“Too bad you don’t have any beer,” I said, just to say something.
He laughed. “Oh man, you’re right. This would be a perfect moment for a couple of guys to drink a beer.” He smiled at me. “It’s been a really shit day.”
The lapel radio chattered, but it didn’t seem to interest him. Time was almost frozen as we sat here, two lonely guys with nowhere to go.
“Do you have any family?” I asked.
“Nah, man. I hope my bitch ex-wife got torn apart by these things. Would serve her right.”
“Where’s your parents?”
“Morristown, Tennessee,” he said.
It sucked not being able to check on my parents. I didn’t want to think about it, because somewhere inside, I knew they were dead, or would be soon. “What’s it like being a cop?” I asked, just for something to say. And because I’d always been a little curious.
MacDougal shrugged. “It’s just like any job, I guess. You have to show up and you try to find ways to make it fun.”
“Seems like it would be really fun to just speed around and break traffic laws whenever you want.”
He laughs. “That’s not the job, you know? But yeah, that stuff was fun at first. Then you just get bored of it and you’re mostly sitting around trying to fill up the time ‘til your shift ends.” He thinks for a minute and then continues. “When I was a kid, I used to work in this mall right here at Vitamin World. It was a tiny little store hidden in a corner and barely anyone came in. So I just played Gameboy and hit on random girls walking by, which made it fun. It got to the point that I resented customers who came in and interrupted my fun time. Being a cop is so much like that. I literally get sick of people and having to deal with them.”
“Yeah, but isn’t that the job?” I laughed. “What else are you gonna do?”
“I’d rather sit around on Tinder and talk to girls. And if I’m having a good convo with a girl and I have to deal with a speeder or a domestic or something, they’ve already got one strike against them because I’m irritated right off the bat. It’s like: ‘Hey asshole, I’m talkin’ to a hot blonde on Tinder, and now I gotta deal with you’, you know?” He looks at me like he expects me to relate.
I didn’t know what Tinder was. “Who can blame you for that?” I replied, because I just agree with people when I’m uncomfortable disagreeing.
The wind gusted so hard the car shook from it. Zombie hair blew like a glamrock video. It was mostly children surrounding the car, so it was easy to see over their heads. We sat there, staring out the windshield, where Home Alone clung with his tree frog arms. Walkers shambled around the sidewalk of the mall, but they didn’t venture toward us. A lot of the ones that had been headed our way had lost interest when MacDougal got back into the car.
“They knew something was going to happen,” MacDougal suddenly said, staring off into space.
“Who knew?”
“Someone,” he says, looking at me seriously. “We were notified two weeks ago of an imminent threat, and they sent in this hardass Incident Commander to coordinate emergency critical incident response procedures for two days straight. No one would tell us any information, but we knew it was a federal mandate made across the nation and the FBI was responsible.”
“It’s probably coincidence,” I said. “There’s no way they knew this could happen. And if they did, they would’ve prepared us.”
He shook his head. “In the twelve years I’ve been on the force, there hasn’t been a federal mandate. We’ve never had a meeting like this. The big wigs were scared, and it spooked us, too. Normally, we’re a bunch of wise asses when it comes to training ops, but the brass wasn’t having it. If anyone so much as smirked, the commander chewed them a new asshole.”
“Hmm,” I said, thinking. “So, if you had all this training, why was this evacuation such a clusterfuck?”
MacDougal laughed bitterly. “You think we were prepared for this? This shit came out of nowhere and hit us from every side.”
“Officer MacDougal, you’re basically telling me that terrorists have somehow figured out how to turn us into zombies.” I shook my head.
He shrugged. “Beats me, man. I just know that the Brass knew something, and they weren’t telling us.”
Staring out the window, I pondered the implications. It seemed like more paranoid nonsense, because a zombie virus is really science fiction. This couldn’t be what it seemed--it had to be something else. But why would they have some nationwide security meeting, unless they knew something?
I fixated on a beautiful woman nearby, watching her hair whip wildly about as dervishes of wind frolicked. I couldn’t see any bites on her, but she walked stiffly, as though rigor mortis were setting in, and I knew she was one of them. Was she even beautiful, or were my imagination and the distance just conspiring to make her seem that way? Everyone is beautiful when you’ve got no one.
Suddenly, there was a loud thump, followed by another one. One of the creatures was ramming its head violently against the rear driver’s side window. I had a perfect view of his face and hands as he started thrashing like he was in a mosh pit.
“Shit,” said MacDougal. “Haven’t seen them do that before.” He put the car in gear and gunned it forward, sending McCauley Culkin flying off the hood. “How about that beer?” he said, laughing and accelerating across the parking lot.
As we rounded the bend in the mall, turning onto the TGIF side, we saw the wasteland of the parking lot, so jammed with vehicles as to be impassable. Fires burned everywhere amidst the cars, and literally hundreds of dead people wandered throughout the lot. “Oh wow, fuck this,” MacDougal said.
I actually started laughing. His understatement, tone of voice, this crazy shit in front of us: we were both losing it now.
MacDougal threw us into reverse.
The lapel radio crackled. “Unit 432 here, Code 30!” a man shouted. “I’m surrounded in the bathroom of Cole Muffler on Erie and Kinne! I need backup right fucking now.”
“That’s Fletcher!” MacDougal said, turning the volume back up and peeling out so the car tires squealed.
“Hey Fletch, it’s Mac--I’m right at Shoppingtown and headed your way,” he shouted into the walkie-talkie. “Hold on two more minutes, buddy.”
“Just get the fuck over here, Mac. I’m barricaded in a bathroom and this door is fuckin cardboard.”
“I gotcha, Fletch, I’m right there,” he said. “Switch to channel 2, okay, buddy?”
“Copy that, switching to channel 2.”
MacDougal fidgeted with his belt radio as he wove through the parking lot, squealing around each turn and hightailing it back the way we came.
“Now, Mac, now, Jesus Christ, the hinge is off the door,” Fletch yelled.
“Just another minute and I’ve got you,” MacDougal said.
Cole Muffler was a block away. MacDougal skidded into the parking lot and got out, his door swinging closed but not all the way. He shot two zombies nearby and ran for the door in the front of the shop, whipping out his flashlight and disappearing inside. I pulled his door shut, hit the autolock, and waited tensely.
Dead people walked across the lot, even turning to face the headlights, but it was as if they were blinded and couldn’t see me. I heard the muffled bangs of guns inside. Pop pop…pause…pop…pause…pop pop pop pop. I watched three zombies enter the door after MacDougal, attracted by his gunfire, attracted to their own death. I waited.
Childish thoughts entered my head. If this is the biblical end times, can zombies go to heaven? I’m not religious; I just started thinking about forgiveness. A cop and a priest walk into a bar, followed by a zombie…cop says, “Bartender give me a good stiff drink.” Bartender throws down a shot of Jameson in front of the zombie. Cop says, “What the fuck are you doing?” Bartender says, “What? You said to give the stiff a good drink.” Zombie ignores drink, bites priest. Cop shoots zombie. Priest is looking pale and sweaty and cop points the gun at him. “No, no, wait,” the pr
iest says, holding up his hands. “Please don’t, ‘cuz I’m definitely going to Hell!”
Okay, that joke wasn’t funny. It was almost there though. This is what happens when I’m terrified—my brain just starts farting around. I’m watching those characters in my head, for some reason wishing I could make up a good zombie joke. It keeps my mind off of the lifeless building in front of me and no sign of Officer MacDougal.
Nothing came out of Cole Muffler for a long time. I’m thinking of resurrection. Wondering what special place in Hell the Christian God would put me if he existed. Then a dead person shambled out. It was a fat woman, somewhere in her 50s, with blood smeared down her jaw. She seemed to stare at the car, then turned left towards the Mexican restaurant. Cue fat joke. I waited and watched, ready to jump into MacDougal’s seat if needed. The next person to emerge was a cop, not MacDougal--another guy. He had that beefy cop-shaped body, with his beer gut dangling from under his bulletproof vest.
The next to emerge was a thin man in a Cole Muffler jumpsuit. Actually, I didn’t see their logo on it, it was just a jumpsuit and I assumed it was an employee without paying much attention, because right behind him Officer MacDougal emerged. He had blood smeared across his neck with his gun dangling almost limply from his fingers. He stopped and looked around then began heading straight for the car, like he remembered it somehow.
I sat there, immobilized. I was in the passenger seat, and I knew the car belonged to this cop. I also knew, somewhere inside, that he was dead. But I couldn’t admit it, I watched him walk towards the car in that stilted marionette way, and I just sat there frozen. I wished he would unlock the car and get in, even though I could see the keys dangling in the ignition. I just wanted things back to how they were five minutes ago, with this big strong ape cop emasculating and protecting me.
MacDougal pounded on the glass. His face was a twisted mask, and I knew there was zero chance of him being okay. But still I sat there frozen for a few moments while he thumped on the glass. Then he did the zombie head banger thing, wailing fiercely on the glass, and I hopped across the laptop and gearshift in between driver and passenger seat, and I gunned the accelerator as I threw the car into drive. It leaped forward, trampling across a body of some kind as I whipped the wheel to the right and careened out of the lot. I wondered to myself what class of felony I’d just committed. I wondered if he had guns in the trunk.
I jumped onto Erie Blvd and went left for some reason--west--towards the city and damnation!
Chapter 13: Now
Charisse is just an idea dwindling into the distance far behind me. When you’re running from honor and death, everything feels like cowardice rushing through you, even the cold air across your face. It isn’t wind, which is coming and going. Icy fingers claw into me, the hands of the woman I love falling further into my past, as if off a cliff.
You can’t love her; you don’t even know her, my mind said.
My breath comes in ragged gasps. Cow-ard, cow-ard, cow-ard. Inhale ‘cow,’ exhale ‘ard.’ Chronic self-derogation. Where can I find a shrink in the apocalypse?
While the other side of my mind says, Don’t be ridiculous, you would’ve died a slow, agonized death if you tried to attack Mavmart.
I stumble down the hill feeling like freedom and cowardice combined. I don’t even acknowledge the friends on Team Doyle I left behind; that’s just human sacrifice to me. All I can do is run: if I stop, I die. The further I go, the safer I feel and the more I justify everything. It’s ridiculous to throw your life away for the first girl who was nice to you.
I love her, I reply to myself.
No, you don’t. You’re just lonely and pathetic and desperate.
I run straight into a blacking-out nightmare, across all the intersecting roads, unswept, unpaved, as black as asphalt, but blacker still because of the type of night we live in now. A strip of tar going this way and a darker strip going that way, I’m not even choosing my direction; just following the land downward because it’s easy. I trip on something, thumping heavy against cold hard ground, scraping my hands.
It’s a parking block.
I’m sorry, Charisse.
You’re a coward, Sam, Charisse replies. I see her brown eyes in my mind.
My eyes adjust and there’s a lighter blackness ahead. The parking lots spread out in every direction, huge charcoal gray smears, lighter than black. I run north, away from my own love and my own shame, jumping fences into yards full of wet, knee-high grass, soaking my pants. I piss my way through grass, feeling my urine running down my legs, and I keep pissing and running. I smell shit and see shambling shapes everywhere; could’ve been my imagination, but I run faster.
By the time I stop, I’m as smelly and dead as all the rest. It’s a gas station off Hillside on the highway. It’s the only place I know in Camillus from gaming nights a decade ago, and it’s been completely gutted. Smashed windows gape like the jagged teeth of some kraken rising out of a cement ocean.
We used to play Dungeons and Dragons out here years ago, a few guys and me. It was a good group, but not the same guys I played Warhammer with at the mall. I was the Dungeon Master for a zombie campaign at one point. In my game, women were immune to the virus, and only men could be turned. Which meant that my players were some of the few remaining men left in this world full of women.
My girlfriend, Veronica, was playing this campaign as well, with a female magician character. One of the funniest moments happened when the players were captured by a tribe of dangerous warrior women who intended to breed with them. Veronica knew the tribe would kill any foreign women, so she cast an illusion spell on herself to appear as a man. When the warrior women tried to rape this man, grabbing hold of his penis to arouse him, their hands passed right through the cock.
“It’s a ghost cock!” one of the warrior women said, and the whole table lost it, laughing so hard we cried.
Most of that campaign was a pervert fest. The plot kinda got lost, and Veronica never lived down the nickname Ghost Cock.
This gas station had been our regular coffee and snack pit stop. We would walk over here and load up on chips, dip, ice cream, and java.
Now those gaping windows are televisions into a thousand memories, warm memories in which I was the one walking with my arm around a beautiful woman, and all of the other gamers were jealous. The opposite of my Warhammer 40K days at Cloud City. Veronica made me a stud. I could break down sobbing on the pavement in front of that dead store, as if it’s her corpse lying in front of me. Except I hear a scuff.
Zombies always scuff. It’s really fortunate they don’t know how to sneak like ninjas or my ass would’ve been grass a long time ago. Sure enough, there it is--a hulking one-armed negro beast rounding the gas pump like a horror straight out of Dead Island. Did he smell me or something? Do zombies have night vision?
I stand transfixed, torn between two women and a zombie. Veronica is long gone. She’d dumped me when we graduated Lemoyne and she moved to New York City with a promising career at a nonprofit research center for developmentally disabled children.
“I love you so much, Sam,” she had said. “I really enjoyed our time together, and I feel so lucky to have been able to share so much beauty with you in this world. I just know that we are two fundamentally different people, and it would never work between us in the long term.”
“We’ve been together four years,” I’d replied, numb, taking a bite out of my sandwich because I didn’t know what else to do.
“I know,” she said. “It’s been the best four years of my life. But it’s time for me to move on.”
I’d bawled my eyes out, then screamed and thrown my sandwich and then cried some more and begged her to give me a chance to fix whatever she didn’t like about me. She cried, too. And told me it wasn’t about me, it was about her exploring the world and other possibilities, etc.
That was five years ago. Veronica and I had drifted so far that our only contact was saying ‘happy birthday’ to each other
’s Facebook walls once a year. She was at ground zero in NYC and most certainly dead.
Charisse is warm and alive and waiting in a fortress guarded by anywhere from 30 to 50 armed men. But I’m not Rambo, Doyle is, and even Rambo would get killed trying to attack that place in real life!
All that’s left is me and this one-armed zombie lurching toward me. I’d made it out of Camillus alive—me and only me. I had nothing to live for at all, but I was still alive and too afraid to die.
Everyone reading might call this cowardice, they might even think it was Jesus who saved me, or astrology, but I know that I’m just a slightly clever and fortunate animal. Because how else could this spindly, idiotic jackass survive while all around him good, strong, courageous men were dragged to Hell?
My rabid ears perk up like a wild beast as another of these monsters tries to flank me. I bolt north again, dashing up the highway embankment to see endless road stretching into darkness, no headlights in sight. I’m awake, and I’m alive, and I’m free. I run until tomorrow doesn’t exist anymore.
When I stop, there’s an earthmover sitting in front of me, and a bunch of dead houses beckoning me. My breathing is ragged, hormones coursing through my body so intensely I can kill anything with my bare hands. Raw animal power surges inside, and I’m a wild robust creature known as man: nimble, fast, capable, and above all--alive!
I’m outside myself, watching me lope through the night, dodging evil, flowing down the asphalt, toward the neighborhood I used to play Dungeons and Dragons. A big sign say it’s made by Ryan Homes. Somehow, my eyes have adjusted, or there are more stars now than ten minutes ago. At the mouth of the neighborhood I stop, gasping for air and surveying.
Every house has some fake brick facade that’s made out of plastic. They looked so awkward and unnatural and I’m completely removed from all the people who wanted to spend their lives living in big stupid boxes.
I see clearly the dead civilization we were a part of: its facades, its image, its endless attempts to appear interesting without actually being interesting.
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