by D. S. Black
He heard their grumbling and smelled the rancid decay rising from dead skin in gagging wisps of hot air. “Daddy never believed! Daddy never believed! DADDY! NEVER! BELIEVED!” Rusty screamed at the world, at his past, at everything he never experienced, the boys and girls holding hands, eating shakes at Buster’s Ice Cream; Rusty saw them now with absolute clarity; the tan skin of the soon to be class of 01, the bully jock boyfriend, with his shitty smears and big muscles. Rusty saw the world in a way he’d never seen before. A world without a mystical force controlling the heavens. No. Just a primal, sloppy mess. Rusty saw it clearly. The evolution of mankind, the clear lack of a guiding hand, the branching of this species into that, the spawning of new and tropical life, the beautiful majesty unfurled upon his mind’s eye.
He saw glory and wonder, insights that he’d never before considered. He stood up and pointed a trembling finger at the approaching horde. His clothing hung, tattered and bloody. His face was dry as a desert with long lines of broken skin, like dried up tributaries. His pants were completely missing. His white Fruit of the Loom briefs still hung, mostly ripped and torn—a clear rectal hazard zone.
The horde inched closer, jerking this way and that, growling under the humid July sun. Then Rusty’s mind jumped again, back into a dark recess of his mind. There was his mother and father. His father’s eyes were glued to a new Laser Disc system. 1988. Little Rusty saw the television. The Nightmare on Elm Street played vividly. His father drank a bourbon and scotch and watched Freddy butcher young girls. The room was dark, save the glow of the TV. Every few seconds his father would smile. His nearly broke into tears of joy at the sight of Johnny Depp’s guts spraying out of a pristine white sheet hole. His mother sat in a Lazy Boy, with a Walkman playing the sounds of Carmen (the bringer of such tunes as “Comin' On Strong”, “The Champion”, and the unforgettable, “A Long Time Ago...in a Land Called Bethlehem.”) Her eyes were closed and her hands folded neatly in her lap. A cancerous lingering of cigarette smoke trailed towards the ceiling, where it moved across the room like a misty nightmare. His father cackled and finished off his drink and poured another.
The world came back into view. Rusty stood, half naked, his ass blistered and raw and shriveled like a sun burned red raisin. The horde nearly upon him, their stenched bodies in direct view. “Daddy never believed!” He screamed at the hungry, growling faces. “DADDY! NEVER! BELIEV—
The first one took a deep bite into his right shoulder. Its dark green and yellow teeth dug into Rusty’s burned skin. Hot blood filled the hungry creature’s mouth with oozy pleasure. The zombie wore a tattered green hemp dress with a blood stained peace symbol. On the back of the shirt said: LOWCOUNTRY JAM FESTIVAL. Another one grabbed his left arm, then the brunt of the horde came in, stumbling, yet fast, quickly taking Rusty down to the ground. Hands tore into his belly. They pushed their arms deep, removing organs, making deep sucking sounds, and chewing with great lust. Rusty screamed and screamed. Horrible and fatal cries that no one heard, save the dead.
Chapter Ten: Professor Mary Jane
1
One hour before the attack
Mary Jane sat drinking a hot bottle of chardonnay. Not top shelf either!
Fuck!
She hates this fucking goddamn world! She thinks as she chugged the bottle hard, turning it up high letting the wine course down her throat.
She sat alone in her room. A room that once belonged to a young hipster now roaming the world as a zombie. She knew this because of the pictures she found when she moved in. He’d been a lanky fellow with a ridiculous looking artsy goatee and slick black hair that looked like something out of Grease. No doubt, he thought it a real hip thing to do, dressing up his hair like he lived in the 50s. Hipsters never made any sense to Mary Jane. Rich kids. She always graded them down. Always. No matter how good their paper may have been.
But, tonight, drunk and high, she sang to herself. Soon enough her world would turn upside down; but right then she drank for the Old World. She sang. She sang some more. Not a jolly tune. Not a tune at all. Just a sound that wreaked of wine and depression. What’s left in this shit hole anyway? More depression than wine. That’s for sure. Jesus. This wine is disgusting. But so is everything. She hates it all. She hates Duras to. She hates them all. She wants out. She wants out of this dreadful excuse for a city-state. The ancient Sumerians would laugh at their pathetic attempts to save Western culture. Oh and the Greeks! What would Aristotle say to a fenced in hell hole that is forever surrounded by roaming dead men?
No. She doesn’t hate Duras. What a lovely evening they just had. Plus…
Where can could she go?
But She did want out. She wanted to go back in time. She wanted her students back. Their cheerful faces, even the hipsters. She wanted research grants back. She wanted the summers off. She wanted to be called professor again.
Her husband, with his little round belly. Her son. Her little boy.
A tears rolled down her face.
Now she just sat. Drunk and stoned. Her whole life is now nothing but drunk and stoned. Weed and drink. That’s it.
Sex with Duras.
The hated task of caring for the needs of people too dumb to care for themselves. She wished they would all die.
She turned the bottle high. Down it went.
Oh god. When will it all end?
To hell with it! Tonight she drinks alone. Tonight she is free. Tonight the dead win. Tonight she cries a tone of solidarity with those dead fucks. Fuck them all.
She walked to a mirror and spoke to her reflection. “I warned them. I told them about Holocene Extinction. Did they listen?”
She threw the empty glass bottle against the wall, causing it to shatter. The little shards of glass fell to the floor like in a slow motion movie scene, and she watched them bounce for a moment, then…
…She fainted to the floor and drifted.
2
She was back in the classroom. It was only days before the virus killed humanity. “The Holocene extinction is the predicted 6th period of historical mass extinction marked by rapid loss of biodiversity largely caused by humans.”
Around twenty young eyes stared back at her. Some of them were clearly high, others clearly hung over; others alert and taking notes.
“Humans are killing off species thousands of times faster than nature creates them. The current rate of extinction across species is one thousand times that of the background rate before humans began altering the globe and thousands of times faster than the creation of new species.”
She spoke to her class with real concern. She knew that something was coming. She felt it in her gut and between global warming, the large number of species dying off, the threat of super bugs that are resilient to antibiotics, and the inability for humans to come to terms with the amount of destruction they ensue—she knew something major was in the air.
It was a simple matter. Humans had to go. Nature wanted people gone, so that’s what it made happen. She never imagined the horror that was to pass. How can a person imagine people would die and reanimate like some shitty horror flick?
She had a family. A husband. A son. The whole American dream. A house, a two car garage, and two cars to park.
“PS4 mom! Fuck! Don’t you know?”
“Make due.”
“With a PS3? Really? Dad! Mom is trying to force me to live like a stone age peasant! Do something!”
She was back at her house. Soft crème carpet under her feet. Mahogany trim on the walls. A large brick fire place with a large picture of her family, her included, hanging above the hearth. She wore her silk dress to the photo shoot. Mark said she over did it. But he would. He never took off his Oxford sweater or any one of his thirty or more Polos.
In walked Mark, his Oxford sweater clinging to his pudgy belly.
“Your son has lost his senses, Mark.”
He chuckled at her and then spoke, “You just don’t know what these kids need hun.”
“Oh?
” Her hands were on her hips, trying to act serious.
“The boy is simply trying to keep up with the social trends.”
Her husband was the head of the Sociology department. How she ever fell in love with a sociologist she was not quite sure. She met him her senior year. He had worn an Oxford sweater, even though the temperature was around 75.
She was standing by the vending machine, staring at the candy hooked in the metal coils. He’d walked up and started babbling about how food choices are influenced by socialization.
She'd always hated sociology, such a mind numbingly waste of brain energy. But, that day, Mark’s idiotic naive intellectual fat face, clean shaven and smelling of expensive aftershave, and those cobalt blue eye…
“Yeah mom! I need to keep up with the social trends. Don’t you want me to grow up and be a fine member of society? I can’t do that without a PS4!”
“Oh Jesus Mary of Lucifer! Take him to the store, Mark!”
She wasn’t much of a mother though. By default, scholars are almost always shitty parents who raise snot nosed brats. Her son, a thirteen-year-old with an addiction to video games and Red Bull was a fine example.
She just didn’t have the time to put into proper discipline, so the boy did what he wanted and she always caved and Mark seemed to get a great deal of joy in giving his son anything he ever wanted. Nurture and love, that’s what a boy needs, said Mark. A proper socialization.
The contradiction never seemed to bother Mark. The fact that his son had zero real friends never made him worry at all. Postmodernist sociology is what he called his specialty. He believed that in the new age of consumerism, digital communication, and global connection, the traditional definition of friendship was inadequate.
His soft voice explained, “You have to understand the concept of hyperreality, which creates the simulation of reality for modern day kids and many adults. Playing video games, watching movies, and so forth creates simulations that are more real to them than what you may consider to be true biological reality. For example, while kids are fighting the perceived enemies in their video games, it creates in them a feeling of power and control, of being the hero. Not that I would expect a biologist to care too much about sociology.”
He was right; she didn’t care; but being around Mark made her feel safe. Strange as he was, he made her feel so comfortable. He never got angry. Never screamed.
She always wanted to see him blow up, just once, but not a fat chance in hell. He yodeled though. Very loudly. It made her love him even more. That fat belly and those chubby cheeks, red and burning with yodeling passion.
And his cheeks were red that day, the day she watched him smile for the last time.
3
A week before she'd watched a documentary, well, if you want to call it that—on the History Channel. Some crap about the Rapture. People disappearing, cars crashing, planes falling from the sky, and all the nonbelievers stuck on earth while the Christians sat happy go lucky with Jesus.
She had a long day that day. Finals. A stack of papers still ungraded sitting beside her half glass of raspberry wine. She flipped through the channels. She finally landed on the satellite radio channel for alternative music. A rare pleasure. She allowed herself to lose all touch with reality while the music glared.
She listened to the tunes of The Offspring’s “The Kids Aren’t Alright.”
Then she remembered growing up off highway 9 in Upstate SC by a shallow and muddy creek, filled with its dangerous water Moccasins. She remembered her daddy’s whiskey breath. He’d tied a long rope to a tall tree that hung over the creek. To that he’d tied an old tire. And it was on that tire that the Creek Kids (that’s how she saw them at least) would swing back and forth, and many times, let go and crash into the water, causing red clay mud to rise up. It was by that creek that she'd gotten her first kiss.
Barry Chance was his name. A blue eyed boy rebel that she followed everywhere. His long blonde rat tail ran down his tan smooth skin.
“Mary Jane! Catch!” The baseball cracked against her skull. She didn’t get mad at him though, even though he knew she didn’t play ball and didn’t know how to catch. His daddy beat him black and blue for putting that lump on her head. She didn’t see him much after that; but she never forgot his screams while his daddy whipped him with a switch from a briar patch.
Soon after her daddy got a new job and she left the Upstate and moved down to Horry County. That’s where she went to middle school, high school, and eventually college.
Damn good days.
She remembers watching the news with her father after getting home during her senior year, the class of 2001. The country was up in arms, ready to kill everyone and everything that looked different. “Nothing but bad news. Nothing but bad people daddy. Least that’s how it seems.”
“Focus in on the seems part, kid.” She always liked when he called her kid. It wasn’t disrespectful, but meant with enduring love. The love between a father and a daughter. “For every bad man, there are at least three good men. But, the news aint never gonna talk about good stuff.”
“If it leads, it bleeds. We learned that in communications class.” She said.
On the T.V. a man in a blue suit and white hair screamed and pointed at the camera. He warned the “demonic terrorists” that their days were numbered. He said the war would be fast and precise. He spoke of smart bombs and special forces.
Her dad cut off the T.V. and looked at her. “Don’t let this old world get you down. Trust me. Life is gonna go well for you. You’re one of the good guys. And believe it or not, us good guys out number the bad guys.”
As she lay half-conscious on the floor (right about then Rusty Ray was learning about anal adventures of the worst kind), the tears came as she remembered her dad.
Where was he now? A dead man roaming the highways looking for living flesh to eat? And where were all the good guys now? Dead. Gone and dead. Walking around dead. All the good people are dead. And she was never one of the good people, because all the good people died early on. They died trying to help other people. She stayed hidden in those early days. She didn’t help anyone. She looked out for herself.
She didn't look for her husband. She didn’t look for her son. She knew they were dead. She knew she couldn’t save them.
So She saved herself. And that made her a bad guy. A rat that hides and comes out when everyone is dead or gone. What did she get for it? This bottle of booze? This half rotten city-state? The filthy inhabitants? The sex between her and Duras?
But what about Duras? Did she really hate him? She loves him. He was all there was now. She'd loved her husband to. She'd loved her son to. But she couldn’t save them.
“I could not! I swear it! I couldn’t save you!” She screamed and fell to the carpeted floor, cradled in a fetal position, and sobbed.
4
She didn't know how long she laid there. But the tears slowly dried up. Better memories came through. She was back with her father, out deep in the woods. A long weekend of hunting was almost over. Now they did what they always did, and wasted what was left of their ammo on his beer cans. He’d throw them in the air, and she'd show him her skill with well-placed shots. The sound of the blast, followed by the echo through the woods always excited her and made her feel powerful. Her father brought her up watching Lethal Weapon, Predator, and she even liked the Crow. But she especially loved Aliens. The heroics of the “not so beautiful” (as her father put it), Sigourney Weaver emboldened the feministic side of her brain and made her want to always be just as fast, smart, and good at killing as any man.
“ROTC? Really? Sounds great kid!”
It was freshmen year in at Socastee High School. “Junior ROTC, but yeah dad, like a modern day Spartan Hoplite.” The year before, she'd become engrossed in ancient Greece, especially the Spartans. A proud warrior culture and dominators of Greece for centuries. And, although her dad still struggled with memories and regrets about his days wearing the uniform a
nd marching deep in dangerous jungles where he watched friends die and saw the bodies of dead kids he knew his bullets had killed—he never bad mouthed the military or the government and always supported her positive warrior nature; a girl growing up in South Carolina had to have a little kick to her step, not to mention be able to handle the kick from a Colt revolver, double gauge shot gun, and any other weapon these local rednecks wanted to throw her way.
And it was a redneck that she fell in love with in early fall of her freshmen year in high school. Barley Thomas, a thick neck dumbass that had the disgusting habit of chewing tobacco. Why in god’s name she loved him never really made much sense.
It didn’t last though.
He was driving her home. She slurped on a chocolate shake from Dairy Queen that he just purchased her with the money he made cutting lawns on Saturdays and Sundays.
“Listen Barley. It’s over.”
His neck pulsed and his eyes enraged. He slammed on the accelerator. His mildly retarded eyes jiggled in the moon light. Rain fell outside and slapped hard against the windshield of his rusted red Chevy blazer. An ancient piece of shit vehicle if there ever was one, and in a moment she was going to find how shitty the brakes were.
He rounded a curb at blazing speeds, all while cursing up a storm. Nothing but dark trees dashed by on either side. She'd never seen him angry before, but he’d told her about his father, who he claimed had the temper of a wild alley cat mixed with a caged dog that hadn’t been fed for a week.
He rounded the curb, and headed down a long patch of road that didn’t have any light on it. Trees arched over the road creating a dark green canopy.
White lighting crackled in the sky and dashed Barley’s face with hot light. His knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel and a large vein pulsed on the side of his neck, “You ain’t gonna leave me! No way! No how! Not today! Not tomorrow! Nooooooo!”