The Way of All Flesh

by Tim Waggoner

  He’d toyed with the idea of trying to hunt Carolyn and Phillip down and put them out of their misery. Maybe even free their souls in the process. He wasn’t the most religious man in the world. He didn’t believe in God exactly, but then again, he didn’t not believe, either. But he was a practical man, and in the end he knew that if he insisted on roaming around town like some kind of half-assed Van Helsing who hunted zombies instead of vampires, he’d just get himself killed. Or worse, turned into one of them.

  His wife, Meg, had died three years ago—complications from diabetes—and he was glad that she hadn’t lived to see the nightmare the world had become. He supposed he might not technically be without family. It was possible that his other children and their spouses and children had survived, as well as his sister and her husband who lived up near Akron. The phones and the Internet had continued to work for a little while after Blacktide hit, but service had been sporadic at best, and although he’d tried numerous times to reach his family, he’d been unsuccessful. So maybe they were still alive. Some of them, anyway. He liked to think so.

  So…Malcolm was on his own. He’d stayed holed up in his home for a few weeks, hoping but not really expecting that someone somewhere in the world would find a way to fix the clusterfuck the world had become. But then he’d started dreaming about Carolyn and Phillip. It always began happily enough. He’d be sitting in his favorite chair, reading. Thank God he’d never switched over to e-books. He still had plenty of the old-fashioned paper variety around for entertainment. The doorbell would ring, startling him. He’d lay his book aside, get up, and cautiously go to the door and put his eye to the peephole. When he saw it was Carolyn and Phillip, he’d unlock the door, tears of joy streaming down his face. And then they shoved the door aside as they rushed in to attack, teeth bared and eyes wild.

  After a week of suffering through that dream each night, he’d decided to move. He had no idea if Carolyn and Phillip would come seeking him in real life, but if there was even a chance that zombies had some kind of primitive homing instinct, he didn’t want to be here when they arrived. He hadn’t moved far, though. Just a few houses down the block, into David Croft’s house. Malcolm had only known the man well enough to exchange friendly waves in passing and chat about the weather whenever he stopped in at the Country Time Buffet. After Croft and his wife had divorced, the man had moved into some apartment complex in town, although Malcolm didn’t know which. Their house was the closest to the golf course, and since the talking heads on TV—before all the stations went off the air for good—said zombies weren’t fond of open spaces, Malcolm figured the closer to the golf course he was, the better.

  So he’d filled a couple suitcases with supplies: clothes and books in one, canned food and bottled water in the other. The house had been unlocked, so he hadn’t had to break in, which was lucky. And while the carpet in the living room was stained with what he assumed was blood, there were no bodies in the house for him to deal with. Better yet, there were no zombies on the premises to try and devour him. And so Malcolm moved into his new home, feeling rather like an old hermit crab who’d abandoned one shell in favor of another.

  Despite the relative lack of zombie activity in the neighborhood, life hadn’t been easier in this new shell of his. He still needed to forage for supplies, and he’d had a few close calls over the last six months. He’d found enough food and water in the abandoned houses nearby to keep him alive, and he set out buckets to catch water whenever it rained. Even so, he’d lost a lot of weight, was scrawny as a scarecrow, as a matter of fact, and if his flaky skin and unyielding flesh were any indications, he was perpetually dehydrated. He’d never worn a beard before in his life, but now he had a full one, white as snow, along with shoulder-length hair to match. He sometimes felt like a castaway stranded on a desert island. Except in his case, he supposed the whole damn world was the island.

  But his physical condition and the privations forced on him by his new life—such as it was—wasn’t the worst of it. Boredom was the hardest part. He’d long ago read (and reread) the books he’d brought with him, along with all of the Crofts’ books and magazines, including the kids’. He looked for more reading material whenever he went scavenging, but he’d found the pickings in the neighborhood to be slim, at best. Before the world ended, more people got their entertainment from movies, TV, music or the Internet than from books. He’d found some, though. Romance novels and nonfiction books, mostly, but he’d gone through all those as well, forcing him to search for other ways to keep his mind occupied.

  And so he’d invented Super Solitaire.

  He figured someone had already come up with it, or something like it. He remembered reading somewhere once that there were lots of variations on solitaire, but this was his version, one he’d made up entirely on his own. Right now he was using ten different packs of cards—most of which he’d found on his scavenging trips—but he wasn’t sure they were enough. He was having a hell of a time developing a consistent and relatively straightforward system of rules, and even though it seemed counterintuitive, went against the whole “less is more” thing, he thought if he had another couple packs, maybe even as many as five, he just might be able to figure out this mess.

  Part of him suspected that maybe he’d gone a bit crazy over the last six months—maybe more than a bit. With the exception of sleeping and going on the occasional supply run, he spent all of his waking moments in here, sunrise to sunset, working on the game. And when there was no longer enough light to see by, he’d sit in the dark and run through rules and moves in his mind. Deep down, he knew his, he supposed obsession wasn’t too strong a word for it, was pointless. Even if he ever succeeded in perfecting Super Solitaire, who would he ever get to share it with? Oh, he would write down all the rules, just in case the world ever returned to some approximation of normal, but he had no illusion that anyone would ever find them, let alone use them. It was just something to fill the long empty hours until his cancerous prostate finally poisoned the rest of his body. On bad days, he thought his game was a perfect metaphor for life, and on good days…well, he thought the same thing then too.

  Enough thinking, he decided. Time to get back to work. He refocused his attention on the middle row, specifically on an Ace of Spades that lay smack-dab in the middle of the stain that he had no doubt had been created by one of the Crofts’ blood. He remembered reading somewhere that the Ace of Spades was supposed to represent Death for some reason, but he didn’t recall why. It didn’t matter. These days, everything represented Death, he supposed.

  He bent down to move the card to another row, his back giving a twinge in protest, when he heard the sound of a doorknob rattling. Cold fear stabbed his gut, and if he’d had anything to drink in the last twelve hours, he would’ve pissed himself.

  David wasn’t surprised to find the front door locked. No matter the time of day, Sarah always made sure every entrance to the house was locked tight. Better safe than sorry is what she’d say whenever he teased her about it. He’d grown up in a safe neighborhood, and his family had left their doors unlocked most of the time. When they’d been married, he’d found Sarah’s insistence on locking up the instant she closed a door to border on OCD, but now he was grateful for it. He had no idea what had happened to remake Lockwood into something out of a nightmare, but in a world where ivory-fleshed demons hunted humans like animals, her cautiousness would serve her and the children well. But now that he was here, he wasn’t sure he wanted to find them.

  Like all the other buildings he’d seen, his home—former home, he had to remind himself—had been transformed into a dilapidated wreck. The ranch’s brick was covered with the same weird mold that he’d found everywhere in town, the windows were streaked with grime, and the sagging roof looked as if it would collapse the next time a light breeze blew by. The grass was long gone, leaving behind dry, lifeless earth, and the lone tree in the yard—a small elm that he’d used to hang snowflake lights from at Christmas—had become twist
ed and rotted. He didn’t like the idea of Sarah and the kids living in such a shit-hole, but that wasn’t the only reason he was ambivalent about seeing them here. After his experience with the lunatics at Country Time Buffet, he was afraid to find his family had become just as crazy as those bastards had been.

  He remembered the way Lindsey had crooned as she’d offered her naked breasts to him.

  Make sure you bite hard. I want it to hurt soooooo good, Davey! And take a nipple if you want. Hell, take ’em both!

  A fresh wave of nausea accompanied the memory, and if he’d had anything left in his stomach, it would’ve come up then.

  He was tempted to turn and leave, instead of trying to find a way in. If Sarah, Steve and Lizzie were inside and out of their fucking minds, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, wasn’t sure he could take it. But what if something was wrong with them? Wasn’t it his responsibility to try to help? He loved his children more than anything, and despite all that had occurred between Sarah and him, he still loved her too. How could he just abandon them?

  “It’s a real head scratcher, huh, David? Kind of like “The Lady, or the Tiger?”, except in this case there’s only one door instead of two. But the dilemma remains the same, doesn’t it? Do you go in or don’t you?”

  He turned to see Simon standing on the damaged walkway behind him, the concrete shot through with cracks and fissures. He wasn’t surprised to see him, but he was angry.

  “Why don’t you go find someone else to harass?”

  “What makes you think I have a choice? Maybe this is Hell and I’m your very own personal devil.”

  That stopped David. Before today it would’ve seemed a ridiculous notion, but after everything that had happened since he’d found himself walking on the street with Simon, it sounded far too plausible. How long ago had that been, anyway? His sense of time was fuzzy, at best. It had been hours, certainly, but how many? The strange pus-colored sky was no help. Its sour light never varied in intensity, as if Time itself no longer held any meaning.

  It didn’t matter, he decided. Hell or hallucination, dream or reality, he didn’t give a damn. All he cared about right now was seeing his children and making sure they were alive and well. And Simon—as usual—was in his way.

  He glared at the young man who looked so much like the kid who’d bullied him in high school. He had the same face, the same voice, the same fucking name… This kid might not be that Simon—couldn’t be, he was way too young—but David had had a bellyful of his snide mockery and condescension, and all he wanted to do was shut his goddamned mouth. And even if this wasn’t his Simon, dealing with the smug son of a bitch would still feel like karmic payback. Close enough for government work, as his dad had always said.

  David took a step toward the teenager.

  Simon smiled. “You want to hurt me, don’t you, David? Hurt me bad.” He sounded amused, not afraid in the least. “Go for it—if you have the stomach for it.” His smile widened into a grin. “But then, we both know you do, don’t we?”

  Images and sound flashed through his cotton-wrapped excuse for a brain. An older African-American man coming toward him, moving slowly and halting on bad knees, keening softly, desperate hunger in his voice.

  Just don’t move. Only take a little. Promise. Promisssssse…

  He remembered his own hunger answering, remembered releasing a sound that was more animal than human as he bared his teeth and rushed toward the man, hands outstretched, fingers curled into claws…

  He felt the same hunger rise now, hot and painful, as if his gut were filled with burning coals. He wanted to put the fire out, would do anything to make the pain go away.

  He took another step toward Simon and was almost within reach of the boy. Another half step would do it, and then…

  He thought of Maribel, Jimmy and Lindsey back at Country Time Buffet, of the customers that had lined up to sample their grisly delights, of the way they had fallen to their knees to gobble up the half-digested gobbets of meat he’d vomited onto the floor, as if he were some sort of regurgitating cornucopia.

  He stopped. For a long moment he locked gazes with Simon, and then he turned away. He made a fist and pounded on the door.

  He waited. No answer.

  “Got to find another way in.”

  He started walking around the side of the house. He didn’t need to look to know that Simon trailed along behind.

  If Malcolm had almost pissed himself when he heard the knob rattle, he’d nearly dropped a load in his shorts when whoever it was began pounding on the door. Part of him was terrified that a zombie had finally found him, but another part felt an absurd but undeniable sense of guilt. He was, after all, a squatter. This wasn’t his home, and although he knew that there was no way any of the Crofts would return—not after all this time—he couldn’t escape the notion that somehow one of them had come back, and he would be forced to explain what he was doing in their home.

  But then he saw someone move past the picture window, and all worries that he would be discovered and branded a house thief fled his mind. Full dawn was still a bit off, but there was enough light for him to make out the basic details of the figure outside. The long, unkempt hair and lurching gait, the torn and stained clothes, and especially those dead white eyes—they all added up to one thing: zombie.

  His first impulse was to flee, and he even went so far as to take a couple steps toward the foyer, slip-sliding on his Super Solitaire cards and nearly falling on his ass in the process. But then he stopped. The last thing he should do was go outside. Even at his age, he could outrun—or at least outwalk—a zombie. The damn things only put on a burst of speed when they were close enough to attack. But just because he’d only seen one zombie so far didn’t mean there weren’t more out there. Going outside would be tantamount to putting a gun barrel in his mouth and pulling the trigger. Better to stay inside behind locked doors, remain quiet and wait for the zombie to move on. Still, no reason to stand out here in the living room in full view. He should go into another room, one that had the curtains closed. Or better yet, the hall bathroom. It didn’t have any windows. He started that way, then his left foot slid on a couple cards—again almost dumping him on his ass—and he looked down.

  He saw the disordered rows, saw cards out of their proper places, a couple even turned facedown. Right now he was confident that he could put everything back where it belonged, but after spending a half hour, an hour, two hours hiding in the bathroom, how much would he remember? He might be forced to start all over again, and he was so close to perfecting Super Solitaire—he could feel it! It had taken him weeks to get this far with his current version of the game, and the idea of beginning anew made him feel sick. The game was what he lived for. It was all he had. He couldn’t abandon it. He wouldn’t! Besides, zombies weren’t smart enough to get inside a locked house. He wasn’t sure they were even smart enough to peer in a window to see if anyone was inside.

  That one was smart enough to try the knob, he told himself.

  A fluke. An echo of memory, that’s all. Nothing to be concerned about. He believed it too, but even if he hadn’t, he would’ve remained in the living room to fix his cards. He truly didn’t have anything else. Not anymore.

  He got down on his hands and knees and went to work.

  While Sarah never forgot to lock a door, she wasn’t so great at remembering to fix stuff. They’d managed to maintain a civil post-divorce relationship for the sake of the children, and sometimes when he came over to pick up or drop off the kids, she’d ask him to take a look at something—a clogged disposal, a garage door remote that no longer worked, that kind of thing. He knew this made them a cliché as far as divorced couples went: she the woman intimidated by home repair projects, he the man who was happy to fix things around the house where he once lived so that he could, if only for a short time, feel part of a whole family again.

  But there was one fix-it job that he hadn’t gotten around to. Or, at least, he had no memory of doi
ng so. The lock on their bedroom window—Sarah’s bedroom window, he amended—didn’t latch as snugly as she liked. If you jiggled it just right, from inside or outside, the lock disengaged and you could slide the window open. The loose lock really worried her. He was sure she had visions of someone sneaking into her bedroom in the middle of the night and raping her, but even if a would-be rapist knew the lock was loose—and how could he?—he would have to jiggle the window in just the right way to get the lock to disengage. What were the odds of that happening?

  So he’d dragged his feet on the repair, which he continued to claim wasn’t necessary, and while that might have been true, the real reason he hadn’t wanted to fix it was because he hadn’t set foot inside their bedroom…her bedroom, since he’d moved out. The prospect made him extremely uncomfortable. He had no idea if she had ever brought men over on those nights when he had the kids, had fucked them on the same bed where she’d fucked him, but he hadn’t wanted to think about it. So he kept putting off the repair. And unless Sarah had hired someone to fix it for her, or asked one of the hypothetical men she may or may not have screwed to do the job, he could use that loose lock to get inside.

  “Have you thought about trying to huff and puff and blow your way in?” Simon asked from behind him. “This place looks shaky enough.”

  David glanced back and saw the boy reach out and flick a finger at the mold-encrusted outer wall as they passed. A chunk of brick broke off in a puff of powder and fell to the barren ground.

  David faced forward again without comment and continued around the side of the house—past both Steve and Lizzie’s rooms—until he reached the backyard. The first window here was the one that he wanted. It was her window.

  He found it as grime-streaked as all the others, but when he got his hands on it, it felt solid and sturdy, unlike the rest of the house, which looked as if it might collapse at any moment. He tried his jiggling trick with it, but it was harder than he thought. His fingers felt numb, clumsy and uncooperative. He focused his entire will on the task, and his hands steadied, but only a little. He wondered if something was wrong with him. Was he sick? Had he had a stroke or something?