by Strand, Jeff
“You okay, boss? You don’t look so good.”
Pitt shrugged and grabbed a plastic bottle from the shelf. He opened it and sipped some tepid water. “I’m just tired. I can’t seem to sleep through the night.”
Kendall’s eyes widened and he raised his weapon. “Damn!”
The dead woman was writhing in the rubble now, making eerily erotic sounds. Some plaster fell away, exposing her face. Rats had eaten away her nose and one blue eye was missing. Her teeth pulled back in an involuntary snarl. Her dress was ripped and shredded. She was wearing sexy, pink thong underwear.
Bart, a skinny teenager with long black hair that contrasted sharply with his pale white skin, came out of the back offices. He was lugging a canvas sack. Back before the world went to hell he would have been labeled a Goth, but now people belonged to only one of two groups: Us or Them. Bart said: “Scored some boxes of ammo, Mr. Pitt.” Then he saw the dead woman and cringed. “Shit, she’s turning.”
Kendall looked panicked. He started edging toward the door. “She’s almost all the way back, Pitt. For Chrissakes, do her!”
“No, the noise could bring more,” Pitt said. “Let’s just get the hell out.”
Just then the woman sat up, arms stiff at her sides. Her one remaining eye was spider-webbed with reddened veins. Her mouth opened impossibly wide and sound like the distant shriek of a hurricane filled the market. Time seemed to elongate and slow. Pitt found himself frozen. I wonder what she’s feeling? Thinking?
Jon, a muscular black kid in his early twenties, came running into the market. He tripped over a box of cat food, regained his footing and closed the gap. “Shut her up!”
Kendall’s finger twitched. The shotgun roared. The top of the woman’s head vanished in a spray of blood, tissue and bone. Her body collapsed again and the room went silent. The four men froze in place and held their breath, listening with a desperation that transcended the senses. Their eyes met like football players in a huddle. They waited.
Bart was the first to speak. He brushed back his long dark hair and grinned. “I think we’re cool,” he said. He moved toward the plate glass window and peered out into the street. “Nothing happening outside.”
“It’ll be dark soon,” Kendall said. His face was pale; voice hoarse and crackled with tension. “We got a pretty good haul today, why push our luck?”
Pitt nodded, and decided Kendall would be replaced on the next run. His nerves are shot. He’s losing it. “You’re right,” he said, soothingly. “Jon, Bart, you move those boxes. I’ll take point. Kendall, just cover the rear.”
Each man dropped into position, Kendall visibly relieved to not have point. Pitt turned too rapidly and endured another wave of dizziness. He stepped out into the middle of the street, rifle at port arms. Keep it together. He searched the alleys for movement and trotted away through the trash and debris. Jon followed, wobbling along with a wheelbarrow full of dented soup cans; then Bart with three crates of powdered milk and a twelve-pack of cheap beer.
Kendall, still inside the nearly deserted market, turned his back to the street. He backed carefully towards the front door. He found himself humming tunelessly, some pop tune from the Twentieth Century, baby, baby I think I love you… He froze as two things struck him simultaneously. First, that he had not reloaded the shotgun.
Second that a nearby pile of trash had just… moved.
“Pitt?”
Pitt, across the street, stopped in his tracks and turned just in time to have another long, slow black-hole experience: Kendall fumbling through his suddenly bottomless pants pocket for some cold, tubular shells; meanwhile, a figure coming up and out of a huge stack of garbage, something that had once been a rent-a-cop. It still wore tattered strips of grey uniform and an absurdly comic hat with a shiny black bill. Then Kendall cracking open the weapon; the Zom on its feet and lurching forward while making that high keening a Zom makes when he’s starving; Kendall trying to load those shells with shaking fingers, dropping the first but getting the second; the Zom snarling and extending bloody fingers with yellowed and cracked nails, hungrily closing the gap.
“Get out of the way!” Pitt called.
They all wanted to shoot but couldn’t without hitting Kendall, and by the time the man tried to run he was toast. The Zom grabbed Kendall’s right arm and twisted it around and up so that it made a hideous craaaaking sound. Kendall grunted and spewed out a mouthful of thick, syrupy vomit. The Zom clawed at his guts with those Fu Manchu nails, trying to open his soft lower belly. Kendall dropped his hands to protect himself. It closed with him in an obscene parody of a slow dance and bit deeply into his neck, severing the carotid artery. Dark blood spurted with each desperate pump of his weakening heart, arcing high and away. Kendall kicked his legs like a man on the gallows and his eyes rolled back as he died.
Pitt crossed the deserted street, closed the distance. He watched as it fed. His skin tingled as he looked deep into the creature’s empty eyes for a long, dark moment. Where has your soul gone? Do you hate what you’re doing right now… or lust for it? Is it both at once? What the fuck is going on in your head? Pitt shuddered, shook the cobwebs from his head.
“Mr. Pitt?”
It was his crew, awaiting orders. Pitt crossed himself, raised his weapon and barked. “Waste them both.”
The others came out of their trance to fire. The three continued firing, the barrage going on and on until the red, white and purple pieces that had been Kendall were indistinguishable from the remnants of the Zom. Silence, and the fading stench of cordite. “Their heads, too,” Pitt said sadly. “Make sure you destroy the brains.”
They jogged back to camp. Not for the first time, Pitt found it difficult to keep up. At forty, he was by far the oldest of the twenty-three rag tag survivors, many of whom were half his age. They followed him because he’d managed to keep them alive for the last few years. During that time, Pitt had lost his right eye to a Zom who got too close and his hair had gone completely white. He wondered if his leadership went unchallenged because the others were afraid of him. In his own mind he was just a football player gone to seed; an ex-marine turned ex-bouncer.
They paused near some trashcans at the entrance and whistled sharply. The sun was sinking into the bloody red skyline, and time was short. The guard whistled back and they jogged up to the next level of the airport parking lot without incident. The women greeted their men warmly and took the food to storage. Pitt went alone to the railing and looked down. The undead were already coming out to howl at the moon. Pitt shivered, although it was not yet cold, his weary mind still obsessed with questions. What are they thinking? Feeling? What would it have been like for Kendall, if I had left him there, let him turn?
The others had posted guards, opened the beer and begun to celebrate. Pitt slid further into the shadows. He reached into his jacket, removed a tattered leather wallet and took out his last remaining picture of Maria. His features softened. It was a shot from their honeymoon. Maria was standing on the hotel steps. She had her hands on her skirted hips and was smiling sweetly into the camera; long black hair swept out to one side, held aloft by a sudden gust of wind. Pitt stared at the photograph for a very long time. He did not cry, not any more. His tears had dried, turned to dust and blown away. In a way, the picture calmed him; reminded him of other lives in other times and places.
… Down at Waterfront Park walking hand in hand, because even with the trash and floating human waste it is their place, and they need to talk about the baby. Pitt scolds her, forces himself to ignore the hurt in her deep, brown eyes. “How could you have been so stupid, Maria? We can’t bring a poor innocent child into this crazy fucked-up world.”
She states her case, and it is for life even in the face of death. Pitt weakens. Soon they are sitting on a wobbly bench on the outer edge of the park. Pitt is rubbing his hand over Maria’s swollen belly, feeling his child’s feeble kicks, when the group of undead swarms out of the old public washroom building. There are to
o many of them, no time to reload the rifle. The bench rests against a concrete wall. Pitt stands on the seat and scurries up for a quick drop to safety on the far side. He reaches, starts pulling Maria up out of harms way, but her hands are slippery from sweat. He loses her. She looks up at him, both terror and forgiveness in her beautiful eyes.
Zom’s are on her, scratching, clawing, pulling his beloved Maria away from his outstretched, shaking hands. Pitt screams and without hesitation jumps back down to try help her, pulling his back-up, a 9mm Glock, from his pants. He fires the moment his feet hit the grass. “Take me!” he cries. But they have no interest in him. They are rapidly backing away; content to protect the prize they already have in their filthy clutches.
Pitt uses all fifteen rounds, but only drops the Zom’s on the outer fringes of the group. They are gone in a heartbeat, disappearing back into the bathroom, locking and barring the entrance behind them, Pitt still outside pounding on the door all alone with his tears and screams of hopeless rage as he hears Maria pleading…
“Mr. Pitt?”
Hands grabbed Pitt by the shoulders. He reacted violently, jumped to his feet ready to lash out. But it was only young Jon. “Sorry, we all know you need your rest, but you were screaming in your sleep. Keene asked me to check if you were okay.”
Wake me? Pitt tried to get the world to stop spinning. Was I dreaming? He’d dozed off. “Fuck! What time is it? How long was I out?”
“It’s nearly midnight,” Jon said, gently. “You need more than five hours. Why don’t you try to go back to sleep?”
“I have to go,” Pitt said matter-of-factly. He gathered up his gun and ammo belt, headed for the door.
Jon followed, shifting from one foot to another, building up his nerve, finally saying: “You’ve got to stop doing this, Mr. Pitt. It’s killing you. You can search for her forever, but it won’t do any good. Accept it and get on with your life. The Zom’s took her and she’s gone!”
Pitt turned in a flash. He tossed Jon against the concrete wall, clutched his throat, screamed into the ebony face just inches away, “Fuck you, you little punk. You don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about, so stay out of this, you hear me? Stay the fuck out of it!”
“Yes, sir,” Jon croaked. Pitt saw his own spittle on the boy’s cheek and felt a wave of shame heat his belly. But he could not bring himself to apologize.
Pitt released the young man and bolted out the door into the parking lot stairwell. He knew no one would follow, but he ran down the stairs two at a time anyway, not slowing his pace until he was out on the street and several blocks back into the dark, rotting belly of the city. Only then did he slow to a walk; raggedy breath sucking in and out of clenched, chipped teeth, heart pounding in its bone cage, pulse loud enough that he was sure any Zom within a mile radius could hear it. He could picture one suddenly sitting up, rotting ears turned to the wind, picking up the tiny thump-thumps, then lurching to its feet, greedily searching for him.
Bring it on, Pitt thought. I don’t care any more.
He held up his lantern. As if his thoughts had given substance to reality, three decaying females moved out of the shadows across the street, running in their broken high heeled shoes and tattered fancy dresses. Pitt drew the Glock and put a blue-tinged hole in the center of the first two foreheads. They dropped instantly. But the third ducked at the right time and was on top of him before he could aim again.
She hissed and spat but she was weak, likely starving. Pitt was able to throw her roughly to the ground. He pinned her beneath his weight. She tried to claw and bite, but he used his knees to keep her helpless. He wanted to shoot her and get on with things, but he paused anyway. He needed to look into those wild, bloodshot eyes and ask her something very important.
“Do you remember your name?”
The Zom snarled and hawked an unmentionable fluid. Pitt slapped her, tried to hold her gaze. “Can you remember who you were? I need to know.”
She hissed again, spat a mouthful of blood at his face and started thrashing with all her might. Pitt felt an almost unbearable sadness take him. He jammed his gun into her gaping maw and pulled the trigger three times. The top of her skull exploded into a jigsaw puzzle; tiny pieces scattered across the cluttered street.
Pitt climbed to his feet and walked away. He moved further into the city. Three blocks later, vision blurred and equilibrium doing cartwheels again, he collapsed in a heap against the front window of a boarded up Dry Cleaning company. His consciousness drifted into a fugue state. He rested for several minutes, stomach queasy, until his head suddenly cleared again. He got to his feet.
Pitt pressed on. He was tired, angry and confused yet knew that he was only delaying the inevitable. He paused in a doorway, took a series of deep breaths to steel his nerves then picked up his pace. He headed straight for the old warehouse on the corner of Columbia and Market Streets, determined to finish things.
The warehouse was a plain old rectangular box, three stories high, spread out covering most of a city block. Pitt had no idea who had once owned the property. There was no logo anywhere on the building; the only paint the sprayed graffiti of long-dead gang members. The warehouse belonged to Pitt now. He had claimed it weeks ago by chaining the rusty door shut and applying a sturdy lock.
Pitt unlocked the door, slipped quietly inside. He locked it behind him.
It was still inside the building and much chillier than out on the street. Pitt stood, weaving in the darkness; eyes closed and fingers tightly gripping his gun. He listened for any movements in the gloom. Nothing. Wait… no, nothing.
Then he heard the scrape of a chain dragging across cold concrete. A nervous smile touched the corners of his mouth.
Thank God!
Pitt started the backup generator. He clicked the light switch. The dust-covered fluorescents cast a dull but adequate amount of light. Maria stood exactly where he’d left her, inside what had once been a small storage room. The walls, floor and ceiling were solid concrete. Pitt had hurriedly constructed a set of bars to seal off the front of the small room. She wasn’t going anywhere, but for safety he’d also fashioned a chain around her ankle and attached it to the rusty bed frame.
Pitt walked nearer to the bars. Maria hissed at him and tried to claw through the gate, but it was something of a reflexive gesture, with little real effort behind it. Pitt took that as a very good sign. She remembers me. She knows who I am! God, even turned, she’s still beautiful.
It had taken two seemingly endless, bloody nights to find her again––to battle his way into the tunnels under Waterfront Park where they were keeping Maria for extra food. She’d already been bitten several times and was well on her way to turning Zom, but Pitt hadn’t been able to shoot her. So he had brought her here, to this abandoned warehouse. He’d kept her existence secret from the group and continued the charade of searching for her night after night.
Pitt removed his coat and shirt. Maria growled and shuffled. Saliva drooled from her shattered lower teeth.
“I know, sweetheart,” Pitt said, kindly. “It won’t be long, now.”
He started to prepare the needle. Maria paced back and forth like an impatient panther. Pitt jabbed the large wooden needle into his left forearm, successfully hitting the vein on the first try. He quickly attached the hollow rubber flex-tube. He didn’t want to waste a precious drop. Maria grabbed the end of the tube that protruded into her cell. She sucked hungrily. Pitt groaned, from a mixture of emotional pleasure and physical pain. She started to drain his life away and once again the loss of blood made his vision blur and his ears ring. Pitt clenched his jaw and pinched himself to stay conscious.
It’s for the baby. The baby.
Maria’s distended belly was huge, now. Joy raced through Pitt as he imagined the baby as it kicked inside of her. I’ll make it up to you, honey, he thought. Thank God our baby’s still alive.
Pitt finally yanked the needle from his arm. He heard Maria growl at the abrupt end of her
feast. Pitt debated returning to the parking garage, but sank to his knees. It’s over, he thought. I’m staying here with my family. Before he could change his mind, Pitt unbolted the door leading into the small concrete cell. He opened the door and collapsed.
Screaming…
A horrible keening sound made Pitt bolt upright; fireworks exploded in front of his eyes and a white-hot knife of pain shot down his spine. He nearly lost consciousness again but fought his way back. After a long moment, he remembered what he had done and adrenaline flooded his veins. He knew he was as good as dead. After a long moment, there came another shriek. Pitt opened his eyes.
The door to Maria’s cell was yawning open. She was no longer inside. A trail of clotted blood led out the door and past where he sat on the floor. With a supreme effort, Pitt managed to get to his feet to see where Maria had gone.
He found her curled in a ball over on the far side of the building. She was slowly rocking back and forth, keeping a watchful eye on her surroundings. It was early morning now, and pale light filtered through the skylights. Pitt could see that Maria was holding something in her arms. Something small, that writhed.
Pitt staggered over. He simply had to see. Maria lurched to her feet and tentatively offered up the child. It was a dirty, blood-smeared, oddly deformed little boy; a darkling who was half-living, half-dead.
Pitt had never seen anything so beautiful.
Maria yanked on his left arm, pointing first to his many scabs and then to the baby’s mouth. She wants me to feed him. And Pitt fully comprehended the darkness at last. He closed his eyes, crossed himself and prayed. When he opened them again, Maria was snarling in hunger.
Zack Pitt looked down at where the needle lay on the filthy, concrete floor. He startled Maria by kicking it away toward the empty cell. He looked deep into her feral eyes, turned his head to the side and offered the baby his throat. The elongated, preternaturally sharp teeth quickly broke the skin…