Plague of the Undead

by Joe McKinney

  But none of us were laughing now.

  And Billy wasn’t wasting any time, either. He kicked at one of the wall speakers until it broke loose from its mounts. Then he scooped it up, lifted it two-handed over his head, and brought it down on top of Jake’s head.

  That dropped him.

  Jake collapsed in a heap and didn’t move anymore.

  By that point Wayne was almost on top of Billy, but Billy was able to step to one side at the last instant, kick the back of Wayne’s knees, and drop him to the floor so that he could finish him with another two-handed blow to the back of the head.

  When it was done, Billy stood over the bodies of our two friends, his chest heaving like a bellows, and looked at Brad, Jim, and Sandra.

  “Well,” he said, “what now?”

  Over the next three days, Billy, our representative from West Point, emerged as our greatest resource. He worked tirelessly. I don’t think I saw him stop once.

  Our first problem was what to do with the bodies of Jake and Wayne. We couldn’t leave them inside, we all knew that, but it didn’t seem like there was any way to get rid of them.

  It was Billy who proposed pushing them out the half-windows up near the overhead luggage racks. They were high enough up on the side of the train that the zombies outside couldn’t force their way in. The only trouble was, no one wanted to touch the bodies. Finally, Brad ordered Billy to do it, and the rest of us watched as he dragged the bodies of Jake and Wayne up to the window and shoved them out.

  The zombies grabbed the bodies before they’d even cleared the window and began to rip them to pieces.

  But none of us had the stomach to watch that.

  We all turned away and pretended it wasn’t happening.

  Later that afternoon, it became obvious we were going to have to do something about going to the bathroom. Pissing was no trouble for the guys. They could just go over to the door well and piss down the short flight of stairs. But the girls, and whoever had to take a dump, couldn’t. Putting your back to the door where all those zombies were trying to break in was like taunting them. They pressed even harder to get in.

  Plus, there was the issue of privacy.

  Brad put Billy to work removing the seats from the floor. He used a dime to unscrew them, and once he had them loose, he hoisted them over to the head of the car and arranged them like a horseshoe, like cubicle walls, so that people could do their business behind a sort of screen. The smell was bad, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances.

  As night came on and we started to tire, Billy worked at prying loose the seat cushions on the few remaining chairs so that we could have pillows for our heads. I used mine as a writing desk, where I continued to scribble notes about what was said and done.

  Later still, it started to rain.

  Billy got excited, though at first none of us knew why. Then he pulled down the plastic covers from the overhead lights and slid one of them out of a luggage rack window, forming a sort of gutter to catch the rain. It trickled down inside the car, where Billy caught it in an empty water bottle.

  “We’re gonna need water,” he said to Brad. “You guys help me.”

  “Good idea,” Brad said, and though I could tell it plagued Jim and Sandra to admit it, they thought so, too.

  Brad, Jim, and Sandra ordered the rest of us to partner up and do as Billy was doing, and within a few minutes, we’d filled every container we could find.

  When we were done, Brad said, “Do you think that’s enough?”

  “For a few days, maybe,” said Billy. “Who knows? We’ll have to start conserving and rationing. And if anyone’s got any food, that’s gonna be an issue as well.”

  Once again, it was as if a peal of thunder had gone through our group. I don’t know if any of the others had already considered the food issue, but I certainly hadn’t. I looked around the car and saw a few others pulling their backpacks close to their chests.

  The zombies went on moaning outside, and inside, Billy kept on working.

  Sometime during the early morning, the zombies managed to knock down part of the door. The sudden rise in volume woke everyone, except for Billy, who had evidently never gone to sleep.

  In the dark it was hard to see what was happening, but after my eyes adjusted, I saw Billy hacking away at the hands reaching through the door.

  “Bring me that chair,” Billy said to Sandra and Jim. With his chin he was gesturing at the cushionless frame of a chair at their feet. “Hurry! I need to brace this door.”

  Jim grabbed the guy next to him and pushed him toward the door. “Take it to him!”

  “Why me?” the guy said.

  “Hurry!”

  Jim could be commanding when he yelled, and the guy obeyed almost out of reflex. He picked the chair up and brought it back to Billy. He stopped well short of the doorway, though, and held it out to Billy like he was trying to feed a rope to someone clinging to the side of a cliff. Billy managed to get ahold of it and jam it down into the door well, and between the chair and the handrail he and Jake had installed the day before, the doors were secure again.

  “That’ll hold them for now,” he said. “But we’re going to need something else to make sure it holds.”

  Brad nodded.

  “Okay,” Billy said. “You do that. Get somebody to help you.”

  Billy looked around for a volunteer, but nobody would look him in the eyes.

  In disgust, he shook his head and went off to do it himself.

  Around noon the next day, Tynice went into a diabetic seizure.

  “Somebody needs to get her a candy bar or something,” Brad said. “Who’s got a candy bar?”

  He looked around the room, his gaze finally settling on Russell Bailey, a computer programmer from UT Austin.

  “Russell, I saw a Hershey bar in your bag.”

  Russell pulled his backpack tight against his chest. “I’m not giving her my food.”

  “Russell, you have to. She needs it.”

  “Well, I need it, too. We’re gonna run out of food soon, and what am I gonna do then?”

  “Russell,” Brad said, “this is for the good of the group. You have a lot and she doesn’t have any. You need to give her some of yours.”

  “Bullshit,” he said. “It’s not my fault she didn’t bring what she needed. I have food in my bag because I had the foresight to put it there. If she didn’t do the same, why is that my problem?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Give her some of yours, then.”

  “Russell, that’s not helpful.”

  Then Brad motioned to Billy. “Get his food. Distribute it around.”

  “Don’t,” Russell said, pleading with Billy. “Please don’t.”

  “Give me the bag, Russell,” Billy said.

  Russell shook his head, and Billy, wearing a look of grim determination, moved in to take it from him.

  Over the next four days, we lost six people. Tynice and Gustavo both went into diabetic shock and died. The other four, weakened by a lack of food and no water, gradually shut down, and when we woke to the sunrise on the morning of the fifth day, they were dead. Once again Billy had to crush their heads to keep them from coming back, and then pushed the bodies out the window. Again we all looked away as the ever-growing crowd of zombies outside ate their corpses.

  It rained later that day and we were able to get more water, but the food shortage was becoming critical. We were down to a dozen people, all of whom were starving, and a small package of beef jerky to go around.

  “Well, we need to divide this up,” said Jim. “Here, I’ll do it.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Brad. “We decide together.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” said the girl from SMU. “And while the two of you argue about it, the rest of us starve. Just hand a piece to everybody.”

  Brad and Jim and Sandra went off to another corner of the train car and talked about it. When they came back, they each h
ad a big piece of jerky. They handed some of the smaller pieces around and told us to divide it up.

  “But there’s not enough here for any of us,” said Billy.

  “Times are hard,” Brad said. “I know. I understand. But we’ll just have to tighten our belts.”

  I got a piece and went off to one side to eat it. I hadn’t had anything in more than a day, and tore into it eagerly.

  A moment later, Brad and Jim and Sandra went over to Billy and whispered to him. He looked upset, but he didn’t yell. He just took his piece of jerky and tore it into three parts and gave each of them a piece. Then he went over to the far side of the car and sat down. He looked utterly exhausted and used up, but he didn’t protest.

  Then they came to me. Brad asked me to give up what I had left for them.

  He said as the leaders they needed to stay sharp.

  They couldn’t afford to go hungry.

  “Can’t do it,” I said. “I’m the press. I’m an observer. You can’t do anything that keeps me from that role.”

  They reluctantly agreed and went off to get what was left of the jerky from the others.

  The next morning, Billy was dead.

  None of us had the energy to move. We were all starving, most of us were sick. And—always—there was the constant roar of the moaning crowd just outside, reminding us that we were not long for this world.

  “What are we gonna do?” asked the girl from SMU.

  “I think it’s plain what we have to do,” said Brad. He looked at Jim and Sandra, and though they didn’t want to agree with a Democrat just out of principle, they still nodded their heads in assent.

  “I don’t understand,” the girl said. “What? What are we gonna do?”

  “We have to eat,” Brad said.

  The girl looked at him, dumbfounded, not understanding.

  “Eat what?”

  Brad, with his mouth set in a harsh, grimacing frown, pointed at the body of the soldier who had done so much for all of us.

  Two weeks later, there were only four of us left—Brad, Jim, Sandra, and myself.

  Sandra was not doing well.

  Actually, none of us were doing well, but she was feeling really bad. We hadn’t been able to cook any of the friends we’d eaten, and the shock of consuming all that raw human flesh was doing terrible things to our systems.

  Sandra was doubled over on her side, holding her gut with both hands and moaning like one of the zombies outside.

  Jim was sitting next to her, stroking her hair.

  “I’m dying,” she said.

  “You’re not going to die,” Jim said. “You’re just sick. This’ll pass.”

  She looked up at him, and there was pain and fear in her eyes, but also acceptance. That acceptance was the hardest thing for me to see, for I had seen it before, on the others that we’d already eaten. And when people started to get that look in their eyes, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  It was only a matter of time.

  “I’m dying, Jim. I know it.”

  He didn’t say anything, for I think he knew it, too.

  “Promise me,” she said. Her voice was weak, raspy.

  “Anything,” he said, still stroking her hair.

  For a moment, as she strained to look toward Brad Owens, who was sitting against the opposite wall, the acceptance and fear in her eyes changed to hatred.

  “Don’t let him eat me. I don’t want some liberal bastard eating me. I can’t die knowing some liberal sack of shit lived another day because of me.”

  She wanted to say more, but another wave of pain shot through her gut and she let out a choked scream.

  “She’s delirious,” Jim said to me.

  But when he put his hand back on her face and pushed the hair out of her face, she was dead.

  “Sandra?” Brad said. “Sandra, no, baby, no!”

  He lifted her head and cradled it in his lap, rocking her corpse gently, like a child he was trying to put to sleep.

  An hour or so later, Brad came over to him with the piece of metal from one of the seats that we’d been using to carve meat off of our friends.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  “Fuck off,” Jim said. “You’re not touching her.”

  “Jim,” Brad said. “Please don’t do this. We have to survive.”

  “She didn’t want a sorry sack of shit like you touching her. No worthless Democrat is going to touch her.”

  “I’ve as much right to her corpse as you do.”

  “Like hell.”

  I knew what was going to happen even before they lunged at each other. Jim knocked the blade from Brad’s hand and the next instant they were rolling around on the ground, their hands at each other’s throats.

  I took complete notes of what happened during the fight, but I guess that really doesn’t matter now. The end result was that they strangled each other. Democrat and Republican, neither would quit until they’d snuffed the life out of the other, and now they were both dead.

  So I sat there, the only member of the Young Americans left alive.

  And a short while later, I picked up the blade and started eating.

  I was rescued by the Chinese Army a week later.

  They hadn’t planned on finding me there. They hadn’t planned on finding anyone alive, I don’t think. Someone told me they were looking for the train, that they had spotted it from the air and went in to retrieve it because they needed it to deliver troops across the country. The zombie apocalypse, they told me, had been contained. For the most part. A few pockets of zombies remained, but those were being taken care of. I was lucky to be alive, they told me, but I could tell they didn’t think much of me for it. The first soldiers to board the train had taken one look at me, and at the pile of bones surrounding me, and had turned their heads to vomit.

  News of what had happened went ahead of me.

  The Chinese Army put me on a cargo ship and sent me back to the States. The ship’s crew seemed to already know everything about me, and that made mealtimes rough. As soon as I would enter the mess hall, the others would get up to leave. No one, it seemed, could stomach watching me eat.

  No one, it seemed, even back in the States, could watch me eat.

  Live with that long enough, and it hardens you.

  That’s why I live here, on this farm in Georgia, where I grow my own food and raise my own livestock.

  I live alone, and I like it just fine.

  That way, there’s nobody to turn up their nose if I like to eat the occasional steak raw. Besides, it’s nobody’s business but mine.

  This is still the goddamned U.S. of A., for Christ’s sake.

  Jimmy Finder and the Rise of the Templenauts

  “Is that your experiment?” Captain Fisher asked.

  The infantry captain gestured toward the boy on the other side of the one-way glass. From the look on Fisher’s face, it was obvious he didn’t think much of the kid. He certainly didn’t see humanity’s greatest hope in the war against the zombies. What he saw was a mop-haired runt, too skinny, too short, too awkward, about as far from a soldier as one could hope to find.

  “His name is Jimmy Finder,” Dr. David Knopf replied. “I try not to refer to him as my experiment.”

  “Finder? You’re kidding. That can’t be his real name, can it?”

  Knopf smiled amiably enough, but inside he was holding on to his patience with both hands. It was always the same with these military men, their smug condescending abuse and smirks of disdain whenever they were confronted with something that challenged the conventional wisdom of the battlefield.

  “James is all we were able to learn from him,” Knopf admitted. “We started calling him Finder after his abilities became apparent.”

  Fisher shook his head. “Frankly, doctor, I think this is all a load of crap. You should probably know that from the start.”

  Knopf’s expression carefully masked his frustration. It wouldn’t do any good to alienate the military now that the
y’d finally agreed to let him demonstrate Jimmy’s talents in the field. It had only taken twelve long years.

  “That’s all right, captain. I’m used to skepticism.”

  “It’s a wonder you still bother trying.”

  You bastard, Knopf thought. Fisher was really trying to bait him. “I believe in what we’re doing here, captain. I wouldn’t have put twelve years of my life into this project if I didn’t. That boy in there is going to save lives and help us turn the corner on this war.”

  Knopf, afraid he was about to say something he’d regret, turned his attention on Jimmy, and a familiar mix of pity and pride rose up in him. Twelve years earlier, a contingent of Warbots discovered the boy wandering the hills above the nearby town of Mill Valley, Ohio. The provisional government gave him to Knopf’s Weapons Research Team with orders that they find out how a two-year-old toddler had managed to survive an entire summer right under the noses of ten thousand zombies. It had taken Knopf three years to discover the answer. It took another nine before anybody in the military’s High Command would take him seriously enough to let him prove it. But he did find the truth.

  “You really believe that kid in there has psychic powers?”

  “That’s not exactly what he does,” Knopf said. “He’s not a psychic. He doesn’t predict the future or read minds, none of that gypsy fortune-teller stuff. Think of him as a sort of bloodhound that we’ve trained to sniff out zombies.” Fisher was staring at him, his expression inscrutable. “Look,” Knopf went on, “you’re familiar with the morphic field theory, right? The idea that zombies move in large groups because their brains are linked by a neuro-electric field in the reptilian core of their brains. Jimmy can pick up on that morphic field.”

  “I’ve heard the theory, doctor. I’ve also heard a lot of respectable scientists say that it’s a bunch of rubbish.”

  “It’s not rubbish, captain. You’ve probably experienced it yourself. Ever felt somebody staring at you from across the room? Or have you ever thought of somebody completely out of the blue, and then moments later they call you on the phone? Ever watched a large flock of birds change direction without running into each other? How about watched a school of fish? Same thing. It’s not rubbish. It’s a documented fact. And it’s what allows Jimmy to do what he does. Think of how helpful that would be on the battlefield. Think of the tactical advantage you’d have if you knew where your enemy was all the time.”