Chivalry Is Dead

by Bennie Newsome

  Angela looked at her alarm clock on the nightstand beside the bed, the glowing numbers easily visible. It read 10:51 pm, and her stomach growled fiercely at its missed dinner. She stumbled to her feet and walked to the kitchen, the cracks of thunder growing closer. She didn’t remember seeing rain in the weather forecast, but she generally chalked weathermen up to the same reliability as telephone psychics. Something about the thunder was wrong, though; it was too regular, too synchronized, but she ignored it, assuming she was still half-asleep.

  Her refrigerator was nearly bare, but she managed to fish out a packet of lunch meat from the small plastic drawer in the middle of the unit. It was ham, and she was pretty sure it was still good. She slapped a slice of bread on the counter and put four pieces of ham on top as if she were dealing out cards. A generous dollop of mayo and mustard followed, and then the top slice of bread, the heel, which she normally would throw away, but she didn’t have another loaf. Have to go to the grocery, she told herself, and began making a mental checklist of everything she needed.

  Outside, the thunder boomed much closer. The windows of her apartment rattled and she looked up, startled, one bite of her sandwich sliding down her throat. Something wasn’t right with that noise, some vital clue she was overlooking, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She walked to the windows in her living room, the only windows in her apartment, and pulled open the Venetian blinds. As her hand began to pull the long cord that would remove the obscuring blinds, she finally realized what was wrong. She had heard thunder, yes, but where were the flashes of lightning? Most of the lights were off in the apartment, and that loud of a boom should have lit up the entire place, blinds or no.

  Her hand fell from the cord as soon as she had gotten the blinds half-way up. The locking mechanism caught, leaving her with a view of the buildings across the street. They looked like they had been hit by a bomb. The apartment complex directly across the street, a twin of hers, was on fire. Flames shot out of the windows of the thick, rectangular tower, and as she watched in horror a burning man stumbled out onto his terrace and fell over the side, dropping at least fifteen floors to the ground. His clothes and hair were ablaze, making him look like a miniature meteor striking the sidewalk below.

  The ham, mayo, and mustard sandwich suddenly came back up into her throat and she vomited all over the carpeting by the windows. She couldn’t believe she had just witnessed a man’s death. It seemed unreal to her, and she honestly considered pinching herself to see if she was still dreaming.

  The next barrage of thunder struck, this time so close she was knocked off her feet. She glimpsed a long, smooth cylinder floating along just above street level the instant before the explosion. As she crawled back to her knees and saw the spider-web pattern on the broken windows, she thought, My God, was that a cruise missile? She’d seen pictures like that; grainy black and white movies of missiles flying through crowded streets and exploding over the heads of bad guys. But that was footage from Iraq and Afghanistan, not the middle of the United States.

  She got back to her feet and ran to the television, desperately searching for the remote control. It was buried under a blanket and two pillows, but she found it, yanked it free and clicked on her flat panel television. She didn’t want to see an emergency broadcast message, but that’s exactly what appeared. The rainbow-striped image said that all counties in the viewing area were under a state of emergency and all citizens should remain in their homes until receiving further instructions. The words scrolled past, burning into her eyes, and then another explosion rocked the building and the screen went dark.

  She desperately clicked the remote but the cable was gone. Her television was too new to have an antenna hookup, and when she tried scrolling through the actual over-the-air stations she saw nothing but static. She turned the television off and rushed to the bathroom. She threw up for the second time, this more of a dry heave as her stomach had already emptied its contents on her carpet. Her stomach continued to twist and buck inside her as she hugged the cool white porcelain.

  When she finally regained control of her body a few minutes later, her digestive tract deciding there really wasn’t anything else to be purged, she stood, grabbed a towel from the rack by the shower and wiped her face. She hadn’t realized she was crying. She looked in the mirror and was shocked by her appearance; her blue-green eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, her lips thin and drawn, and her nose was a bright red to match her burning cheeks. She wiped her face clean, took several deep breaths, and walked back out to the living room. She dropped the towel over the vomit by the windows, careful not to look at what she was doing for fear it would send her retching all over again.

  She walked into the kitchen, trying to remain calm, not rushing. She felt that if she rushed somehow the nightmare she was trapped in would solidify and become real. If she walked nonchalantly she could pretend that the whole thing was just a bad dream that she would eventually wake from. Then she’d have a laugh at herself and call...

  The phone! She raced over to it, forgetting her caution. She picked up the white plastic receiver from its cradle and held it to her ear. There was no sound, not the comforting buzz of a dial tone, not even the stuttering noise her phone made when she had voice mail. It was dead, just like the cable. This might have sent her spiraling into another fit of vomiting and fear, but instead she felt a cool wash of reason crest over her. She went to her jacket, tossed carelessly on her kitchen counter, and fished out her cell phone. She looked at the little device hopefully. Three blue bars appeared at the top of the display; she still had signal.

  She laughed out loud as she scrolled through her contacts and called her friend Trisha. Trisha lived about six blocks over and always had her phone on her. The cell phone made a satisfying beeping noise as she hit send and moments later she held the phone to her ear and grinned like a fool at the sound of ringing. One ring, two, four, six...then the automatic voice mail voice answered the phone, informing Angela that the party she had dialed was unavailable and that she could leave a message at the tone.

  “Trisha, it’s me, it’s Angela. Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but call me, okay? Call me as soon as you get this. Please, just call me,” she pleaded. She wanted to say more, but the phone beeped at her that the message time was almost up. She punched the red disconnect button and slid down to the floor against the countertop.

  The explosions had stopped at least. That helped her nerves. She didn’t know if her building was on fire like the one across the street, but she hoped it wasn’t. Don’t be stupid, the fire alarms would be going off if it was, she told herself. It didn’t help much, but it was logical. She still had power, the lights still worked when she flipped the switch, but the phone and cable were out. She knew the water was still on from flushing away the little bit that she had regurgitated in the bathroom. She was okay, she was safe, and she wasn’t scared. She didn’t know how many of those three statements were actually lies.

  She brought her knees to her chest, leaning back against the cabinet and forcing herself to hold back the tears she felt stinging her already pain-filled eyes. She looked at her phone, a wonder of modern electronics. It bounced signals from big metal towers up to satellites and then back down again, but none of that helped if there was no one to call. She could try to call her mother, but odds were she’d be drunk and passed out in the trailer where Angela had grown up. Her father was a stranger to her, so that was out. She could call one of the guys she had dated, but none of them were really the type you turned to in an emergency. All she had was Trisha, and she wasn’t answering. She did try again, half a dozen times over the next twenty minutes or so. Every time the phone went to voice mail after eight rings.

  She sat up a bit straighter, folding her legs underneath her. If she had cellular signal, she might also have internet on her phone. She turned the device sideways, the touch-panel screen flipping obediently. Her thumb touched the icon that looked like a blue, orange, and white compass and a few sec
onds later a web browser launched and connected to her telephone company’s homepage. She smiled a little, her thumbs clicking away on the virtual keyboard to direct the phone to a news website. It took a minute to come up, but eventually the page loaded, the crazy headlines staring back at her in all their pixilated glory.

  “The Dead Walk!” claimed one. “Zombies Invade New York”, another read. There were dozens of articles: “Martial Law Declared”, “Citizens Urged to Barricade Homes”, and “Military Counterstrike to Walking Dead”. She scanned through each story with growing horror. Her stomach wanted to empty again but she fought down the urge. The stories all said basically the same thing; the dead had risen from their graves, mostly the recently deceased, and they were now terrorizing the country. Some articles claimed it was a military experiment gone awry, others blamed environmental waste dumping, and one even tried to pin the blame on aliens. Angela didn’t really care what caused it, she was too terrified to care, but she did want to know what she should do. The overwhelming answer was, “stay in your home and barricade the door.”

  She got up, her arms and legs protesting. All she really wanted to do was go to bed and sleep. That was shock, she was pretty sure. She felt cold too, and she knew that was another sign. She forced herself to walk twice around the apartment, pumping her arms and legs as if she were at the gym. It got her moving, got her mind off what was happening. It kept her awake.

  There wasn’t much in the apartment that would make good barricade material. She could shove her sofa against the door, but that wouldn’t stop anyone. She did make sure the brass safety chain was closed and that the deadbolt was turned, but she couldn’t think of a single thing that would keep the door shut if someone, or something, really wanted in. She peered out of the peephole in the center of the door but the hallway outside was completely empty. There weren’t any other people living on this floor, so maybe the zombies would ignore her. She couldn’t believe she was actually worried about whether or not zombies would find her. It was just too surreal.

  She settled for propping one of her dining room chairs under the doorknob. It was a pretty sturdy thing; she’d bought the whole set at one of the kitschy downtown antique stores, and it made her feel a little better to see it wedged between the door and carpet. She sat on the sofa, her head in her hands, fingers tangled in her long brown hair, and she tried to think of what to do next. Her brain felt stretched like the skin of a drum. She couldn’t form much in the way of a coherent thought.

  She was about to get up from the couch and clean up the puke on the floor, it was starting to stink, when a deafening roar filled the apartment. She looked around, muscles tense, nipples hard, fear turning her skin ice cold. Through the half-open blinds she saw the apartment building across the street sway to-and-fro, like a tree caught in a heavy wind. It was clearly the source of the noise, the concrete and steel grinding as it began to topple. Angela watched with abject terror as the building seemed to lurch toward her, falling over on foundations compromised by explosions and fire, like a domino tilted too far. It slammed into her building with a sound like a dozen semi tractors all crashing off a side of a cliff at once. She covered her ears and tucked herself low on her sofa.

  It was good that she had assumed such a cautious position. The crashing building shattered the windows of her apartment, sending lethal glass shrapnel through the room with the force of a hand grenade. Shiny, dagger-like shards embedded in the walls, furniture and even in the door. Only being tucked down on the sofa protected Angela from becoming a human pin cushion. She screamed as dust billowed into the room, choking the air from her lungs. She briefly wondered if she was breathing in asbestos or some other toxic substance, but the painful stinging in her chest stifled the thought as soon as it surfaced. She had more things to worry about that long term health risks, things like being crushed by the wreckage tearing free of the other building and slamming into her apartment.

  She rolled off the couch, pulling it with her. It was an old trick that she had discovered as a child when her mother was on one or another of her drunken rampages. She hadn’t been very strong back then, but it wasn’t hard to tip the ratty old couch in their house trailer and once it was over her she could pretend it was a tent, or a space capsule or an army bunker, and nothing could hurt her while she was inside. Her current sofa was much heavier, with thick padding and chunky cushions, but she managed to spill it over just in time. Something heavy slammed against the back of the couch and sent both it and the woman underneath skittering across the apartment floor, finally coming to rest against the far wall near the door.

  Groans and shrieks filled the apartment for several long minutes. Angela was sure a sharp metal rod would impale through her makeshift barricade or a ton of rubble would crush and bury her, but neither came. The dust began to settle, the last pebbles of debris skittering into place. She peeked from the corner of the sofa at the destruction around her. All she could see was a thick coating of gray ash and chunks of concrete and plaster. Even her front door had been blown right off its hinges, the wooden chair propped against it nowhere to be seen.

  With a hefty shove she managed to work her way free from the overturned sofe. She looked around the room that had once been her apartment. The windows were shattered, plaster and concrete dust coated everything, and big boulders of unrecognizable rubble were strewn about like a child’s carelessly forgotten toys. An I-beam, twisted by heat and pressure, lay on the floor where the couch had been, the cue-stick that had sent her ricocheting across the floor. She could see that part of the neighboring apartment complex was leaning against her own Hanscomb Tower, the top floors disintegrated so that she could see right down into the gutted building. It almost looked to her like a giant playground slide or one of those big yellow slides at the fair, the kind you rode down with a burlap sack underneath you.

  Her building seemed to be stable, or at least it wasn’t swaying at the moment, and she was grateful to whoever built the place for their engineering genius. She looked out on the city, her Venetian blinds shredded in a heap in front of the open rectangles that had once been windows. Buildings burned along the skyline, fires bright against the night sky. She saw water mains broken and disgorging tall fountains, cars flipped over and tossed aside like crumbs brushed from a table, and people, crushed, mangled, but many still flailing about far below her on the street.

  There had been people inside the other building, too. She looked down into the wreckage, and a few floors below a huge hold allowed her to see right into a hallway tipped at an odd angle. She saw a man whose bottom half had been shorn off by a huge piece of plate glass, crawling along the broken floor tiles, a thick trail of blood behind him. He shuffled along the hall toward a woman who seemed to be flopping about, her clothes stained black with soot.

  At first Angela thought the man was trying to reach the woman to comfort her, perhaps to say goodbye, and she was moved by the romantic notion of a man spending his last moments trying to reach the woman he loved. Then she watched in horror as the crawling man bit into the woman’s breast and began to feed upon her flesh. The woman screamed, a high pitched shriek that made Angela grind her teeth in sympathetic agony, the woman’s mouth working desperately and her arms flopping uselessly as the crawling man’s teeth tore her left breast away. Angela backed away from the window, hand to her mouth, and stumbled numbly to her bedroom.

  The damage wasn’t as severe in the small room. There were no windows, the room faced inward to the tower, and while there were huge cracks in the walls, the room seemed safe enough. She didn’t really care, too numb with shock to worry about the ceiling collapsing on her. She lay down, pulled the covers over her head and shivered so hard her teeth chattered. In her mind, over and over, she heard the woman screaming for help and saw the bright red maw of the bisected man as he gnawed at her flesh.

  At some point she fell asleep, the trauma finally too much to deal with. She slept with the covers tucked tightly over her, a fact that saved her lif
e when she woke to feel them being pulled slowly but firmly away. She opened her eyes, blinking against the light streaming in from the hallway. Her brain was still catching up, still trying to collate all of what she had experienced the night before, but something was trying to take away her warm sheets. Her hand bunched up some of the covers and she was about to give them a tremendous yank when she heard a groan and her nose was assaulted by a horrible smell.

  Angela cautiously looked down and saw a raw red, bleeding arm pulling the sheets from her. The skin on the arm was missing in places, the muscle and tendons beneath showing through. It seemed burned here and there, and grimy dirt was caked on the hands and fingers. Dirt…and something else, something dark maroon in color.

  Without a second thought, the girl leapt to her feet, throwing the remaining sheets over the thing pulling them away from her. Something squirmed under the sheets, and she could tell whatever it was, it wasn’t quite the size of a person. She looked around for something to use as a weapon, but the best she could come up with was the flexible metal lamp from her nightstand. She stood spread-legged on her bed, hair wild, eyes wide, the lamp held back like a sad, drooping baseball bat. Something wiggled out from under the covers.

  It was, or had been, a man, probably in his thirties. He was missing most of his body from the waist down, and his face, which was missing the nose and one of the eyes, had an angry mouth caked with dried blood. She knew immediately that this was the man whom she had seen in the other building eating the poor injured woman. He had somehow managed to crawl up to her room and was still alive despite the horrible injuries. No, he’s not alive, she thought. He’s a zombie and he’s going to bite you and make you into a zombie, too! She took a step back and brandished the lamp menacingly.