and squeezing the trigger.
On the screen, #24 suddenly locked on a worker and shot him in the back, cutting him in half. His crew went on bagging and tagging the bodies, all green tags. Definitely not an equipment failure.
“I shot you,” he said to the screen. “I told you to shoot. I gave you a fucking order…”
The replay of Eagle staring down his favorite Death Machine ran on a corner screen until Sherman kicked it in.
It made his foot hurt like a bastard.
War was just so unfair.
Are You Trying to Tell Me This is Heaven?
By Sarah Langan
Sarah Langan is a three-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award. She is the author of the novels The Keeper and The Missing, and her most recent novel, Audrey’s Door, won the 2009 Stoker for best novel. Her short fiction has appeared in the magazines Cemetery Dance, Phantom, and Chiaroscuro, and in the anthologies Darkness on the Edge and Unspeakable Horror. She is currently working on a post-apocalyptic young adult series called Kids and two adult novels: Empty Houses, which was inspired by The Twilight Zone, and My Father’s Ghost, which was inspired by Hamlet.
Benjamin Franklin said, “Fish and houseguests start to stink after three days.” It can really be a strain, sharing your living space with another person, and so the decision to have a child is one of the biggest gambles a person can take—you’re essentially inviting a complete stranger to come live with you for a few decades and to be a major part of your life until you die. Most of the time it works out pretty well, at least we like to think so, but there are exceptions—children who are desperately unhappy no matter what you try to do for them, who run away, or get mixed up in crime. Parents torment themselves over how they should handle situations like this—Do you draw the line somewhere? Try to enforce strict discipline or maybe ship your child off to a prison-like reform school? Or do you provide unconditional love and support and hope
that somehow they find their way in the world? Sometimes nothing you do seems to work.
Our final story tells of a parent who was in just such a predicament, and who is trying to reach his wayward daughter in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. He knows that his daughter is not the child he might have wished for, but he loves her nevertheless and is willing to do anything to protect her. Or at least…almost anything. After all, the world can be a terrifying place, a place full of monsters.
I.
He Gets Bit
The midday sun slaps Conrad Wilcox’s shoulders and softens the blacktop highway so that his shoes sink just slightly. It’s a wide road with a middle island upon which Magnolias bloom. Along the sides of the street are parked or crashed cars, most of them rusted. He’s got three more miles to go, and then, if his map is correct, a left on Emancipation Place. Two more miles after that, and he’ll reach whatever’s left of the Louisiana State Correctional Facility for women. He’ll reach Delia.
Along the highway-side grass embankment lies a green traffic sign that has broken free from its metal post. It reads:
Welcome to Baton Rouge—Authentic Louisiana at Every Turn!
And under that, in scripted spray-paint:
Plague Zone— Keep Out!
Conrad wipes his brow with the back of an age-spot-dappled hand and keeps walking. He’s come nearly two thousand miles, and he buried his fear back in Tom’s River, along with the bodies. In fear’s place came hysteria, followed by paralysis, depression, the urge to do self-harm, and, finally, the enduring numbness with which he has sustained his survival. But so close to the end, his numbness cracks like an external skeleton. His chest and groin feel exposed, as if they’ve loosened from their bony cradles, and are about to fall out.
“I’m almost there, Gladdy,” he says. “You’d better be watching. You’d better help me figure out what to do when the time comes, you old cow.”
“I am.” He answers himself in a fussy, high-pitched voice, then adds, “Don’t call me a cow.”
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