Undead L.A. 1

by Sagliani, Devan

  What could have happened to him to leave him in this condition?

  Edgar realized he could hear the man moaning, even though he was over a hundred feet away. There were no car horns, no traffic sounds, and worst of all, no planes. Edgar glanced up nervously to confirm his suspicion and saw not a single aircraft in the sky. As he looked back down, the man with the gnarled face raised his puss-covered hands in his direction and let out a delirious howl of hunger. The next thing Edgar knew the man was charging at him, his limbs oddly flailing as he moved.

  “What the fuck?”

  It was all he could manage before his 'fight or flight' instinct finally kicked in. He felt his legs go from being two solid and unyielding slabs of concrete to feeling like thin, rubbery trees as they abruptly unlocked, threatening to pitch him to the already hot asphalt of the parking lot. He wobbled for a millisecond as the awareness reached him and his adrenaline kicked in, then he pivoted and turned to run. His arms moved like two unattached windmills; his heart was racing now, pumping hot fear and fresh panic into him. It felt like he'd just slammed down ten shots of espresso all at once! Every thought ceased, his generally incessant inner monologue going surprisingly quiet as the reality of the danger of his situation fully set in. He seemed to be moving at half speed, the way he did sometimes in dreams, where everything else was moving normally and he was mired down in molasses. He felt the muscles of his right calf seize up as he urgently kicked away from the ground in an attempt to force start a run, and no lack of warming up was going to stop him from escaping.

  Not today, he thought with fierce determination.

  He sprinted forward a few steps, feeling a new confidence enter into him. It didn't matter what was really going on. There would be plenty of time to figure all that out later. All that mattered now was that he escape in one piece. He locked his eyes on the open door of the Escalade and decided it was his best chance for sanctuary and a possible getaway. His feet pounded against the ground as he turned toward the door, and he gave it all he had. He marveled for a split second about how amazingly resilient the human body was; how the mind, so often murky and tired and muddled, could be cleared instantly in the face of an eminent threat to one's survival.

  It's written in the DNA, he thought.

  He heard the feral animal grunts of the man behind him. He tilted his head slightly to see if the walking nightmare was in his peripheral vision, all the while keeping his body moving straight for the refuge of the sports utility vehicle. He saw a flash of oily, thick, inky black hair matted with blood, and something else that looked like brain matter. It was moving incredibly fast. His heart thundered in his ears as he pushed his body for more, but it wasn't enough. He felt the cold hand clamping down on his shoulder as spikes of panic raced through him, making him numb.

  There was something heavy on the back of his legs, pushing the fabric of his suit pants into the crease of his knees. He felt the back of his right shoe push hard into his silky dress sock, and then come loose. The next thing he knew something solid hit him in the lower back, right where he hurt the most from sitting through long flights. Then the ground came up, rushing unexpectedly toward his face. He put out the palms of his hands to break his fall. He felt a sharp sting as they connected with the hard ground, drawing blood. He tumbled forward and the monster clinging to him rolled with him like a heavy sack filled with foul liquid. A strong smell overpowered him, and he realized it was coming from the man. He came to a clumsy stop flat on his back, nearly knocking the breath out of him. The palms of his hands screamed in pain, but he held them up to force the man back. The smell of fresh blood only seemed to drive the man further into a frenzy as he snapped viciously at Edgar's face, leaning over and drooling what smelled like rancid meat saliva, missing his face by near inches.

  “Get off me!”

  It was no use. There was no longer any man left to reason with, no longer anything that resembled a human being other than the sack of skin and bones that pinned him to the ground. Edgar could feel his strength leaving him as the monster leaning over him used the force of gravity and the weight of his body to drive himself closer and closer to his face. He turned his head and saw in the distance more creatures like the one that was trying to kill him. They were sniffing the air like a pack of wolves. Some had already caught the scent of fresh blood and were now heading his way, picking up speed as they moved.

  I thought zombies were supposed to be slow and dumb, he thought briefly before shoving back with renewed force against his assailant. This isn't what I expected at all.

  The realization came to him suddenly – he didn't have much time left. If he planned on living to see another day, he'd have to do something drastic and do it fast.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said, reaching up and driving his thumb into the Asian man’s left eye. To his great surprise, the man didn't even flinch. His thumb slid into the eye socket and the man's eye squirmed out, dangling by a series of fleshy threads until the gelatinous orb was now inches from his own face. A trickle of dark fluid oozed down to the ball and dripped onto Edgar's face. The man above him showed no response to having his eye gouged out. Edgar wasted no time doing the same thing with his other hand to the right eye. Using all the strength he had, he drove his fingers in deep until he felt a spongy material somewhere deeper inside the man’s skull. Driven on by adrenaline and the will to live Edgar squeezed down, jamming both thumbs toward each other. He could feel the muscles of his arms and chest contracting painfully as he gave it all he had. He felt the man's grip on him loosen slightly as he drove his fingers all the way into the brain. With a great cry Edgar forced the man off him, rolling over and hurling the disgusting corpse away from him. The man crumbled into a ball, then rose again quickly and began wildly searching for his victim. His eyes hung loosely from the filth-covered strings in their sockets, dangling near his collarbones like some kind of macabre kid's toy. He sniffed the air, knowing his quarry was just nearby, but was unable to locate him. He threw back his head and screamed out in anger, an inhuman cry that brought the attention of the others now closing in.

  If they didn't know you were here before, he thought, they sure do now.

  Edger pushed himself to his feet just as the next one came running toward him at an impossible speed. Without thinking about it, he rushed right at the creature – a stocky white guy in a Budweiser delivery uniform with thick dried blood smeared down the front of his goatee and white undershirt. As he reached the man he brought his palm up, fingers curled in, and drove it forward into his attackers face. He felt himself connect with the underside of the deliveryman's nose, driving the bone straight up and into the brain. The man went instantly silent and fell to the ground lifeless. It was as if Edgar had turned off an electrical switch that had kept him running. He laughed at the simplicity of it, the sound of his own mirth surprising him.

  “Fucker went down like a sack of bricks,” he said aloud, eliciting a fresh roar from his sightless companion.

  There were others closing in now and no time to waste. A stream of undead horrors was now converging on the parking lot of the Radisson from all sides, drawn in by the chaos and the smell of fresh meat. Edgar wiped his hands on his pants before turning back to the Escalade. He jogged over, feeling sore in his hips and legs from where he'd hit the ground only moments before, and inspected the vehicle. There was blood all across the driver's seat and what looked like a puddle of urine, but he didn't care anymore.

  I just gouged a man's eyes out with my bare hands, he thought. What's a little piss after that?

  He got into the car and slammed the door. He could feel the alien wetness soaking into his pants as he hit the car locks. He did his best to ignore it. There would be time later to deal with it. He buckled up, more from routine than a conscious attempt at safety, and turned over the ignition. The car came to life, blaring loud hip-hop music. He recognized the song on the radio. It was by the rapper, Snoop Dogg, a world famous icon for the West Coast and L.A. area, who grew
up in Long Beach. Snoop had always impressed him. The fact that he'd gone from selling drugs on the streets of Long Beach as a member of the Crips gang, to becoming one of America's most beloved celebrities – all the while advocating the use of marijuana – always struck Edgar as nothing short of brilliant. He'd become familiar with Snoop Dogg’s music during the two weeks he'd spent in Budapest having an affair with a local named Agi. She'd rented a friend's flat so we could screw all week without being interrupted. The place was sprawling, with solid plumbing, having been built before World War 2. It was also almost surely haunted. The slightest breeze would produce unearthly howls through the eroding tile hallways as if the dead were calling us to follow them home.

  The guy who rented the “cable ready love shack” to them was a Serbian refugee who went by the name of Victor. He owned and ran the youth hostel in the heart of town, on the Pesti side. His assistant, Vlad, was a Romanian who'd preferred staying in a building teeming with teenage Swiss girls rather than going into the family’s factory business back home. One night we went to visit them, giving ourselves a chance to hydrate a little and score more ecstasy pills. We found both of them painting the stairs up to the beds a shade of bright blue that reminded him of Violet Beauregarde; high on coke and blasting Snoop Dogg's hit single, “Gin & Juice.”

  “You know, I usually don't like rap music,” Edgar had said at the time. “But this is pretty catchy.”

  After that, Victor made them take the CD with them. They'd never been able to hook up to it without Edgar breaking down and laughing, but when the week was over he packed it with his stuff and took it home. It had been on his iPod ever since.

  “Sorry Snoop. Gotta concentrate.”

  He shut the stereo off and turned the AC on. A frigid gust hit him in the face and arms as the air loudly came blasting out.

  “God that feels good right now.”

  A moment later a resounding thump rang out on his left side. He nearly jumped out of his seat as he turned to face another monster – a woman this time – with stringy blonde hair sticking out of her head in patchy clumps. She had started out pounding both fists on the driver's side window but soon gave up and pressed her open mouth against it, sucking at the tinted glass.

  It's like those fish at the doctor's office, he thought, the ones that eat algae off the walls.

  He could see inside the woman's mouth to the back of her throat. Her tongue was chewed up to a pulp. She was missing several teeth including her two front ones, which looked like they might have come out before she was transformed into a walking corpse. She was dressed like a streetwalker so it came as little surprise to Edgar, who assumed that women only turned tricks to score illegal drugs anyway. He knew from years on the job that women like that worked at airport hotels all over the world, buying rooms and placing ads for Johns online. He was grateful once more that he'd never sunk so low as to hire one, even for comfort. He knew a pilot years back who'd been robbed at gunpoint by a pimp who had literally caught him with his pants down in Singapore.

  Play with fire, he thought, and eventually you will get burned.

  The hooker let out a loud, distressed moan of hunger. She ran her fingers pitifully down the windows, almost as if she was begging him to get out and kindly let her take a bite out of him with her hobo teeth. He could see her fingernails were chipped and cracked, and in some places torn off completely, exposing the sensitive quick of the nail.

  “Sorry sweetheart,” he said, a feeling of renewed confidence coming over him. “But I’ve got a flight to catch.”

  He put it in drive and the car shot forward with a sudden jerk toward the exit and Century Boulevard. There were people blocking his immediate path out of the parking lot – a landscaper missing his right arm at the elbow, a tall white guy with spiky black hair in an expensive suit covered with bloodstains and looking like a charred palm tree; and a short, severely overweight woman with a huge ass wearing pink sweat pants, a bejeweled, sequined T-shirt, and flip flops. The woman carried the gnarled remains of a lap dog still in her arms, while the empty leash dangled from her other hand. There were huge chunks torn out of the now deceased animal. A sickening shade of dirty yellow puss ran out of the bite wounds and over her manicured hand with French tip fingernails. She clutched the remains to her out of instinct, emitting a low growl sounding like a sinister siren as she waddled forward in between the men.

  There were more monsters out in the streets, but Edgar knew he could drive around most of them. These three stood between him and his escape plan. They'd have to be dealt with, one way or another.

  “Fair warning,” he said darkly as he brought his hand down and sounded the horn.

  He noticed the monsters in the streets turning at the sound of the noise, their heads rising up like wild beasts as they sniffed at the air. It was then that he realized they were drawn to sound as well as movement and smell. If he was going to make it out of this nightmare alive, he'd have to do a better job of keeping a low profile – or find a way to blend in.

  He put his foot down hard on the gas and drove straight into the three ghouls blocking his path, gripping the wheel confidently with both hands and bracing for an impact. He felt the grill of the automobile hit the bodies before he heard it. The woman was in the middle when he collided with them. She was so short that she instantly went under the car, taking the corpse of her rat pup with her. The others bookended the hood of the SUV, both of their heads whipping forward dramatically on impact like two stoned teenage boys headbanging at a rock concert. Only instead of coming back up again with their fingers twisted up in a heavy metal salute to their favorite bands rock guitarist solo, they collided hard with the hood – the force of the blow cracking the landscapers skull. Edgar didn't stop to see if he was dead.

  Instinctively he pressed down on the pedal, causing the wheels to pull the men’s legs under the tires and spin them away from the speeding vehicle, their ragged clothes making them look like flags whipping around violently in a gale wind. Edgar could feel the woman beneath the car hitting the undercarriage as he bore down on her. He felt only relief that it had worked. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the expressionless face of the Latino man just as his gray brains slid through the gash in his forehead and down the front of his tattered uniform. It was all over in seconds and Edgar was out on the street at last.

  Cars jammed up the short distance between him and the airport departures entrance, but he wasn't worried about that now. He piloted the Escalade up onto the center divider, covering the short distance of stalled and abandoned vehicles before turning back to the right and using the cars weight to push a Toyota Corolla and a Mazda Miata easily out of his path. He saw a few mangled people out there, moving in between the cars, searching for living things to eat. He didn't see any normal-looking people. He passed the Police Checkpoint station that had been set up after 9/11 and was never taken back down. Whoever had been left in charge had done him a favor by setting up the wooden RESTRICED ACCESS signs and blocking off incoming traffic. Edgar barreled through them like they were made out of matchsticks, leaving a trail of scattered plywood in his wake.

  “Maybe that was the worst of it,” he said, trying to give himself some kind of encouragement. “Maybe it will get easier from here.”

  He sped up as he took the corner, veering sharply right toward Terminal 1. He'd have to take the short cut across the bridge and past the Terminal 7 parking lot, then drive the wrong way back up toward Terminal 5 to get back to his plane. He came flying around the corner and had to jam on the brakes hard to avoid plowing into the back of a line of empty cars. The tires screeched loudly and the seat belt cut into his shoulder and chest, restraining him. He furiously slammed his fist against the wheel a few times in frustration.

  “Great,” he bellowed. “That's just fucking great, man! Just what I needed.”

  He noticed that his sudden stop had caused a shiny metal revolver to slide out from underneath his seat.

  “Who the fuck keeps a gun und
er the front seat? It's like everyone in this city is fucking crazy!”

  He didn't have time to work it out. A loud growl sounded from somewhere behind him. He whipped his head around just in time to see a small child with blood pouring from his torn open mouth come hurling in his direction, teeth first. Without thinking, he leaned forward and chucked a hard elbow back at the demonic brat's forehead, colliding dead on and causing him to tumble back. He could hear the pintsized nightmare scrambling on the seat, pushing himself back up to attack once more. Edgar looked in the rear view mirror and saw the terrifying child monster preparing for a fresh lunge.

  “Hold on, fucker,” he said, slamming his foot down on the gas pedal and turning the wheel to the right toward the loading and unloading zone.

  An unearthly roar erupted from the back seat as the SUV lurched forward again, but it wasn't going to be enough. Instead of being pinned to the creamy beige leather upholstery, the kid had collapsed into a crouch and was now inching forward. Edgar considered his options for a split second. He could reach down for the gun and hope it was loaded and working, but it was a huge risk.

  It sure didn't help whoever used to own it, he thought.

  One bite was all it would take to ruin his plans of escaping this disaster. The little savage was bound to be climbing all over him like a playground jungle gym the second he stopped, chomping at anything that looked like flesh and blood. He'd come too far to give up so easily, too far to leave things to chance.

  Instead, he aimed the Escalade toward the wide concrete pylon closest to him and closed his eyes, pushing down so hard on the pedal that his foot hurt. It was over in seconds. Edgar felt the car lurch forward as it collided, his seat belt locking up and digging hard into his guts until the wind was forced out of him, a spray of glass misting over his arms and face. At the same time, he heard the child scream as he flew past him out the window, kicking him in the back of the head and neck with his faddish light-up sneakers. Edgar opened his eyes and inhaled like a man drowning. The windshield was busted and the front of the SUV was smashed up with steam coming out the front grill. On the top, like a hood ornament, were the mangled remains of the kid, who'd gone head first into the pylon as well. A greasy looking stain of dark red blood was splattered where the impact had been. The body shook; the child's now shoeless foot twitched, then went still.