by Joe McKinney
When it actually started ringing I got so excited I nearly dropped the phone. The ringing took forever. One ring, two, three…“Come on, come on,” I prayed out loud. “Come on, April. Answer.”
I heard a click on the other end. “Hello? Hello. April, it’s Eddie.”
“Eddie?” She was talking through waves of static. “Eddie, is that you?”
“Sweetie, it’s me. Are you okay?”
“Eddie, what’s going on? The TV said—”
“It’s real, sweetie. It’s all real.”
The ocean of white noise between us roared. “April. April. Are you there?”
“Where are you, Eddie? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, April. I’m okay. I’m gonna come home as soon as I—”
“The TV said—” The rest was static.
“April? Are you there?
“—there were sick people all over the city.”
“April, stop. I need you to listen to me. I need you to stay away from everybody. Don’t go outside. Don’t go near the windows or anything like that, okay? Don’t let anybody inside, even if you know them. My other pistol is in the closet in that blue bag. Remember? Remember how I taught you to use it? I need you to get that gun and keep out of sight. Okay? Can you hear me, April?”
There was nothing on the other end. I wasn’t even getting static anymore. I tried calling again and again and again—more times than I could count—but the phone wouldn’t send.
In a rage, I threw it against the wall and broke it all to pieces.
Ken appeared in the doorway just in time to have the debris whistle past his ear.
“Whoa,” he said, backing up. “What did you do that for?”
“Get bent.”
He looked at the pieces all over the floor. “Did that work?”
“Yeah.”
“And you broke it?”
I didn’t answer him. Instead I sat down in the station commander’s chair and simmered in my rage.
I was hoping desperately that April had heard enough to remember the Springfield Armory .45 automatic I kept in the closet. She hated guns. Always had. But I was hoping she would remember it, and use it if she needed it.
“We could have used that phone,” Ken said.
“That was my wife,” I said.
“Yeah, but—”
“Mr. Stoler, in all those little powwows you and your buddies have on your website, did any of you ever stop to consider the human side of it? Did it ever dawn on you that every zombie wandering around out there equals a wasted life? I’m not dealing in philosophy, Mr. Stoler. I have a wife and a six-month-old son out there. That’s not philosophy. That’s humanity.”
He looked like he wanted to respond, but thought better of it.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked.
“I’m leaving,” I said. “I have to find my family.”
“You’re leaving? What about the rest of us? What are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t really care,” I said. “Maybe you could discuss the philosophical existence of consciousness.”
“Officer Hudson, please.”
“What are you complaining for?” I said. I was being nasty, and I knew it. I didn’t care. “This place is secure. You’ve got food. You’ve got a TV. When the phones come up, you’ll have those too.”
“Yeah, but we’ll be stuck here.”
“No you won’t. I’ll leave you the truck. I’m taking that Chevy parked out back.”
As far as I was concerned, the conversation was over. I didn’t want to hear anything else from Ken Stoler.
I walked out of the office, down the hallway, and was five steps from the door when Octavio came bounding down the stairs in a rush of knees and elbows, yelling at me in Spanish and pointing back up the stairs.
I thought I heard the word ‘baño’ and I knew that meant bathroom, but there was no calming him. I tried to hold him there and get him to slow down, but he broke away from me and ran back to the kitchen, yelling the whole way.
There was a light on at the top of the stairs, but the stairs themselves were dark. I looked back at Ken and he shrugged, but I saw fear in his eyes.
I pulled my gun and started up.
As I mounted the steps I felt something sticky beneath my boots. I shined my light on the stairs and saw a long smear of blood leading up to the landing.
I took a deep breath and kept going.
Chapter 9
There was a puddle of blood at the top of the stairs and a long black smear leading down a corridor to the right. I kept my gun up, working the corners to maximize cover, and followed the blood trail into the locker room.
The locker room was at the far back corner of the second floor, and I knew there was no other way out. Whatever it was, I was about to meet it face-to-face.
The blood trail led into the bathroom. The floor was white tile, and the black blood glistened against it like a poorly made brush stroke. The smell made me want to vomit.
I passed the banks of urinals and turned the corner into the showers, my finger on the trigger, ready to fire. There, propped against the back wall in a puddle of his own blood, was Carlos. He had pulled his bandage off and tossed it aside. His eyes were cloudy white, but streaked with crimson. They were vacant and sunken into his face like pits. The barrel of his gun was resting across his chest.
I lowered my gun. “What are you doing up here?”
He didn’t seem to hear me.
“Carlos?”
His hand and his gun fell from his chest and hit the tile beside him. He still held it loosely.
“What are you doing, Carlos?”
“Did you come up here to stop me?”
His voice shook me. It was coming out of lungs that even as we spoke were filling with blood.
“What can you say to stop me?”
He was right, of course. There was nothing I could say. I had no idea what kind of pain he was in, and it wasn’t fair for me to judge him for wanting to put it behind him. It still horrified me, though.
“Are you…you gonna say…”
“No,” I said quickly. “No. I won’t stop you or say anything.”
I watched him roll his eyes to the ceiling. His chest rose and fell with the pain of breathing.
“Carlos,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
He coughed hard. “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “You didn’t bite me.”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry that you’re hurting and I can’t do anything for you. I don’t know anything about how to use the stuff around here.”
He coughed again, and black bits of his lungs landed in his lap. He looked down at the pieces of himself and moaned horribly.
I didn’t know how to comfort him and I felt like all I was doing was making his last moments painfully public.
But at the same time, I don’t think he wanted me to leave. He wanted to talk, to say anything, just to keep his hold on his humanity for a little while longer.
I lowered my eyes to the tile, feeling like an idiot. He needed to hear something from me, something that acknowledged his humanity, but I couldn’t think of anything that made sense.
“Eddie?”
“What is it, Carlos?”
“I’m really scared. I don’t want this to happen. I want to hold my son again.”
“I know, Carlos. I’m sorry.”
“I’m going to miss hearing people speak,” he said. “I’m going to miss the sound of words.”
“Carlos, I don’t know what to say. I wish I could say something to make this all better, but I can’t.”
“It’s fine,” he said, and let his chin fall to his chest.
He was quiet for a long time after that. Finally he said, “Did you call your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yes, I think so. She’s scared.”
“And Matthew?”
“What?” Matthew was his son’s name.<
br />
“You have a boy, right?”
“Yes. I think he’s fine, too.”
“I have a son.”
“I know. I’ve seen his picture.”
“Yeah. I’d like to see him. Can you get it for me? In my wallet.”
I nodded quietly and got his wallet out of his back pocket. There was a picture of his wife and his son and I took it out and put it in his hands.
He looked down at it and coughed. His chin sank into his chest and I saw his whole body deflate as the breath left his body.
For a moment, I thought he was gone. But then his eyes flew open and he screamed—or tried to, anyway. It turned to liquid in his throat.
He was panting heavily. I had my finger wrapped around my trigger, the gun tucked out of sight behind me, just in case he turned before he got what he wanted to say out.
When at last he settled into a series of shallow breaths he said, “Do you know what’s so scary about dying like this?”
I shook my head. My finger fell off the trigger.
“I’m losing my mind. I mean, I’m really losing it. I can’t think.”
“It’s the pain. I know it hurts.”
“No, not the pain. It’s the forgetting, the not feeling anything.”
“Carlos, I—”
“I have a wife.”
“I know.”
“But I don’t know her. I don’t remember her. I can’t even think of her name. I try to think of her and I don’t see anything in my mind. There’s nothing there. It’s a blank space and nothing else. I know I’m supposed to love her, but I don’t remember love or pain or any of it. My son…don’t tell him I couldn’t remember his name.”
“I won’t.”
“I won’t have a soul, will I?”
There was no use in me saying anything. Nothing I could say could reach him anymore. He was becoming a shell.
“Leave me alone,” he said, suddenly sounding lucid again.
“What are you going to—”
“Leave me one bullet.”
“Carlos—”
“Hurry.” He coughed several times, hard. “Please.”
I hurried. I took the magazine from his gun and checked to make sure there was one in the chamber.
“Okay,” I said as I helped him put his fingers around the grip. I had to help him lift it to his mouth. It took two hands, it was so heavy.
“Okay,” he said.
“I’ll be outside.”
I turned and walked away. Just around the corner I stopped, and waited, and listened.
I flinched when the gun went off. The sound of it reverberated so loudly in the shower stall I thought it would split the floor under my feet.
My head fell back against the wall and I let the tears fall freely. When I caught my breath I wiped my nose across the back of my arm and went back to his body.
He was dead. The gun was down by his side and his head rested peacefully against the wall. His mouth was slightly open in a mock expression of surprise, but there was very little blood on the wall behind him. I was surprised by that. It almost looked clean.
I kneeled down in front of him and wondered how something so awful could have happened. None of it made sense.
I heard footsteps on the tile floor coming up behind me—fast, hurried footsteps. I didn’t bother to turn around.
It was the gardener, Octavio. His voice was soft, apologetic. “¿Señor?”
“Get out,” I said in a hoarse whisper, turning my head only slightly in his direction.
“¿Señor?”
“God damn it,” I said, spinning around and stabbing my gun at him. “Get out. Get out. Get the hell out of here!”
On his face was tenderness. There was no sign of fear in it. Only grace. He looked beyond me to Carlos and crossed himself. Then he turned and walked away and left me with my gun pointing at nothing.
Chapter 10
I closed his eyes with the palm of my hand.
There was nothing I could do for the body. It would have to stay there until the world was back on its rails, and that looked to be a long ways off from where I was standing.
Besides, my own family was out there, somewhere, and they needed me.
But I was also thinking about his wife and son not knowing whether he was alive or dead.
At least I had been able to talk to my wife. The cruel change that killed Carlos had robbed him of even that kindness.
I took the gun from Carlos’s hand. The slide was still locked back in the empty position. I collected all the remaining ammunition and divided the bullets evenly between our two guns. It worked out to fourteen rounds a piece.
I took his driver’s license out of his wallet, and slipped it into my gun belt. His address wasn’t far from the station.
Downstairs, the others were sitting in the break room around a cheap plywood card table. Ken was over by the sink, watching me warily.
When I walked into the room they all stopped talking and stiffened nervously. I probably looked a little crazy. I’m sure Octavio told them what he had seen upstairs in the shower.
I didn’t try to change their minds. I put the gun on the table so that one of them could grab it.
“There’s a gun for you. Una pistola. And here are the keys to your truck. Sus llaves para la troca. You’ve got fourteen bullets for the gun. I don’t know how to say bullets in Spanish. I’m sorry. Lock the door behind me when I leave. Or go somewhere else. I don’t care.”
With that I walked away. None of them said anything to me. They just watched me walk out the door and into the night.
Ken followed me out to the parking lot. “Officer Hudson,” he said. His voice sounded winded. “Officer Hudson, wait. Please.”
I slowed, but kept walking.
He caught up with me. “Officer Hudson, where are you going?”
“I told you,” I said. “I’m going to find my family. I’m not staying here.”
“You can’t leave us.”
“We’ve already had this conversation,” I said. “You’re as safe here as anywhere.”
“But the other officer? Did you—”
“No.”
“But I heard a shot—”
“He did it himself.”
“Oh.”
I got to the truck and unlocked it. The inside looked like crap. There were empty soda cans and fast food wrappers and packs of cigarettes everywhere. It smelled like stale smoke and sweat. The dashboard was blistered and cracked from years of exposure to the south Texas sun.
I swept all the trash off the seat and climbed in.
“Officer,” Ken said. “I don’t want to stay here. I want to keep moving. That’s the best way to stay alive.”
“I’m not taking you anywhere,” I said. “I’m going to pick up Carlos’s family and then my family. Nowhere else.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “Just as long as I don’t have to get boxed in somewhere.”
“Suit yourself,” I said, and waited with the truck in gear for him to climb in.
He wrinkled his nose at the smell, and had to push his glasses back up.
“This is the station commander’s truck?”
“Yep,” I said, and peeled out of the parking lot.
He held on to the door as we turned onto the road. “You’d think a high-ranking firefighter like a station commander could afford something better than this.”
He was bouncing all over the seat.
“It runs,” I said. “That’s all that counts.”
Carlos’s address was on the near west side. It was pretty close to downtown, but still on the west side of Jewett Street, which serves as the boundary line between the West and Downtown Divisions.
Most of the neighborhoods west of Jewett were rough, but the families there tried to keep their homes in good shape. They mowed their grass and planted trees and had contracts with termite companies.
But the people on the east side of Jewett had given up a long time ago.
I
n the old days, those streets had been the heroin capital of San Antonio.
My district was just a couple of miles north of Carlos’s neighborhood, and I used to make calls on both sides of Jewett when the downtown guys were getting hammered with calls. I knew the area well enough, so I was able to stay away from the high-traffic areas and still make pretty good time.
I rolled the windows down and let the breeze cool my head. Carlos’s death upset me in a way I couldn’t really understand. He and I were never really anything more than passing acquaintances, yet I felt his absence like I was missing someone I had known and cared about for years.
I couldn’t see any lights, and I found my thoughts mirrored by the uncertain darkness surrounding me. Almost directly overhead, the clouds were backlit with moonlight and shined like wet pewter. On the horizon, the clouds were tinged with a dull orange and streaked through with charcoal scars.
Ken saw me watching the darkened houses slip past and said, “I’m sorry about your friend.”
“Thanks,” I said, not really wanting to talk with him.
“I mean it,” he said. “I know you don’t think I understand. After what I said earlier, I mean. But I do. I do understand.”
We passed two men on their knees who were eating a body they had ripped apart. They looked up as we drove by, blood and gore oozing from their lips.
“I lost somebody too,” he said.
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “That zombie I told you about? That one I tied up back at the school?”
“I remember.”
His glasses were hanging on the tip of his nose, but he didn’t touch them. He looked down at his lap and took a breath.
“Her name was Margaret Sewell. She was a teacher at the school.”
“Were you guys—”
“No,” he said quickly. “Nothing like that. I would have liked us to be, but I never got the nerve to ask her out.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Thanks.” And then it was his turn to look out the window.
We drove on for a little while, dodging crowds when we saw them, staying away from traffic jams, and we talked about the zombies.
“You basically have three kinds of zombies,” he said. “At least that’s how we divide them up on my website. You got the Hollywood zombies, like in the movies, though sometimes people call those Pittsburgh zombies because that’s where Night of the Living Dead was made. They’re dead people that have been re-animated somehow.