If this is how the world is now, will I ever get used to it? I don’t think so, but I think about Darlene and how the only way I’ll be able to survive is with her by my side. I couldn’t go on without her. She’s the reason I haven’t given up yet. She’s what gives me hope.
“Jack! Come on,” Isaiah says. One of his hands grips my bicep. I didn’t even realize it. I was transfixed, just standing there, staring at the carnage, at the freaks.
Fingernails dig into my skin, and he pulls me. I almost drop the ten-pound weight I hold in my hand like a hammer.
The dead lumber toward us. They’re only about five feet away when Isaiah nearly yanks me off my feet.
Abby is in the lead. She’s almost to the fence that separates the aerobic area from the basketball spectator stands. Pat is behind her, Miss Fox behind Pat, and last is Kevin with Ryan in his arms.
Abby weaves through treadmills.
“Around the corner,” she says. “It’s a service stairway.” Snarls crawl up my back, almost drowning out Abby’s voice.
“Jack, watch out!” Abby says.
I turn around to see a zombie with his nose half-ripped off, lunging at me. I don’t even think. I just act, let the dumbbell come down on its face. There’s a sickening crunch of bones shattering. My shoulder is nearly ripped out. A pinch in my back travels from my ass to my neck.
But No-Nose drops like a sack of bricks.
Bash one head in, two more take their place, I guess, because an old woman and an old man, both more like skeletons than recently dead people don’t even take notice to their fallen comrade. A hand goes for my throat.
I fall over, losing my weapon. Rotten skin and dusty bones fills my nostrils, then the damn thing opens its mouth. My forearm goes up to block the thing’s bite. Problem is my forearm is bare.
One bite and I’m the next nameless corpse. What a bittersweet irony that would be. The writer becoming the monsters he writes about.
I drive my elbow into its neck. The one on top of me is the man.
His wife joins in on the fun. This is not how I picture my first threesome.
I use my other arm to try to fend her off, but somehow she’s stronger than he is. Fresher maybe, too.
Isaiah screams.
There’s a crack that follows that scream. I’m showered in a cloud of dust and brains. Some wet stuff, too, like blood or God knows what else. Another crack.
The old guy drops on me, unmoving.
“Come on,” Isaiah says.
He pulls me out from beneath the lifeless corpses, but more are on the way. I can’t sit around stunned. I have to move.
Their eyes are yellow, some are red. All are dead.
“Come on, you assholes, we can’t wait around all night,” Pat says.
He has his gun raised, but he won’t fire. There are too many, not enough bullets. He might be a good shot, who knows? He knows he can’t drop all twenty or so that come up the steps.
I cross the gate and slam it shut. It’s only about waist high, but it might slow the bastards down. We weave through a maze of stationary bikes and treadmills. Dead TVs hang above us, watching this carnage unfold with black-screened eyes.
The gate bangs open not long after I’m through.
Abby and Pat turn the corner, knifing through the top part of the basketball stands.
I’m sweating, I can feel it, but something else leaves my skin, too. It’s dread. I really hate heights. This rec center is full of heights. Who knows how high up we’ll be, and if we’ll ever really be high enough to get away from these things?
Isaiah throws his dumbbell in one last-ditch effort to slow them down. It whistles by my head, nails a woman in her stomach. She doubles over and falls. The others take no notice of the momentary roadblock.
They aren’t stopping.
All I can do is turn back around, and run.
Kevin and Ryan turn the corner that Abby and Pat have just turned. Isaiah and I are right there. I go first. There’s a clatter. Kevin’s deep voice rings out. “Fuck,” he says.
I trip over the big guy like he’s a fallen boulder. Ryan sprawls out in front of him curled up in a ball, moaning, grabbing at his leg which just kind of hangs there like rubber.
Isaiah slows up before he’s the next victim in this dumbass pileup. He hops over Kevin, clamps a hand around the big guy’s forearm and tries to pull. With me he had no problem, but Kevin probably weighs twice what I weigh.
I scramble up and try to help.
My eyes bulge out of my face as I pull with all of my might.
Kevin shakes his head, lift his face up. He wears a mask of red over his left eyebrow, even more blood on the floor where he hit.
He pushes himself up, dazed.
The snarls grow louder, that dry clicking noise in the back of the zombies’ throats. A gray-skinned girl is the first around the corner. I swear her eyes light up when she sees the meal at her feet. She wastes no time in dropping down on Kevin’s bare legs.
Her mouth clicks open. Black spit rolls from the corners of her lips in thick, ropy goops.
I kick out and hit her square in the face. Her hair flies back as if she’s being electrocuted. The spit sprays, dotting the white walls to my right.
“Go! Go!” I say to Kevin.
But he moves like a drunk.
Isaiah kicks another one in the chest. Sends the bastard over the railing to our left and into the bleachers where it gets tangled.
“Too many!” Isaiah shouts. “Go, we have to go!”
I try to block it out, try to deafen myself to the guy’s logic, but sometimes I’m too stupid for my own good.
I kick at another’s head. It falls in a spray of blood and brains, the soft, mushy skin not standing a chance. One grapples at me, but I see it from the corner of my eyes and dip, throwing an elbow into its back, sending it to the bleachers with its friend.
“Jack! Come on!”
Teeth are inches from my face. My fist goes up, hits the man under his jaw. His runny, black eyes close with the force of it.
“Kevin!” I yell.
But it’s too late.
He screams out as one of the things dig into his calf. Tendons and skin pop and snap.
A ringing fills my head. It’s not real. None of this can be real.
In one last kick, I free up enough space for me to back out, to hop over Kevin’s body. The rest of them fall down on him. They cover him like ants on a dropped piece of food.
I get about ten feet away from the carnage, from the spraying blood and the crunching sounds of jaws working at his flesh, when he lifts up. This muscular man I once called a friend in high school actually does a half-pushup with about ten dead bodies crawling over him.
It doesn’t last long.
He falls back to the floor with a crash.
The look he gives me will probably give me nightmares for the rest of my life assuming the rest of my life lasts as long as I want it to.
It’s a look of pain, of defeat.
Kevin reaches an arm out toward us as he lifts his head, then drops, his bloody face bouncing off the linoleum.
Isaiah has Ryan in his arms. “Come on, man!” he shouts.
The last thing I hear as I crawl up the steps are Kevin’s dying screams.
He dies a hero.
23
Pat’s face almost fills the opening at the top of the metal ladder. Behind him is an expanse of black sky dotted with white pinpricks of light. I love the stars. They remind me of Darlene. The late nights in Chicago where we get drunk off cheap wine and sit on the balcony, looking at these very stars. Even in the winter when her body keeps me warmer than any fire.
I’m smiling as I think this, as my heart aches for her. I’m trying not to think of her in some back alley covered in trash and blood with inhuman hands digging into her insides. It’s a hard job. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die. There have been a few occasions tonight where I’ve had that feeling, except it’
s not my childhood or my memories. All I see is Darlene’s smiling face. So beautiful. So perfect.
“Nuh-uh, drop the kid,” Pat says, bringing me back down to earth. He’s not talking to me, he’s talking to Isaiah.
“What the fuck do you mean drop him?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“This is a human life we’re talking about,” I say. “He might be one of the last ones for all we know. We have to keep him alive.”
“What did I say about talking back to the man with the gun?” Pat says. He flashes the pistol which gleams in the starlight. “And there’s seven billion people on this planet. You think Ryan the janitor is going to be one of the last ones? You think the fate of the human race is going to have to rely on this shit-stain?”
“Man, fuck your gun. I’ll come up there and beat your ass right now,” Isaiah says.
“Patrick,” Miss Fox says in her most motherly voice. “Let them up!”
Pat’s face drains of all color.
“Yeah, shit-stain,” Abby says from the roof. She’s not visible.
He exhales a deep breath, then rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he says as he moves out of the hatch. Thank God, because those snarls and choking, gurgling sounds drift up the hall. It’s haunting.
Isaiah goes first. He hangs Ryan over his shoulder like a backpack. “You gotta hold on, kid,” Isaiah says to him. Ryan moans something that isn’t decipherable, but his hands clasp together around Isaiah’s neck.
“I’m right behind you,” I say, then turn my head away from the two, watching the corner, waiting for one of the dead to lunge at me. I won’t hesitate anymore. I am changed. I am Johnny Deadslayer. I am a twisted creation from the depths of my own imagination.
Nothing comes. The coast is clear. I shamble up the ladder, careful not to let Ryan fall off of Isaiah’s back. There are only about ten steps. It doesn’t take us too long to reach the cool, night air.
Abby closes the hatch, stands over it like it’s an animal she just accidentally hit with her car. “You don’t think they can climb up the ladder, do you?”
I shake my head. “If they can’t figure out how to pull the lobby doors open, I think we’ll be okay.”
I almost tell her that according to my rules, there’s not a chance in hell they can, but this isn’t my fictional world.
Her mouth forms into a thin line. “I hope so, I really hope so.” Something about her face tells me she doesn’t believe a word I say.
With the sounds of the horde secure behind the hatch, it hits me how quiet it is outside, how still and…empty.
The darkness is a complete black for as far as the eye can see in front of me. No streetlights are on. No headlights driving down the road. All we have is God’s natural light above us, and it’s not much.
There’s a smell in the air. A rotten smell.
“Now what?” Isaiah says.
He’s lying on his back. Ryan is next to him, unmoving, but making soft whimpering sounds through his nose. The leg wound spills blood at a steady rate. The gauze is almost soaked through.
Miss Fox rummages through the first aid kit a few feet away from the both of them. I’m standing, breathing calmer than earlier. Abby is next to me, pacing a few feet back and forth. Pat’s back is to us all. He looks out toward the darkness, where, far up the road, is the Leering Research Facility — Pat Huber’s former place of employment, first, thanks to a fire and now, thanks to the dead rising.
“We wait up here,” Abby says, answering Isaiah. “What else can we do?”
I nod.
“Shit,” Isaiah says, then he does a sit-up, straining. “None of y’all was bit, were you?”
I pat myself down, then shake my head. If I was bit, I think I’d know.
“Nope,” Abby says. “Never got close to them…wait a minute — where’s Kevin?”
I shake my head. I hoped this wouldn’t come up, that everyone would’ve forgotten about him because it hurts to say this out loud. “H-He didn’t make it, Abby.”
“What? You’re joking, right?”
“I wish I was,” I say.
“The damn things fell on him. He tripped carrying Ryan, and they were on him faster than I could believe,” Isaiah says.
I bow my head, pinch my nose. “We tried, Abby. We really tried, there were just way too many of them.”
“A couple seconds longer and we wouldn’t have made it, either,” Isaiah says.
She sniffles, then explodes into a sob. “God, why? What the hell is going on? Why is this happening to us? I’m not a bad person. We aren’t bad people, are we?”
“Don’t question God,” Miss Fox snaps. “We are beneath him. We have no right in questioning his motives.”
I think she’s right, but I keep my mouth shut. Doesn’t matter why this is happening or who had a hand in it. It’s happening, and all we can do is survive. I have to, God or not, for Darlene.
“It wasn’t God or the Devil,” Pat says. His back is still facing us and he talks in a quiet voice. “This is man-made. We did this.”
“What? How you know?” Isaiah asks.
Pat turns around. His face is still white, gun still in his hand. “It was an accident,” he says.
“You think it was an accident?” I ask.
Pat shrugs. “They were studying a virus…at Leering. I worked on the third floor, dealing with animal testing mostly, but I heard the rumors. Test Subject 001. They said she came back to life — except she was supposed to be a he and the project head was batshit crazy. When things went south, one of the researchers made it out of the decontamination chamber with a bite wound. He went a few places, spreading the virus before he could be quarantined, not thinking in his right mind.” He sighs. “Yeah, I heard the rumors, but I didn’t believe them. Then there was the fire. Fires happen from time to time. There was talk of rebuilding, of renovation. That fire was an accident, I was sure, especially when they shut us down. You know, all kinds of batshit things make the rounds at Leering, and so far none proved to be true…until now.
“When they shut us down, I was relieved. Six months away from early retirement and a nice, fat pension. Re-lieved. But I wasn’t thinking it was because we were all royally fucked. I wasn’t thinking the Leering big-wigs saw their fuck-up and decided to jump ship, leaving us all to crash and burn. No, I wasn’t thinking any of that. Besides, I heard all of this almost six months ago. A lot can go through a man’s mind in six months.”
A heavy silence hangs in the air. This is bullshit. I don’t believe Pat. He knew this whole time. He was never in denial. He was probably the cause of this whole thing. That wouldn’t surprise me. Leave it up to a Huber to end the world.
“If the government broke it, they will most surely fix it, won’t they?” Miss Fox asks.
“Honey, I don’t know,” Pat says. “A virus like this is like wildfire. It’ll burn and burn until it eventually extinguishes itself or…until it consumes everything in its path.”
“Will we catch it?” Miss Fox asks, somehow her face going paler.
“If we haven’t caught it yet, I’d say we’re immune. Since the rumors are turning out to be true, what we’re seeing here is an exploding time bomb. Everyone exposed was exposed at roughly the same time, and now the virus is changing them all at roughly the same time,” Pat answers.
I see the seriousness in his face and think back to my own zombie novel. The cause of the dead rising was from some crazy spaceship that crash landed in an abandoned Ohio cornfield, chock full of little green men infected with radioactive alien parasites. Outlandish, yes. Pat’s so-called rumors are not as outlandish.
Miss Fox relaxes a bit, but I don’t.
“Roughly,” Pat repeats. “Which could mean we’re not out of the clear yet. We could turn now, we could turn later. Give it another month for us. Maybe longer for Jupiter, being an out-of-towner and all. Even longer for the rest of the world.” He smiles at me like he’s enjoying all of this.
“So you’re
telling us you knew about all of this and you didn’t do anything?” I ask. Another typical Huber trait. “This whole time, you knew a bite could be fatal? You knew Doaks was going to turn into one of those things? In the back of your mind, you knew.”
“They were rumors, kid! I really didn’t want to believe them. Would you believe horse-shit like that? No! That’s the type of stuff you block out. Trust me, what I saw today is going to haunt me forever,” he says. “But it’s not my fault. Sometimes you play with fire and sometimes you melt your face off.”
“Sure,” I say.
“Man, don’t listen to this fool. He’s just blowing smoke out his ass,” Isaiah says to me.
Abby is sitting now, her face in her hands.
Pat just shrugs, walks over to her, and puts his hand on her shoulder. “Hey, don’t get hung up on the big guy. One less person to worry about, right? Those things will be so full when they’re done with him — a big guy like Kevin…it’ll be a buffet. They won’t even want us after him.”
“Stop,” I say. My knuckles crack as a ball up my hands. I’ve had enough of this prick. Gun or not, I’m going to shut him up if he doesn’t shut himself up.
Abby doesn’t answer with anything besides her sobs.
“I think it’s Judgment Day,” Miss Fox says in the tone of someone revealing a dark secret.
“Oh, please,” Pat says.
“No, no, this is God’s wrath. The meek shall inherit the Earth. Those things are the meek — ”
“Then what are we?” Abby snaps, causing me to jump. “We are still here. There’s got to be tons of people still here. This is new. It would take forever for the population to be wiped out.”
“Crybaby has a point,” Pat says.
“Enough! Stop it, Pat,” Abby says. Black streaks run from her eyes, then they smear as she wipes them away with the back of her hand.
“He wants to make us suffer. We have wronged Him,” Miss Fox says. She tilts her head up to the sky, outstretches her arms. “But I have not. I am your humble and honest servant. I’ve done nothing but spread your love for all of my years. I am forever grateful for the life you have blessed me with. Please, do not take it now.”
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