“Psychos, all of them—and they’re after me,” he groans, looking over his shoulder.
I cower back and look at the road.
“Sir,” I mumble, “I don’t know what you’re talkin—”
“Some people bandin’ up, gettin’ together with guns and then they, they—”
He grabs my wrists and squeezes them hard, his eyes threatening to pop out of his skull.
“They’re catchin’ people, puttin’ ’em up in a facility and studyin’ ’em—” the man continues. “Please, fucking help me!”
The desperation of the last few words sends my skin crawling.
“Who, who’s catching people?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says, glancing around. “Crazy ass researchers—I don’t know. Fuck. But I know I saw them.”
“You know this for sure, that they’re catching people?” I ask.
The man continues to look around, and the tears are beginning to well in his eyes.
“Not just anybody,” he moans. “Oh, fuck. Oh, god. Please! They want the ones who haven’t turned. The ones who haven’t, not just yet. The ones who haven’t but are gonna soon.”
And with that, the man slumps onto the ground, and as he does his jeans slide up along his legs, revealing a yellow, bubbling wound. A bite. And before I have time to get back inside the store, the gunfire comes, and at the same time the sound of a convoy of trucks, maybe four or so, moving slowly down the road. I lie on the other side of the truck and clutch the back of my head with my hands, wincing at the sound of each glancing bullet clipping metal and plastic plating.
I hear the trucks pull into the lot, and the gunfire intensifies, but I still hear the moans of the man on the other side. And then the moaning stops, along with the gunfire. But they haven’t killed the man. The zombie. They only lost sight of it.
I look underneath the truck to see if I can find the body of the creature, and as I do, I notice that I can no longer feel rain beating down on my back. The faint shadow behind me looms and staggers onto its feet, and I feel the plop, the saliva, the drool pooling onto my nape. But I don’t turn around, and instead, my eyes shut. This is it.
And then I feel pain in my shoulder blade, like hot iron, and the sharp, piercing snap of bullets flying at us both. The shadow staggers back, and I lose consciousness.
***
“Papá. Papá, do you hear me?”
Lying on a hospital bed, my tired and bone-thin father struggles to move his neck in my direction. His head is the only part of his body that isn’t covered, and the machines pumping fluids into him click and beep.
He blinks his eyes a few times and looks at me.
“Mijo,” he whispers.
The tears are streaming from my eyes. I know this is it. Mamá and Bianca know too.
“Papá, why you?” I sob. “Why us? I can’t—”
“Shhh,” Papá whispers, stroking a strand of my long hair. “We all go. Some of us just ge’ checked in early.”
I try and smile. Even at the end, he was like this.
“I can’t, Papá,” I say. “I can’t.”
“You will,” he whispers back. “We fight until the end, but accept that there is an end. Your time, everyone’s time—it wi’ come. Death is no’ evil, it jus’ waits for the right moment, even if we can no’ understand. Be good to your family, mijo. I will be waiting. Con paciencia.”
***
“Get up,” says a soft, commanding voice.
I groan, only hearing the sounds but not the words.
“Get up.” This time I know it’s a woman, and before I can move my legs she has me by the shoulders, and with incredible strength helps me off the floor and onto my feet.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” she says, her nose nearly pressed against mine. “The bathroom is this way.”
She leads me down a white corridor and points me to a small room with a sink. She gives me clean clothes but leaves the door ajar, as if she doesn’t trust me.
I turn the knob above the sink and scoop up the cool water, splashing it against my muddy, bloodied face. Then I do the same with my legs, my arms, not knowing if I’ll get a chance to shower. I take off my tattered shirt and peer at my reflection in the mirror, turning around slowly, as if it were the first time I saw my body. I stop when I see the gauze pressed against my right shoulder blade.
“Shotgun shrapnel,” the middle-aged woman says, from the door. “You’ll be okay. Just don’t touch it, or take off the gauze.”
I look over at her. I feel numb as if I’m only half-attached to the world around me. I don’t know where I am, just that the building is clean, and that the static air is an artificial cool. The woman has a coat on. White, too.
“This way,” she says. “Your room is around the corner.”
She leads me down the rest of the corridor and from there we take a right down another. At the end, there is a glass chamber, the bulletproof kind—thick, sleek, and almost invisible.
“Where am I?” I ask her. The question should have come sooner, but I couldn’t think. Not about Jay or UNM or Bianca or Mamá or Papá. Not about anything.
“A safe place,” she says as if that was the response she had to give.
“The men of the convoy, they took me … are we in California?” I ask.
“Those people in the trucks, my team, they saved you; they work for me,” she says. “And, sure.”
My body drips with sweat, and a tear falls from my eye. I just want it to be over, for things to be back to the way they used to be. Maybe I’ll see Mamá and Bianca again someday. I want to ask the woman in the white coat if it’s over, if I’m safe, but my voice only cracks when I open my mouth.
The woman leads me into the room and then closes the door. On the other side of the glass, I see her look back at me with a curled, wicked smile. She doesn’t care that I reach behind and feel underneath the gauze on my back. Or that I feel grooves that no gun or shrapnel could have made.
“Everything will be okay,” she lies.
I glare back. Then smile. Then laugh.
And then I gurgle.
4 The Jilted Loser by A. P. Sessler
Carrie stepped into the garage-floor elevator, car keys in one hand and her habitual morning latte in the other. She was instantly greeted by conservative talk show host Doug Heder in disembodied person as his assertive voice chimed through hidden speakers.
When she pulled the top of her purse open and dropped her keys in, her glasses slid down her nose, stopping just at its delicately curved tip. She traded hands with her latte and pushed her glasses back to the bridge of her nose.
While Heder prognosticated, time seemed to come to a crawl, as well as the elevator’s ascent. “Zombies. There, I said it. Everyone knows that’s what it is, so let’s call an ace an ace, a spade a spade, and a zombie a zombie,” Heder said. “It’s not some psychological phenomena or viral outbreak; it’s the end of the world, people.”
Carrie’s stomach sank as the words came out of his mouth and the elevator halted.
“Just because they call it Romero Syndrome doesn’t make it a syndrome. It’s not some mental illness that can be fixed by further drugging society into increasing subjugation.”
When the doors opened, a caterer with several plastic bags wrapped the length of his arms quickly stepped in. Whatever was in the bags (labeled U-Boats) smelled great.
“Which floor?” Carrie asked aware the caterer’s arms were too full to press the button.
“Fifth floor. I hope,” he said. “Our coordinator didn’t give me the right floor.”
After she pressed the appropriate button, he thanked her. She noticed his bare arms from the plastic bag handles down had turned blue. She couldn’t help but remember the blue-skinned people she’d seen on the nightly news.
The doors closed, and the elevator resumed its ascent.
“Hope you have the right floor this time,” she said.
“Yeah, me too, before my arms fall off.”<
br />
Heder’s program continued to gnaw at her stomach. She forced a smile to hide her unease.
“The idea that somehow zombie pop culture has so infiltrated the collective consciousness of society that normal people like you and I have been hypnotized into thinking we’re the living dead is preposterous,” said Heder.
“Isn’t this horrible?” she asked. “I hope Jesus comes back and takes us all away real soon.”
“Me too, sister,” said the caterer. “It’s the end of the freaking world, and I’m still working for less than minimum wage and tips.”
“I admit,” said Heder, “I’m as much against this kind of garbage they call entertainment as anyone, but the whole ‘devil made me do it’ mantra has to stop, that is, if your devils are music, films, books or video games.”
The elevator stopped.
“Keep looking up,” said the caterer, before lugging his bags of food out of the elevator.
“I will,” she said and pressed the CLOSE DOORS button.
She ran her fingers through her frazzled hair and took a deep breath to calm her nerves.
“Speaking of devils, the conspiracy nuts are promulgating the lie that the American government that I love has experimented on its citizens with mind-altering drugs and some cannibalistic virus,” said Heder. “That is as equally preposterous and to be honest, it’s downright offensive.
“Just a moment, fellow Heders, I see we have our first caller. Go ahead, Logic89 from Burbank, you’re on the air.”
Another voice spoke. “Why is it that whenever it fits your narrative you claim entertainment is responsible for all the evils in the world, but when it doesn’t, it has to be the Apocalypse? Isn’t your version of the devil supposed to be in charge of both?”
“Well, Logic89, I suppose your moniker indicates you were born in 1989, but as far as logic I think your moniker has earned you today’s first Epic Fail.”
An analog synthesizer played a triad chord, ascending from bass to alto, followed by deep male voices in offset stereo declaring “Epic fail!”
The elevator bell rang, and its doors parted.
Heder’s voice followed Carrie out of the elevator through the foyer’s sound system.
“Thanks for being a first-time caller and first-rate loser,” Heder said and hung up the phone. “You see, America, Loser89 didn’t get my analogy. I have long stated I hold the entertainment industry responsible for the moral decay of our society. As far as the epidemic that is ravaging the Left Coast to the point of extinction, God willing, I believe that to be a divine judgment from a very angry God, who does in fact, vote Republican.”
“Good morning, Carrie,” said the gray-haired receptionist seated at the desk to Carrie’s right. On her desk was a coffee mug with a yellow “smiley” with quite the opposite expression. Beneath the angry round face, text in bold comic sans proclaimed “I’M A HEDER”—a play on words for fans of the conservative host.
“Good morning, Deloris. How are you?” Carrie said.
“Blessed and highly favored.”
“Wish I could say the same,” said Carrie with a self-deprecating smile.
Deloris searched through piles of paper atop her desk. “Oh, but you are. Somebody left you something.”
Carrie approached the desk. “Left what? Who?”
Deloris found the folded letter and handed it to Carrie. “A young man. He was in scrubs. Are you dating a doctor-in-training?”
“I don’t date,” Carrie said matter-of-factly and took the letter. Without looking, she crammed it into her purse.
“Courting—whatever you kids call it.”
“No, at the moment I’m not courting anyone, either.”
“Well, don’t be too picky or you’ll end up an old maid.”
“I have to be picky, but it’s all right. I know God has someone set aside just for me,” Carrie said and resumed her course to the office.
Deloris rolled her eyes and shook her head.
Carrie passed the break room down the narrow, unlit hallway and was immediately greeted with the buzz of busy drones flitting around the bright hive of cubicles. The fluorescent lighting lining the ceiling was outdone by the baking sunlight shining through the office’s wall-to-wall windows.
To combat the heat, an artificially-induced Arctic wind pumped through the ceiling vents, leaving the cold-natured clinging to sweaters and jackets, and the hot-natured in shorts or knee-length skirts and short-sleeve shirts.
The office’s horrible acoustics amplified everything that happened, whether it was typing, sharpening a pencil, a screaming fax machine or the numerous laser printers. It was a constant stream of noise that employees had to reacclimate to daily.
She made her way through the cubicle matrix to her personal block on the grid, placed her purse and caramel latte on the desk and sat down in the swivel chair. With a sigh, she retrieved the letter from her purse.
The neatly-folded letter sat by her coffee. It called out incessantly, demanding her attention. She placed her hands around the pleasantly hot cup and was about to take a sip when the nagging letter accused her of neglect.
She stooped beneath her desk and pushed the power button on the computer tower, and tried halfheartedly to unfold the letter with one hand while turning on the monitor.
The letter was practically a work of origami, a reminder of the writer’s anal-retentive nature. In the process of opening it, she tore one of the letter’s complex folds, then gradually arrived at its proper solution.
Again she looked at the still-hot latte but refrained from indulgence. She reluctantly took the letter and read:
Dear Carrie,
It’s been so long since I’ve heard from you. Did I do something to offend you? If so I wholeheartedly apologize. You know I would never do anything to hurt you, so I just don’t understand what went wrong. We were so good for each other. We had great, long talks and laughed, and you said yourself we have so much in common. I just don’t see why it’s so difficult to pick up the phone and call or text me or just drop me an email sometime. You know I would do anything for you, so why are you giving me the silent treatment? Please, if you care for me or have any feelings for me at all, call me. I need to hear your voice just once more.
Forever yours,
Alex.
She took a deep breath and tried to fold the letter back as neatly as she found it, but the longer she tried, the more frustrated she became. Finally, she ignored the telltale creases and folded it in half twice, still managing to leave Alex’s signature on the top fold, and she wished it wasn’t.
Her eyes returned to the monitor, where a LOGIN prompt awaited her password. She carefully typed it in with one hand and pressed the ENTER key. While the operating system finished loading, she sank into the chair, its squeaky back flexing to cushion her weight. She took hold of the warm thermal cup and got lost in the first comforting sips of her latte.
Ben interrupted the moment. “Hey, Carr. How’s it going?”
The chair squeaked again as she straightened her back. “Hi, Ben. Okay,” she said, brushing the letter aside to her left.
Ben’s eyes followed the motion of her hand and focused on the writing. His eyes darted back to her face.
“I’d be better if I didn’t have to listen to Doug Heder every morning on the way up,” she said. “He scares the heck out of me.”
“I’m not a fan myself,” said Ben. “I wish people would stop equating him and the Republican party with Jesus. The guy’s theology is crap, too.”
“You mean junk, don’t you?”
He sighed. “If it offends you, then yes.”
“What do you think about what’s happening?” she asked.
“I could get into it, but it’s a bit lengthy. Definitely not a one-paragraph answer.”
“You’re so smart,” she said, half-smiling.
“Just well read. You finished with your cookbook yet?”
“No, but I finally made it to the Desserts section, so not
too much further.” She perked up. “I wish Gramma Collins could spell as good as she can cook. If I see one more p-e-e-can or a-l-l-mond, I’m going to s-c-r-e-a-m. That or q-u-i-t.”
“You think Gramma would have learned how to use spell check by now.”
Carrie groaned. “You mean a word processor? She still sends us Notepad files.”
“I don’t see how that makes it past Submissions.”
“Because Submissions doesn’t have to sit here for hours replacing ASCII characters with tabs and returns. And because she’s Gramma Collins. They’d rather die than let another publisher get hold of her.”
Ben laughed. “I hear you.”
“In any case, her oatmeal cookies alone are worth the hassle. I made some last night. I probably gained two pounds from the butter alone.”
“If so, it doesn’t show,” he said with a glance from head to toe and smiled.
She returned the smile. In the mutual silence, the letter that previously demanded her attention caught his.
“Is he still bothering you?” he asked.
“He left it with Deloris,” she answered, her eyes trailing back to the letter.
“He was in the building?”
“Yes.”
“You need to report him to the police.”
“He doesn’t mean anything by it.”
“Hey,” he said, placing his hand firmly around her elbow. “I’m serious.”
She turned quickly to face him, half-startled, awoken from her fixation. “But he’s a really sweet guy. He just—”
“He’s just an obsessed loser who won’t take no for an answer. You need to put a restraining order on him.”
“He’s been rejected enough as it is. Something like that would destroy him.”
“He needs to man up. He’ll get over it.”
She rubbed the palms of her clasped hands together between her closed legs. She gazed at the smooth flesh of her forearms, and the red WWJD bracelet around one wrist, which to her seemed suddenly agleam like wet blood. “He’s tried to commit suicide twice.”
“He told you that?”
“Yeah.”
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