by Urban, Ami
Okay. This is no big deal. Whatever it was that fell down the stairs is probably not alive anymore. That’s right – I was talking myself out of it when I’d just volunteered to be brave. Whatever. I’d killed hundreds of these fuckers. I didn’t have to answer to anyone.
Something cracked under my boot. A sharp ping rang through the musty air as glass shattered. I winced, turning back to everyone for a moment. Lexi nodded while Brendon’s face was turning greener and greener.
Once I reached the doors, I began wiggling my fingers like an old west cowboy getting ready to draw. And as they closed around the protruding handle, I felt the cold of its steel bore into me. Oh, my God was I stupid.
The door had one long, vertical window near the top. The glass was still intact, but dust caked its surface. Using the sleeve of my shirt, I wiped in a circle, clearing it enough to see inside. I could see the stairs, littered with garbage. A strange trail was left on the dirty floor by whoever or whatever had fallen.
“See anything?” Cyrus asked.
“Mm. No.” I stood aside, fingers still grasping the handle. “Get ready.”
They poised themselves for a fight. If we hadn’t been in imminent danger, the scene would have been funny. A short skinny dude, green as can be, holding an oyster shucker as a weapon next to two kids who looked as intimidating as stingrays.
Sorry, Steve Irwin.
“One…” I wasn’t ready. “Two…” God, this was stupid. We were all going to die. “Three!” I tugged the door open, ducking behind it so I could have the element of surprise if need be.
Seconds passed. Nothing happened.
All the green color in Brendon’s face was drained to white. Lexi stood tall. The look on Cyrus’ face was unreadable.
“What is it?” I poked my head around the door to get a better look. It was a Biter, alright. But I’d never seen one so far gone.
The thing’s skin hung off its bones. Patches of it were missing completely. Its eyes were open – if you could call them eyes. One was red, streams of thick blood stained the cheeks below. The other eye was cloudy, unseeing. Its teeth were jagged inside its mouth, looking like crumbling gravestones in an old cemetery. It was as if it’d broken every single one of them, turning them to razor blades. Some black substance coated the outside of its mouth. The hair was a few mere strings of white between the shiny bone of an exposed skull. One of its arms was missing completely. Meaty strings of flesh hung out the tattered and stained sleeve.
“Jesus fucking Christ, man.” My words came out in a croak. What a scene.
“Gnarly.” Brendon was the first to move forward. “I’ve never been this close to one before.” He knelt down for a better look while I stepped out from behind the door. “How could it have still been living?” There was a giddiness in his voice. It was as if a child had found a cool bug on the sidewalk. His features were a mix of horror and bemusement. Even though his mouth was carved into a sneer, there was a hint of a smile in his voice. “Gross!”
Cyrus stepped closer. “Whoa... Can a person even live like this?”
Brendon looked up at him, his dark eyes shining. “Well, it’s dead now. We should—”
Before the words even left his mouth, an ear-shattering howl emanated from the thing’s open, twisted mouth. And without a second’s hesitation, both it and Brendon were on their feet. With its one good hand, it lashed out at him, pushing him backward. He yelped out loud.
Okay, he didn’t just yelp. The dude screamed like a little girl. And he kept screaming until the Biter had him up against the wall, gnashing its pointed teeth, ready to taste a nice chunk of hipster. Without waiting for anything, I lunged for the creature, putting it in a headlock while it chomped the air. Cyrus and Lexi each threw themselves at one of its legs, slowing it down and leaving cleanish wakes in the dust behind them.
Brendon was still screaming. The Biter struggled hard.
“Use the knife, you moron!” I had to yell over his own keening.
I watched as he fumbled with the knife, the Biter taking turns trying to sample of the both of us. The oyster shucker glinted in the pallid dusk light before sinking into the thing’s chest. It howled but kept fighting. I tightened my grip, putting it further into a choke hold. The fucker should’ve been asleep by now.
Brendon kept screaming. “It’s not working!”
“Dude! You have to shove it in deeper! Aren’t you a surgeon?” The urgency in my voice caused him to yelp again. He pushed on the knife, dark blood gushed over his hands, causing him to start screaming again. The Biter kept on struggling. Its own jagged teeth began cutting the inside of its mouth, causing fresh red blood to gush down its chin. Droplets of thick, foamy saliva pattered on my forearm. Brendon pushed even harder on the knife until some of the handle was inside. Gore splashed on his clothes, on the floor, the wall, the kids and even me. The thing finally went still.
Once its body went limp, I lowered it to the floor, pulled out the oyster shucker and buried it into the thing’s brain. I wasn’t taking any chances. You heard the surgeon – it shouldn’t have been alive. I let out a long sigh.
“Why didn’t you grab the butcher knife?!” I scolded Brendon as the rest of us straightened. But I didn’t get an answer. Because when I turned back to him, he was puking his guts out in a corner.
Fucking noob.
February 20 – Jack Reynolds
The next morning was cold and gray when we woke for breakfast. Raychel had already started a fire and had begun to cook when I sat down. At first, I didn’t notice Brendon’s presence. I was too busy stuffing my face with some bomb-ass eggs. But my sister just about had a conniption every time she saw him. That morning was no exception. As soon as he sat down, Raychel let out a squeal of excitement, doting over him and making sure he had enough to eat.
Cyrus sat down next to me with a heaping plate of bacon. And only bacon. Not a bad idea, but sometimes you needed protein.
“Sleep well?” Raychel smiled across from me.
“Like the dead,” Brendon answered. He then sang a few bars about sleeping tight.
My sister nodded. Then, she said, “I hope everyone’s ready for some hunting!”
I didn’t look up from my paper plate. Hunting? I wasn’t in the mood for hunting. I hadn’t slept very well the night prior. Boy, that was an understatement.
“The meat don’t fry if the bullets don’t fly!” Brendon slapped his hand on his knee, causing me to jolt a little. I wiped my chin with the back of my hand.
“Do we have to?” I glanced at Lexi who’d sat down next to Cyrus. She was a little too close to him for my comfort.
Raychel leaned forward, the thin leather of her jacket creaked around the joints of her elbows. “Yes. We do this every time. Everyone should know how to hunt and eat for themselves. And that includes you.”
I studied her for a long time, noting the laugh lines and crow’s feet on her otherwise flawless face. A lazy smile danced across her lips.
“Well? What do you say, Jacky?”
I cleared the remaining food from my plate, chewing with infuriating delicacy. The twinkle in Raychel’s eyes faded but didn’t disappear completely. When I’d swallowed my food at last, I glared at her.
“I’d rather chew my own leg off.”
Tossing what looked like a wary glance at Lexi, Raychel leaned in. “Come on, bro. Do it for me?”
I said nothing. Only stared at her.
She grunted in her throat. “When’s the last time you felt hot lead rip out of that twelve gauge you have?”
She had me there. I hadn’t shot anything in quite some time. I could’ve used some target practice. Didn’t want to get rusty. Inhaling deep, I prepared myself for my own betrayal.
“Fine.” It was pretty hard to say.
Raychel beamed. “Atta boy! I’ll round up Charasco and Stilts and we can head out.”
As she stood, I gazed in puzzled bewilderment at the log she’d occupied. What the hell kind of fucked up law firm is
she talking about?
“What is that? It sounds like Tabasco and Cholula had a baby,” Cyrus joked.
I smiled. Good one.
As it turned out, Tabasco was a huge Samoan with biceps the diameter of my thigh. Stilts, aptly named, was his opposite. Stilts was lanky, white and awkward. Of course, when we went to take the dirty old van, I got stuck in the very backseat between the two of them while Brendon rode shotgun.
“You guys don’t talk much, do you?”
The Samoan grunted a reply. Stilts said nothing. Wow. It was going to be a fun drive. I inquired as to where exactly we were going.
“Just up the road a bit,” Raychel said, turning in her seat to yell above the sound of the heater. “There’s a good thicket where deer and elk graze all day.”
We hit a bump, jostling everyone in the back seat, squeezing me until I thought my eyeballs would pop out.
“You haven’t, like…mass murdered a ton of people or anything, right?” I asked the Samoan. He looked down at me, dark eyes blank. His features remained stoic. His upper lip twitched.
“Do you really want to know?” His voice was like crunching gravel.
“Nope.” I turned my attention forward again. “No, I do not.”
A grunt sounded from my large friend. Wind whipped outside the car as we drove on in silence. I wondered if all the trips they took were that enjoyable.
Cyrus and Lexi had bonded almost right away. They chatted and laughed in the seats in front of me.
“Deer.” The Samoan pointed out the window, then began rifling through his bag of equipment at his feet.
Raychel slowed the car down, drifting toward the emergency lane. “Get her!” She egged him on.
The large man took a never-ending rifle out of the bag. I don’t know much about guns, but this one would likely blow apart an elephant from 500 yards. He shifted in his seat, pushing me into Stilts so far, I could feel his hip bones. Then, he rolled his window halfway down, waited a second or two, then pulled the trigger.
The deer that had been grazing alongside the car disappeared from view in a shower of blood. The Samoan turned forward, a frightening smile plastered on his face.
“Got her.”
Color me impressed. “Holy shit, Sriracha! That’s some aim you got there.”
After everyone piled out of the car to check out the carnage, I decided that was a good time to take a piss. I stepped down into a ditch on the side of the road, almost losing my footing more than once.
While I stood there emptying my bladder, I heard footsteps behind me. Turning to the side, I saw Brendon making his way toward me.
“Pee break!” He sang stupidly.
I sighed, surveying the area as he unzipped next to me. It was pretty flat the way we were facing. Behind us, though, Utah’s bluffs stood like dark sentinels in the morning light. Ahead of us, rows and rows of golden wheat followed the wind in shiny sheets. It was almost magic.
Brendon had just opened his mouth to speak when I noticed something colorful. About fifteen feet in front of us, some kind of cloth was twisted up in the brambles. I glanced over my shoulder. Everyone else was still huddled around the deer carcass. No one was paying attention to us. Good.
“What is that?”
Ignoring him, I ventured forth into the thick wheat, its heads latching onto my pant leg as if they were desperate to leave. Each stalk crunched under my boots as I made my way closer to whatever was lying there.
Then the sound of my steps changed. Instead of the snapping of wheat, my foot was met with a chunky squish. Looking down, I lifted my boot high enough to see those stalks drenched in crimson blood. They dripped off the sole of my shoes and onto the ground with a barely audible plop.
“The fuck?” I shook it off, almost losing my balance in the process.
“Is that what I think it is?” Brendon crunched through the field toward me.
I stepped around the irregular circle of blood to see what had made it all. In a man-sized depression laid the corpse of a Biter. If I had to guess, I’d say it’d been dead a good week or so. What used to be a dude was lying face down in a puddle of its own blood. Its back had been torn clean open. Well, not clean. The pink jagged edges of flesh around the wound stuck out as though he’d been blown through with a shotgun the size of Texas. About six of its vertebrae had been picked clean by scavengers. The dry bones buzzed with flies. Sticky, shiny organs had turned putrid in the Utah sun. The damn thing stunk to high heaven.
“Gnarly!” Brendon stood a few feet back. “How many of these are we gonna find out here?”
“Hopefully this is the last one.” I knelt down, finding an odd fascination with how gross the scene was. Being a male at heart, I knew I had to poke it. So, I grabbed a decent-sized stick, balanced my left elbow on my left knee and started thrusting the stick into the Biter’s corpse. As soon as I nudged it once, the flies departed, swarmed in a cloud of black, then went back to their feast. With each poke of the stick, the sludge that used to be its organs stuck to it for a second, then slunk back into the body with a stomach-churning slurp.
“Ugh… I think I’m gonna be sick…”
At one point, I poked something just right and a bright red spurt of blood flew into the air, tossing the flies into a frenzy once more.
“That’s weird.” So, I did the only thing I knew how to do and poked it again. That time, however, the blood gushed from the Biter, spilling onto the tips of my boots. A little even splashed on my hand.
Holy fuck, my dudes. That shit stunk. It was like industrial sludge mixed with iron deposits in a dry lake bed. But that wasn’t the weirdest thing about it. The weirdest thing about it was the blood was runny. Like, runnier than it should’ve been.
“Can exposure to the sun do that?” I asked aloud.
I was brushing my palm against the thigh of my jeans as I heard Raychel call for us before Brendon could answer. I took one last look at the gore before me, shrugged and continued back to the van.
***
“You want me to what?” I turned toward my sister. At some point, she’d found gum and was chewing with her mouth open. Stilts had run off with a group of people to follow a rabbit and the Samoan looked like he was checking for tracks.
“Go up to the stand with Brendon, Lexi and Cyrus.” She pointed toward a flat pallet nestled in the crook of a tree about a hundred yards away where the three of them were already perched.
I shook my head. “I want Burrito with us. He’ll keep us safe.”
“Charasco.”
I turned back to the big man. “Gesundheit.” Then, to Raychel, “You can go somewhere by yourself.”
I couldn’t believe she made me go to the stand without Burrito.
Brendon helped me onto the platform that would serve as our lookout. The day was cold, but bright. All the snow had melted, and a crisp breeze fluttered our jackets as we sat and watched an empty forest. Everyone had gone off in different directions. I could see no one any longer.
“Here.” Cyrus thrust what looked like a breakfast bar in my face.
I took it, leaning back against the hard bark of the tree. The snack looked like what happens when shit dries out. Except this one had whole berries of some kind in it. Shrugging, I took a bite. As soon as it touched my tongue, I violently spit it onto the forest floor.
“What the fuck? What is this?” I handed it back him. “It’s bitter. Tastes like vomit and broken dreams.”
He stared at it. “I made it out of elk.” He took a hearty bite, ripping a large piece off while shaking his head like a dog.
Brendon laughed. “It makes ya grow hair on your chest.” He glanced sideways at me. “You got hair on your chest, Dood?”
I stared ahead, the metal of my shotgun feeling cold against my skin. “No. I wax.”
Out of my periphery, I could see his upper lip curl back over his teeth. “Ouch.”
I sighed. “I miss Cholula.”
“Charasco,” Cyrus corrected.
I felt
my eyes narrow. “You guys keep making that sound. It’s like someone chewing steak with their mouth open. My misophonia!” Pretending to be offended, I placed both hands over my ears.
“Missah…what?” the boy asked, his puzzled face now turned toward me.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s a strong negative reaction to the sounds of eating or smacking.” It paid to be married to a doctor.
The kid shook his head and laughed. “I’ll have to remember that.” We were silent for a moment, the breeze whipping around us.
“Rabbit!” Brendon pointed with binoculars held close to his face. I followed his finger.
“I got it,” Lexi said, hugging a small hunting rifle to her chest.
“Okay, hold on.” I shuffled over to her on my ass. Then, I put my arms around her to steady the gun. “Look through the sight. It’s going to be distorted, so make sure you get that bunny right in the middle.”
The muzzle of the gun ambled through the air until she’d found the rabbit. Then, she paused. “What now?”
“Safety off.” I clicked it, then positioned her fingers the correct way. “Hold your breath. Good. Now squeeze.”
The muzzle flashed in a shower of sparks. I watched the bullet pierce through the rabbit like butter and it went down.
“Nice shot!”
Lexi beamed at me as I ruffled her hair. Then, she put down the gun and scrambled to the forest floor to pick up her prize. Brendon followed her, saying something about wanting to see a tiny rabbit’s heart. I hollered for a cease fire while they made their journey.
“What’s that, Mr. Reynolds?”
I looked to Cyrus who was pointing at my wrist. Pulling the sleeve back, I gave him a better look of the only tattoo I had.
“This tells doctors I’m allergic to penicillin. I’m supposed to wear a bracelet, but as you can imagine, that got lost pretty early in the apocalypse.”
Cyrus laughed a contagious laugh. It was sort of a kid giggle, but with the gut bust of an adult.
A buzzing sound inhabited my left ear. I scratched at it. “I almost died when I was sixteen because I always managed to lose it. They had to give me two shots of epi and even then, I was in a coma for days!” I held up two fingers for emphasis.