by James Hunter
Ferraro had guided her horse off to the side of the road, and sat fiddling with her pack, searching through the contents before finally liberating the map Fortuna had given us back at the saloon. I pulled my moped over to her and killed the engine, waiting for her to finish her survey.
“You doing okay?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said, eyes still scanning the map. “You were right, the nausea passed with the fog. Still”—she gave a brief shake of her head—“that’s something I’d like to never, ever do again.”
“Hey, that pretty much sums up my whole life.” She didn’t laugh, didn’t crack a smile even—and that was good material. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m nervous.” She finally looked up, eyes scanning the highway. “This place feels wrong. There’s something bad here. It’s midday here, but there’s no traffic. There aren’t even abandoned cars. And it’s too quiet for a city.”
She was right. There were better odds of winning the lotto than finding a highway this size empty during midday. And there were no noises, absolutely zero. No horns, engines, squawks from pedestrians, or thumping radios. Not even the chatter of birds. It was daytime here, but heavy gray overcast made the whole city look somehow sick and muted. This place was on its deathbed … or maybe the coroner had come and gone long since.
“Fortuna said this was a bad future,” I replied. “She said there were genetically altered zombies running around here and a cult leader named Cannibal Steve. Cannibal Steve, for cryin’ out loud. There’s a reason Lady Fate wants to prevent this future from happening. It sucks balls. Let’s just do this thing, get the hell outta here, and then go kick Randy’s ass, huh?” I glanced around for a minute, not entirely sure which way to go. I’d glanced at the map when Fortuna had shown us back in the saloon, but I’ve always been sorta lousy with directions—and yes, I know that’s ironic, considering I’m a former Marine and I basically live out on the open road. Google all the way, baby. “So where to, master navigator?” I finally asked.
She looked down at the map again, chewing on her lip as she went over it. “I think we need to take the next exit into the city—should let out at James Street and 7th Avenue. Looks like we’re going to head past the city jail, and then head out toward the bay. From there, we’ll head over to the Four Seasons, if you can believe it.”
“The Four Seasons?” I asked. “Swanky. Apparently Cannibal Steve has pretty refined tastes.”
“That’s sick.”
“What’s sick about liking the Four Seasons?” I asked.
“Maybe you should refrain from putting the word ‘cannibal’ and ‘refined tastes’ together in the same sentence. Just sick.”
“Oh, got it. Just a terrible misunderstanding … Hey, that sums up the rest of my life.”
That earned a small crack of her lips at least. “All right, let’s get this over with.”
She nudged her horse forward, I started the engine on my scooter, and we cruised for another quarter mile or so, before taking the next sloping exit ramp. Two hundred or so feet of steadily slanted roadway dropped us at an intersection with lifeless stoplights, James Street and 7th Ave.
Everything looked stone cold dead and long abandoned by those with the ability to leave. Looked like a tomb for everyone else. Jeez, why can’t I ever be strong-armed into doing a job in a decent place? Just once, I’d like to be sent to the tropical island of beautiful women, where vicious monsters—composed entirely of southern-style barbeque ribs and frosty beer—are running amok. Why can’t that be my life, just once?
A few solitary cars rested on the street, a few more dotted a large parking lot, sprawling underneath the overpass. From the dust and debris littering those few lonely vehicles—cars, trucks, and SUVs—it was pretty damn clear they hadn’t been moved for a good long while. One car rested on its top, scattered glass lay around it like spilled blood, scorch marks revealed someone’s attempt to burn it.
Welcome to the bright and sunny world of tomorrow, kids. It only gets better from here.
Ferraro glanced down at the map. “This way,” she said, now more sure and confident. She guided her horse left, under the overpass, and I followed along trying to keep my head on a swivel—friggin’ place felt like the set of some Hollywood zombie flick. Had me all kinds of nervous.
On the other side of the underpass, a slew of bleak buildings lined either side of the roadway. Directly on the right was a rough concrete parking garage and to the left towered twenty or so stories of dirty tan stone, which absolutely had to be a jail.
You never see city jails painted in bright and happy colors, or decorated with subtle landscape paintings—I’ve never, not once, mistaken a jail for anything else. They’re always the most depressing-looking building on the block, like the kind of building you’d expect to find in George Orwell’s 1984. A large multistoried glass building a little further up on the right proved to be the Municipal Court of Seattle, confirming my suspicion that the neighboring building was in fact the clink.
The hair at the nape of my neck tried to stand up and salute. Someone was watching us—which sounds kinda paranoid, I know, but, as they say, it’s only paranoia if it’s not true. “I officially hate it here,” I declared in a whisper only loud enough for Ferraro’s ears.
She glanced back over her shoulder and nodded at me. “The eyes? Watching us?”
I nodded. “Hey, hold on a second.” I pointed over to the sidewalk running out in front of the glass-faced municipal court building. A series of blue, white, and red metal newspaper bins, running along the sidewalk, caught my eye. “I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that whatever shitstorm hit this place, it didn’t happen overnight. Bet the newspaper has something about it. Just hang on one sec.”
I steered the moped over to the news bin, killed the engine, and slid from the seat. The bin was coin operated, as was only fitting since I didn’t have any change, but thankfully my pistol grip was a universal opener for anything with a glass front. I whipped the screen with my pistol—the crunch and tinkle of broken glass was so friggin’ loud. Like making a racket in an utterly still library, assuming, of course, that said library was filled with man-eating freaks.
Careful to avoid the jagged shards of glass that were still intact, I pulled out a crumpled copy of The Seattle Times—the very last copy too, lucky me. Thanks Fortuna. The front-page story showed a picture of dead bodies stacked up like cordwood out in front of some CDC quarantine area. The title read: “The Infection Spreads.” I flipped to 1A.
The Infection Spreads
Despite all attempts by the CDC to suppress the spreading epidemic, the infection seems more virulent than ever. The “Green Death,” as it has been dubbed by the masses, continues to hold residents of Seattle enthralled as it sweeps through the streets and ravages those still living. An estimated two hundred and fifty thousand residents—nearly half of Seattle’s population—already lay dead, while scores more seem to be dying by the day. Many residents have fled the city only to be quarantined by US Army soldiers who have established containment camps at every major exit route.
Reports trickling out of the containment camps indicate that the epidemic is moving even more rapidly among detainees, likely due to cramped and unsanitary living conditions. Detainees are additionally suffering from a wave of famine, brought on by severe food shortages, and lack of administrative personnel within the camps.
More troubling still is the number of infected individuals contracting a new, more virulent, strain of the disease, a strain which appears to mutate the infected. If a friend or family member contracts the plague but does not die within a day of presenting symptoms, then the CDC advises blockading the individual in a secure location and distancing yourself immediately. Mutation brings on extreme bouts of violence. The city has opened the King County Jail, located on 5th Avenue and James Street, as an infectious detainment center for the violently infected.
Plague. Craptastic. And not just plague, but freaky-deaky plague that mu
tated people and turned ‘em into violent killing machines. Even better, the collection point for the “violently infected” was only a couple of hundred feet behind us—the very place I’d sensed we were being watched from. Craptastic squared. I glanced back down at the paper—there was something wrong with it.
The date, in the upper right hand corner, kept changing, cycling through date after date, like it couldn’t make up its mind just when this nightmare future had hit: January 16, 2020 … September 15, 2018 … May 13, 2022, July 24, 2029 … On and on the dates flashed, some almost solid while others appeared misty and faded on the page.
“So?” Ferraro asked. “What’s it say?”
“Scary-ass zombie plague is what it says. So I’m thinking we should get our asses moving a little quicker.” I jerked a thumb at the jail. “That’s the place where the government was rounding up all the mutated shitheads.” I ripped 1A from the paper, folded it up, shoved the article into my pocket, and hopped back on Sir Zippy. “It’d be just our friggin’ luck to get away from Fast Hands and his posse, only to get chewed to pieces by infectious monsters.”
The squeal of a door on rusted hinges rang through the air, loud as a crack of thunder in the silent city.
The sound had come from behind us.
TWENTY-FOUR:
Meatbags
I swiveled in my seat, eyes searching for the noise—pretty sure it’d come from that damn jail. But nothing moved down the length of the paved road. No door stood open. No breeze stirred the stale air. Shit, there wasn’t even any freaky horror movie music to announce the imminent approach of something terrifying. If only real life could be as simple as Hollywood—I would have killed for a menacing horror movie sound track.
Despite the stillness, I had the terribly uncomfortable feeling that we were on the edge of a cliff. It was as if the city was holding its breath, and one great exhale would blow Ferraro and I right over the edge. I had to wonder just how long ago that newspaper article had been written: a day, a week, a year, ten years maybe? Hopefully, ten years. Genetically altered zombies probably couldn’t survive in a place like this for ten years, right? But if the article had been penned a week ago … we could be standing right at ground zero.
Something moved ahead and just to the left—a faint rustle of motion right out of the corner of my eye, near a shop up ahead. A red-brick, single-story convenience store with a wraparound window front and a dead neon sign reading “Lotto.” Nothing moved in there now, but dammit, there had been something. I’d put my impeccable reputation as a smartass on the line, I was so sure.
Ferraro shot me a look—she’d seen the movement too. Then she nudged the horse to the opposite side of the road and kept moving down James Street. Tall buildings gave way to smaller places of brick and stone—mostly boutiques or family eateries—many of the windows broken out or boarded over. Lots of greenery though; a bunch of trees lined the sidewalk on both sides of the road and everything seemed vibrant and healthy. Too healthy—I’m naturally suspicious of anything that doesn’t look at least mildly sick and broken. Damn trees looked like they’d been shooting up Miracle Grow. Didn’t trust a one of ‘em.
More movement … couldn’t pinpoint it though, seemed to happen everywhere, like the whole city had finally let out that breath. This place hadn’t died, it’d just gone into hibernation like some kinda giant, hungry animal that’d run short on food. I got the oddest sense that maybe we’d woken it up with all our clomping around.
Ferraro leaned toward me and whispered, “Behind us.”
I looked back and sure enough, there was a man-shaped something or other standing on the sidewalk, framed by a yellowed wooden door that let into a diner, Hole in the Wall Bar-B-Que. Animals, even monsters should know better than to defile a barbeque joint.
Now, to call the thing in front of the shop a man was a generous use of the word; I’ve seen a fair number of halfies that look closer to human than this thing. Really, the best I could say about it was that it was man-shaped. Kind of.
Son of a bitch was a lump of deformed, twisted white skin and ropy muscle. Copious amounts of black-green flaps, what could only be rotted flesh, dotted its form in places. An eyeless face of creamy white—head canted inquisitively to the side—regarded us from above a gaping fish-like mouth filled with jagged saw-blade teeth. Really, it was the tattered blue jeans and the shredded flannel shirt clinging to its body that gave away the fact that this guy had once been a card-carrying member of the human race.
The skinny jeans and flannel also told me he’d been a hipster … great. Not just a zombie—a snooty, hipster zombie. My worst nightmare. On the upside, he’d probably refuse to eat me since I was chock-full of deadly carcinogens from my many years of smoking.
Two more pasty white meatbags—one clearly female from the shriveled up tits and thin build—emerged from a doorway further up on 2nd Avenue. I heard the shuffle of more lumbering footsteps from ahead of me … I swung back around to face forward. Ah, excellent, two-dozen creatures edged toward us from the direction of the jail, clad in the remnants of orange jumpsuits, all marked “DOC.” Now I really did feel like my head was on a swivel—looking back and forth, trying to track all the clusters of evil zombies circling around us. Another creature, a lone woman, wandered out from an alleyway up ahead while four or five more staggered onto the sidewalk from an enclosed parking garage.
Yet another small mob—these all sporting what had once been business suits—emerged on the street before us. They’d boxed us in nice and tight, leaving absolutely no route for escape, which had probably been their intention from the start. How these ugly, stupid bags of flesh and rot had coordinated between themselves was a mystery, but one that ultimately didn’t matter. We’d been outsmarted. Outsmarted by brain-dead zombies. Jeez. That one definitely wasn’t gonna make it into the Christmas letter.
This just kept getting better and better. So far, none of the creepers seemed especially interested in mauling us or eating our brains, but I remembered the warning from the paper: “Mutation brings on extreme bouts of violence.”
“Well shit,” I said to Ferraro, shifting my gaze from one pocket of doom to the others. “This could get interesting.”
“Che palle,” she swore. “What should we do?” She gave me a brief look, before turning away—trying to watch everything all at once.
“Right. Do. We do need to do something.” Talk about Captain Obvious, but you try putting a game plan together under those circumstances. I mean, a man on a moped and a woman on a horse ride into Seattle with a pack of zombies … it sounds like the set-up for some morbid joke. You just can’t plan for shit like this. I was just hoping that the punchline didn’t end with: then the zombie hoard eviscerated them.
“Alright,” I said trying to sound cool, calm, and collected even though I really wanted to pull my hair and shriek like a little girl. “Stay close, follow my lead. Gun out, try to conserve ammo—there are a lot of these meatbags. If we get separated, move your ass, and make it to the Four Seasons. That’ll be our rendezvous.” I took a deep breath, trying not to hunch over and vomit on myself. This situation downright scared the bejesus out of me. Deep breaths, one, two, in, out. Calm the mind. Shut away the fear, the worry. What would be, would be. “Ready?”
“Oh, I’m ready,” she said. “How about you? You sound shaky. Listen, if you’re not up to the challenge, you can just sit this one out—I can handle it without you if you need the breather, old-timer. Oh, and never tell me to move my ass again—I’m a federal officer.” She smiled a little when she said it though, obviously she’d seen through my naturally cool and unruffled demeanor. That’s one thing I love about Marines, regardless of whether they were officer or enlisted: Marines always know how to smile at the Devil and spit right in his eye when they need too. Even in the worst situations they can somehow find a way to be ornery, irreverent, and tough as steel.
Once upon a time, at a little place called the Chosin Reservoir, Marine General Ch
esty Puller found himself in a situation not too dissimilar from ours … well, no zombies, and he was in Korea not Seattle. But that’s really just semantics. Chesty and his battalion were surrounded on all sides and outnumbered twenty-two to one, with no possible hope of escape. The Army had pulled back, giving the unit up as a lost cause. Without batting an eye, Chesty turned to his lieutenant and said, “They’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us … they can’t get away this time.”
It was time to pull a Chesty and spit right in the Devil’s eye.
I drew my pistol, a thin scrape of metal rubbing leather. The ugly sons of bitches were moving now, slowly—lazy even—but they were getting closer and their numbers seemed to be multiplying by the second. Time to rock and roll, baby, show these slow moving shit-heels why cannibalism doesn’t pay.
“Just try to keep up,” I said as I revved the engine of my moped—zing-zing-zingggg—before zipping away toward the alleyway, guarded by the solitary woman-thing. The scooter put her in my range half a second later—I leveled my pistol while zooming forward like the Flash on a Rascal, and pulled the trigger. Just a single squeeze, followed by a soft pop. Her head exploded from her shoulders; her neck and the lower half of her jaw simply vanished in an arc of greenish gore, while the top half cartwheeled through the air. The head landed with a sickening wet thunk, her body fell to the side, arms and legs thrashing with sporadic movement.
That seemed to be the straw that broke the ugly, cannibalistic, mutated camel’s back. The whole horde—what the hell did you even call a group of zombies? … Murder, yeah, definitely a murder of zombies—broke into action, surging onward, as though the act of violence against one of their own had unlocked some need for vengeance. A sea of eyeless faces, molted skin, and sharp, tearing teeth bore down upon us like an ocean tide crashing on the shore.