Decaying Humanity

by James Barton

  “Hi, I’m Peter and I’m eight!” the little boy said from the frame of the door. Peter was rather short, even for his age. Atop his head sat a terrible bowl-cut hairdo that extended nearly into his eyes. He danced around energetically in his little sweat pants and food stained shirt. He moved around awkwardly waiting for my response.

  “Well hello Peter, my name is…”

  “I’m an airplane, want to see me fly?”

  “Sure, I guess,” I replied.

  He began to jump from one bed to the other while his sister sat on the edge, eating one of the bars.

  “I’m a flying zombie, vroom vroom!” Peter said.

  I looked at Shay with a confused look. She smiled, “ADHD, you know the hyperactive disorder. I think he’s got it pretty bad. Half the time he barely even focuses long enough to have a conversation.”

  “I think I’m more concerned that he thinks zombies can fly and go vroom,” I responded.

  “Well they could in Xombi Birdmen 3,” she responded.

  “You saw Xombi Birdmen? Wow, that wasn’t even released here, it was only…”

  “Released in Europe, yeah I’m a bit of a movie nerd.”

  “I’m in love,” I said jokingly.

  She playfully shoved me. “Good, I’ll have someone to talk to about movies or something. There are only so many conversations you can have about lifting weights, delivering kittens, or Spanish gibberish I can take. I’m glad we didn’t let you die out there,” she said while beaming a smile at me.

  “Yeah me, too,” I said while reaching into the rucksack. I pulled out some strawberries and cream oatmeal packets and held them out to her. “What? I have to give you something, you saved my life.”

  “Let’s just hope it doesn’t give me the shits,” she joked.

  “That ain’t funny; it does!” Desmond shouted from the other room.

  We all laughed.

  Todd told us that Harvey checked out fine, which was a huge relief. I really hadn’t given myself time to think about the possibility of him getting bit. I always sort of just thought he was invincible. I started to realize we couldn’t survive this alone. The zombies weren’t the biggest threat at the moment—it was the people.

  As for the Budget Motel crew, things seemed worse than they let on. They didn’t have much food and even less nutrition. There were enough cases of cereal and instant grits to last everyone about two weeks. I guess they should be thankful for the continental breakfast or they would have run through the snacks in the vending machine in a couple days. All those foods were just carbs. I’m no dietician, but I’m pretty sure you needed protein and fats too. I traded off some of the canned meats and other high-protein foods to the others who easily gave up their ration of grits and neon o’s. I didn’t need it as bad as they did, at least not today.

  As we all gathered around a camping lamp, I kept thinking that we should pay a visit to Marc. We could probably make a trade for some fish. It wasn’t much, but he was the only other person we had met so far that didn’t try to kill us. He and his group were sleeping on a pier, so maybe we wouldn’t even have to trade food. This motel had an abundance of mattresses and blankets, something they could use desperately.

  “And that’s when the priest says, that’s not my leg!” Desmond said, finishing the punchline. Todd gave a mandatory chuckle, Harvey actually laughed, and everyone else just looked at him.

  “At least the new guy gets it,” Desmond said.

  “D, it’s not that the joke isn’t funny,” Nikki began. “It’s just the only joke you know.”

  After finishing her food, she sat picking at her hands nervously. I bet before all this went down, she had a cellphone almost permanently attached to her. Now she was left with jokes around the table. I could relate to her technology withdrawal. I missed watching stupid videos on the internet.

  “Dez, you’re a clown, honk honk, red nose spider guy,” Peter rambled. “Whoosh!” he shouted as he leapt up from his seat and knocked the card table over. It sent canned ham and cereal all over the floor. The lamp fell on its side and teetered on the filthy carpet.

  “God dammit, Peter! Sit down!” Todd roared while picking the lamp off the floor. It didn’t really seem to faze anyone by his scolding outburst, but it surely caught me off guard.

  Peter slumped into his chair mumbling, “It wasn’t my fault.”

  I started to scoop up each neon circle back into my milkless bowl. Shay bent down to help and I found a particularly nasty one. Three short black curly hairs intertwined through the center of the loop. I held it up to her, “How hungry am I?”

  “Please,” she made a dry gagging sound while giggling, “please not that hungry.”

  “Hey Jim, I’m really sorry about that. He used to be on Ritalin, and he was a totally different person. Now without it, ugh, I’m sorry,” Todd said.

  “It’s fine, I had a cousin who was pretty much the same,” I responded.

  Shay finished picking up her untouched meal and looked at it disdainfully. She held it out, offering it to Nikki. “I already ate in my room earlier.” Nikki looked at it with disgust, but took the food anyways.

  “So, anyone have a plan?” Harvey asked out of nowhere.

  “Die of boredom,” Nikki said with a mouthful of ham.

  “Seriously, we need to get some real food, more weapons and, shit I don’t know, do something,” Harvey preached.

  “Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit,” Peter began to shout rapidly as he ran down the hallway with his arms extended like a plane. Todd gave Harvey a disapproving look.

  “What? You cussed, too,” Harvey responded. Todd looked down and shook his head trying not to laugh.

  Pablo said something in Spanish and made circles at the side of his head with his finger.

  “Yeah, he is a little crazy,” Todd responded.

  “Well, Harvey, what do you suggest?” Shay asked.

  Pop, pop, pop; the sound of gunshots rang out across the street. Everyone jumped up and ran to the window. Todd turned off the lamp and we looked out into the darkness. A light glow from the moon allowed us to barely make out what was going on. The sounds went off again, quicker this time and muzzle flashes lit up the street. The flashes silhouetted a large truck in the center of the road. It wasn’t our friends in the black truck, but this one was similarly decked out. A spotlight kicked on and lit up the front entrance of the Smith & Field’s diner. People were at the window of the diner returning fire. The gunshots rang back and forth between the truck and residents. There were at least four shooters in the truck and some of the shots were clearly not aimed at the diner. They were fighting off incoming zombies and attempting an assault at the same time. I had to respect their boldness, even if it was tactically a terrible plan.

  They exchanged bullets for a minute, both sides standing their ground.

  I felt a pull at my arm, “C’mon, we need a closer look,” Shay said, pulling me toward the door.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “They aren’t paying attention to us and zombies can’t get through the fence. We need to know what is going on,” she whispered.

  I didn’t completely agree, but I followed her anyway. I probably would have followed her into a volcano if she looked at me with those blue eyes. We stepped out into the patio; the fresh night air was tainted with the smell of gunpowder and rotten meat. We crept close enough to the fence to remain out of reach of any surprise zombies. Amid the gunfight, one of the cars in the Smith & Field’s parking lot flashed on its high-beams. The truckers shielded their eyes and we got a better look at them. They all wore camouflage or dark clothing and toted shotguns and hunting rifles.

  One single shot echoed through the night and the spotlight mounted on their truck exploded into sparks and broken glass. I could hear the men cussing to themselves and starting to question their attack when a second high-powered shot rang out. It sent the camouflaged man spiraling to the ground. He shook and whined, grasping his bloody chest. “Help me up, let�
�s get the hell out of here,” he cried out.

  The remaining men, still shielding their eyes, looked at each other. One revved the engine up and the other ran over to their downed man. One more shot cut through the night and the rescuer’s body went limp and fell on top of the wounded man.

  The truck peeled off towards Allmart, leaving their friends behind.

  “They are probably part of the group that attacked us. They left a wounded man behind during our shootout too,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, every man for himself out there,” she whispered back.

  I squinted and looked away slightly as a group of zombies closed in on the two in the street. The man screamed as they tore into his stomach first. I thought we would have another episode of zombies eating until there was only a puddle, but I was wrong. The giant spreader stepped up and vomited an endless stream of waste, right into his screaming mouth. The man was covered completely and just like that, all of the undead stopped chewing on him. They just turned around and walked away. Even if you couldn’t hear it, the words “what the hell?” seemed to float like subtitles in the air.

  “Hello! Someone help me!” the man screamed. Even the dead ignored him now. It was surreal watching him, lying in the middle of the street. His entrails were stretched on the pavement and he was covered in viral waste. All this, while begging for help from people he just shot at. The irony train was making a lot of stops recently.

  There was movement over at the restaurant and the car lights cut off. From the dim moonlight, I could barely make out a man kneeling in front of a white sheet with writing on it. I nudged Shay and pointed at their sign, “I guess they weren’t lying.”

  Shay looked over at the sign, “Retired sniper inside.” The shadowy figure stood up and spray-painted a single black line through the word retired, before returning inside.

  We looked over to see a zombie reaching through the gate, making a low moan. Shay drove her screwdriver into his head. “Remember the combo is 1215, I’ll be right back,” she whispered while pointing at the large numerical bike lock. It was one of those oversized locks that had the blue nubs sticking up with numbers 0-9. It was big enough that it could be handled from either side of the fence.

  “This isn’t a good idea. You can barely see,” I whispered back.

  “Same goes for them … I hope,” she responded while slipping outside.

  She slipped into the shadows and disappeared. I closed the gate back as quietly as I could and waited. I couldn’t see anything, but then I heard the wounded man call out in a hoarse voice.

  “Oh thank God, you came. Hey, come back you bitch,” he trailed off. A moment later I could see her slinking through the street. I turned the numbers to 1215 and opened the lock.

  “The other one was covered in sludge, so I didn’t risk touching it,” she said while showing me the wood-gripped hunting rifle. “This one is clean; it fell a few paces away from them. I would have checked their pockets, but they are … contagious looking.”

  I smiled at her as she inspected the weapon. “Let’s go inside,” I whispered.

  We came back inside to an argument.

  “We watched a girl die, and she stayed dead,” Harvey said.

  “Well she was shot in the head then,” Nikki responded.

  “No she wasn’t.”

  “What is going on here?” Shay asked, breaking the two apart.

  “These guys are oblivious to the fact that when someone dies, they get right back up as a zombie,” Nikki said.

  “You really didn’t know that?” Shay asked with a look of concern.

  “Wait, you can’t be serious?” I asked.

  “I thought everyone knew that,” Shay said.

  “No, we saw someone die and they never moved. The rules can’t just change right in the middle,” I stated.

  “They aren’t my rules, but that’s what happens,” Shay said.

  “Since when?” Harvey asked.

  “Ever since we got here nearly a week ago,” Desmond started. “There was a maid; she killed herself in room 118. Luckily for us, she had locked the door prior.”

  “You just changed movies on me; we went from The Dawn to…” I began.

  “The Unliving 3, yeah it really does complicate things,” Shay interjected.

  “Man, what is next? Are you going to tell me that spreaders don’t make other spreaders with their vomit?” Harvey grumbled.

  “They don’t,” Todd said, looking up from his book he was reading on the couch. He grabbed my attention.

  “It’s in our DNA or something,” Todd began. “Each person turns differently when infected. I’ve seen spreaders and regular ones turn from random people; it just depends on who you are. Maybe it’s your blood type or it could be something deeper.”

  “Remember when your mom said you were special?” Desmond said. “Well, she could be right; you might be the first zed that shoots lasers out your ass.”

  “Funny. But seriously, ask Pablo,” Nikki said.

  “What would I ask him? I don’t speak Spanish,” Harvey remarked.

  “Ask him about the corridor or whatever. I don’t know exactly what it means but I think he saw something none of us have seen.”

  “Corredor,” Pablo corrected. He began to speak and we all listened, even though the words made no sense to us. His charades were humorous at first, but soon grew frightening. He acted out a scene where a large zombie vomited on one of his friends. Later his friend went to sleep; I recognized the two hands against the face gesture at least. Then he made the motion of running.

  “Your friend turned and you ran?” I asked him.

  He paused for a second, obviously frustrated by the language barrier.

  “No … friend run,” he mustered out.

  I squinted trying to make sure that I heard everything correctly. He solidified what I saw by making the motion of sprinting, grabbing shoulders and biting. Then pivoted, made the sprinting motion, grabbed and pretended to bite another person.

  “Corredor!” he shouted abruptly at the end of his act. It startled me and caused me to jump a little.

  I glanced over at Harvey and we had the same look on our face. “A runner? What the hell are we dealing with?”

  In the days to follow, there were no notable events. We were cutting into our food supplies quickly and there was a lot of sitting around, doing nothing. You could call that conserving energy if you wanted to sugar-coat it. Pablo spent his time working non-stop on all manner of things. He boarded up all the outside windows using boards he removed from one of the interior walls.

  Shay, Harvey, and I sat and discussed movies. It seemed that our knowledge of low budget horror films wasn’t translating into survival skills as well as I had hoped. A good movie always had one thing going for it. It comes up with rules and sticks to them. Except this real life virus wasn’t following any rules. It made people come back to life, sometimes. It was passed by bites, maybe. People that turned, became individualized monsters, sometimes. I had jotted down all the notes I could, but nothing was concrete. All of my notes pretty much ended with question marks. The time frames didn’t match up either; they said that the maid turned after she committed suicide around the same time that the girl died in our front lawn. The girl in our lawn didn’t get back up, and neither did John.

  Yeah, John, the man we had tied to a chair back on the lawn, we made sure that he at least fulfilled one more note before he died. We didn’t chop his head off or hack a blade into his brain. We weren’t completely barbaric. We cut him and let him bleed out, we were pushed for time, but we had to know. He had been bitten, but he had died from his wounds, and we had waited ten minutes. He never turned, so I just figured it didn’t work that way. Maybe the virus had to take over while you were alive; perhaps the undead were actually just infected people. Maybe what Todd said about each person receiving the infection in a unique way extended to not just what you turned into, but also how. It all hurt my head trying to figure it out. I knew that zomb
ie virus or not, being bitten, splashed with spreader goo, or dying, were all things I wanted to avoid.

  “Maybe the virus has adapted,” Todd said as we all sat around a lunch of cereal and peanut butter.

  “I just don’t get how it can be so different each time,” I responded.

  “We might be looking at it the wrong way. It might not be one virus.”

  “What is it then?” I asked.

  “There could be multiple viruses, all of them similar, but, well different rules as you would put it,” Todd said while straightening his glasses.

  “It’s like the bargain bin of DVDs spilled out and they are all trying to be in one movie?”

  “Um, I guess,” Todd said, not getting my analogy.

  “C’mon, Nerd, let’s hit the pool,” Shay said while smacking my shoulder.

  After the first night, Harvey had mentioned how the pool was untouched and no one had showered in … well, a long time. Todd and Pablo had found some chemicals in a shed outside. They pointed at the labels and argued briefly before Pablo shooed him away and mixed them into the pool. He finished and crossed his arms and shouted “Bueno!” I was pretty sure that was Spanish for let’s swim!

  It was strong and the chlorine burned our eyes, but holy crap, did it feel good. Everyone was able to have some fun, the most neglected luxury of all.

  We weren’t reckless; we had someone on guard. Desmond was always glad to be on duty. Smashing skulls through the black wrought-iron fence with a carpenter’s hammer seemed to bring him inner peace. The zombies would practically stick their heads through the lateral bars, asking for us to put them down.

  The noise we made attracted many of the nearby wanderers and they had started to pile up on the fence line. The hunter with his ripped-open stomach had disappeared from the street. His friend though, must have taken a bullet to the brain. In the street was an explosion of red. Shreds of clothing and meaty chunks of flesh lay strewn about, buzzing with flies.

  As more uneventful days passed at the motel I felt closer to Shay. It was as though I knew her for years. I was never very good at romance, so I felt like I was passing up a chance to woo her by simply hanging out. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted. Of course I wanted more from the sexy, capable, ass kicker, but for now, I was happy just to have her with me.