by Jason Beech
He stood, but four of them blocked the doorway, including a brunette woman. He shook the thought away. Had to stop thinking that way. One down, two, three … out of bullets. On his knees again, his fingers worked the new, less torn, ammo bag he’d found. Unzipped. He fumbled for another round. He fitted it, looked up…
***
LIZZY HAD controlled her shaking with thoughts of long summer days, dates which had gone wrong, others which had zinged. Connor.
She thought about the day they brought Tilly home. She’d looked so small in that cap the hospital fitted on her head.
She waited a couple of minutes after Frank fired his first shot, listening for the last zombie to shuffle past the little closet at the apartment’s opening she had hidden in. Once she thought none remained, she pushed the door open and splashed gasoline in a line along the carpet in the hall and up the front door, making sure it dripped at the bottom. She tip-toed outside and closed the door, leaning back as if something on the other side might snatch it open again. She let go once satisfied, and carefully spilled a little more.
More thuds from his rifle. He might just finish them all off. A little shimmer of guilt made her stand still before the door, but his betrayal pushed it back down to the pit in which it belonged. The world only had room for one Eve. Clarissa had to die. So did Frank. She pulled the matchbook she had readied in her back pocket, tore off a match, struck it, and eyed the flame for a moment. She stepped back and flicked the match at the liquid. The result shined in her eyes, matching the feeling in her belly.
She turned and ran down, missing the odd step, smashing the head of the one zombie which had lost its way from the pack and now continually walked into the wall. It crumpled into a fetus position. A few shakes and it fell still.
She stepped backwards to view the scene. The flame had spread. She could see it redecorating the kitchen and dining room areas. It punched through the dining room window, allowing a few licks to reach the roof. She could hear groans getting louder as fire seared flesh, or bullets crunched bones. The bullets stopped eventually, replaced by the sound of a rifle butt against what she guessed were skulls and jaws. Frank’s cusses gave way to grunts at the effort he expended to stay alive, to keep from becoming one of them. The only thing surprising Lizzy was the lack of screaming from the woman. Maybe she accepted her fate. Maybe she welcomed it. Like Lizzy welcomed this new freedom. Frank couldn’t have been her Adam. He had hardly evolved. She wanted smart children. This new world would need them. She would head to New Mexico to find a proper Adam. These new passages in Wikipedia had sparked urgency. Somebody out there awaited her. He, and she hoped it was a he, would father the new world.
A scream and smash snapped her back to the present. Frank had left the building. Through the upper bedroom window. His arms flailed, his legs kicked for purchase on something solid. He landed hard on the concrete, belly first, his forehead smacking into the surface. The nose crack brought a hand to her heart, but she let it drop as she took her first step towards him. He still gripped his favorite toy, the damn rifle. His other hand held tight to another bag she’d never seen. Maybe Danny’s. Frank had got his money after all. His torso moved up and down. Life remained in him.
She sucked her teeth, then let air whistle through them. She pulled the gun from his hand and let the muzzle rest on the back of his head. Since the world had pulped its humanity she had hardly used a gun on any of the beasts. Her bat did everything. She felt her way was much fairer than Frank’s method. After all, zombies didn’t have the capacity to fire a gun. But Frank had hunted their food with this. She might need it.
“Bye, Frank,” she whispered. She shouldered the rifle, turned, smiled at the cloud which cooled her from the sun, and took her first steps to New Mexico.
END
JOHN BRUNI is the author of the crime novel, STRIP, and a collection of short stories called TALES OF QUESTIONABLE TASTE. His work has appeared in many publications, most notably in VILE THINGS from Comet Press, A HACKED-UP HOLIDAY MASSACRE from Pill Hill and ZOMBIE! ZOMBIE! BRAIN BANG! from Strange House Books. He lives in Elmhurst, IL
CAPTAIN METH-MOUTH ON THE HIGH SEAS OF CHICAGO
ONE
HOW HAD a simple summer job turned into a way of life? Captain Dwight Fitzgerald looked at himself in the cracked mirror in his quarters and looked over his pirate outfit, now more rags than costume since he’d worn it every day from the time when the zombies killed civilization. The buttons on his coat, once shiny, now gave off a dull gleam through the tarnished, filmed-over spots, and what once was rich red material had thinned so much he could see his undershirt beneath. He’d long ago stopped wearing the fake beard, since he now had a real one, although he couldn’t grow much on his upper lip. Even the tri-corner hat he wore seemed ready to fall apart, and the skull-and-crossbones insignia had faded so much it was only a pale shadow at his brow.
The only part of his accoutrements that remained fresh was the sword he kept strapped to his waist. It wasn’t the phony one his boss had given him for the show. No, this came from his private collection, and he kept good care of it every night, no matter what. He rarely used it, since he did his best to not let zombies get that close to him. He much preferred the .45 he’d found in Miami, and the assault rifle he’d picked up in Atlanta didn’t hurt, either.
He tried to remember being a college student, but he couldn’t conjure the memories. It seemed so long ago, like he’d been a different person back then. He’d only meant to be a pirate on the Treasure Island Adventure Show for a summer before going back to class. How had he come to this? He’d been so mild-mannered before, and now he helmed a boat full of survivors, and he’d had to kill a lot of people to keep his shipmates alive. How many? He couldn’t even remember.
How messed up was that?
Boots clomped down the wooden steps. Dwight turned and saw Lt. West, a muscle-bound man dressed completely in black, arms bulging under his tight shirt. A skull cap stretched over his bald head, and a light layer of thick whiskers kept his cheeks warm.
“Land ho, Cap. Looks like we’re here.”
Dwight stared at West, the only real warrior on this ship. West had been a Navy SEAL before the zombies. The crew had found him in New York on a suicide run, cornered by a herd of the undead. With a bit of luck and hard work, they’d saved him, and when he joined the ranks, Dwight made him first mate. Since then, West’s expertise managed to not only keep them alive, but also kept them on track, even through the wilds of Canada. Even through the Niagara Falls nightmare. And as for Detroit?
Dwight didn’t want to think about it.
He nodded. “I’ll be right up. Thanks.”
As West made his way back up to the deck, Dwight took one last look at himself and straightened his sword. After all they’d been through, this was it.
They’d first heard the rumor from Benny, a teen they’d picked up in Miami. At the time, they’d set anchor on the coast of the city, safe from the zombie horde. Whenever they ran out of supplies, they’d sneak to shore and forage what they could. Sometimes they rescued survivors, and sometimes, they lost companions. They found Benny in a dumpster behind a McDonald’s with two zombies trying to get to him. Later, on the ship, he said he’d heard that the government had a base in Chicago, that they’d restored a semblance of order there.
Supplies were running low, and each search party came back with less and less. Soon, Miami would be stripped bare, and then what?
Dwight brought his advisors together. He could never get used to the pomposity of having advisors—-they were just Julio, who used to sell him weed; Jocko, who played the first mate on the Treasure Island Adventure Show; and Tori, who worked at the concession stand—-but being the captain, he was stuck with the idea. Everyone had agreed: they needed to get to Chicago. None of them favored going over land, though. The ship had offered them safety, and they didn’t want to give that up.
Over the course of the month they’d floated near Miami, they’d collected a
n entire treasure chest of batteries, just in case. They kept them in Ziploc bags to keep them dry, as they did with a GPS device Julio had scavenged from a grocery store. If they conserved enough energy by only turning it on once a day, they figured they could go up the coast to the St. Lawrence and take that through the maze of lakes and rivers to Lake Michigan and to Chicago. The only issue would be the cold, so they waited another month before setting sail.
Dwight smiled, thinking about old friends. Benny died in a freak accident in Atlanta. Tori bought it at Niagara. Julio and Jocko were gunned down in the Detroit massacre.
And only a half a year ago, they’d all just been normal people eking out their mundane existences.
Sometimes, Dwight lost faith in Benny’s talk of rumors, but every once in a while, they came upon a traveler or sailor who had heard the same thing. It wasn’t always the government who saved the day, but every story agreed that Chicago was a safe zone, and that kept everyone going.
Dwight took the stairs two at a time, feeling the rough and splintered hand rail scratch at his palms, and as he emerged onto the deck, he saw West had gathered the troops. All of them lined up, as if waiting for a speech.
He looked at their expectant faces and realized only one of them had been with him from the start: Hector St. Martin. They’d gone to school together but never really talked to each other, not even when they both got summer jobs on the Treasure Island Adventure Show. In fact, Hector had played the first mate of the invading pirates back then. Together with Julio, Jocko, Tori, and a few others, they’d gotten the idea to hide out from the zombies on the ship they’d worked on, the S.S. Stevenson. They’d even decided together to start rescuing people, since they’d had plenty of room onboard.
Every single person who stared at Dwight now had been saved by him and his friends. His crew. Sure, it ran contrary to the pirates they pretended to be, but just because the rules of society had been canceled didn’t mean everyone could act like a pack of uncivilized assholes.
Dwight cleared his throat. “It looks like we’re finally at our destination. We’ve all been through a lot, and for all we know, the rumors we heard are just that. We must maintain hope that order has been restored to the City of Chicago, but I want us to be prepared for the worst.”
He turned to West. “How long do we have?”
The lieutenant cast his eyes up to the mast, where Dandy Jim kept watch with his telescope extended. “Probably a day. No more.”
Dwight nodded and addressed the rest: “This is a cause for celebration, but by the time we have Chicago in our sights, I want us to be armed and ready, just in case—
“Ship ahoy!”
Dwight glanced up and saw Dandy Jim pointing to the west, toward the city. Sure enough, another ship rode the waves. It looked like a fishing boat, and it was headed toward them.
It could be good news or bad. They’d come upon many ships in their journey. Most wanted to barter, but occasionally, there were folks who wanted more. Folks who took their roles as pirates more seriously. Nobody onboard the S.S. Stevenson needed to be told to grab their weapons and ready themselves for battle. They scrambled about in a frenzy, but none of them panicked. They’d been through too much to panic.
Dwight stepped up to the helm and felt West’s presence at his back. He knew the former SEAL held his M16 but did not point it anywhere, his finger resting on the trigger guard. None of Dwight’s people aimed at anything yet. They didn’t want to seem threatening, but they didn’t want to look weak, either.
As the boat drew closer, he could see their people doing the same. Their stony faces reflected the grim world they lived in, and the rags they wore indicated their squalor.
One man stood out from the rest, and as the ships started to line up parallel to one another, he said to Dwight, “I take it you’re the captain?”
“Dwight Fitzgerald. What gave it away?”
The guy looked puzzled for a moment, and then his face cracked in a smile. “Sorry. We saw the pirate ship and your clothes, and it got us kind of jumpy.”
“Relax. We won’t try to kill you if you won’t try to kill us. Deal?”
This time, the guy laughed. “I’m Nate Gables, and this is my crew. We’re getting the hell out of Chicago, and when we saw you, we thought you were, you know. Him.”
Dwight exchanged a glance with West, but the lieutenant didn’t acknowledge him; he was too busy looking hard at Gables.
Dwight turned his attention back to the other captain. “Uh . . . first of all, him who? And second of all, why leave Chicago? We heard it was a safe zone.”
“You heard wrong. I take it you’re not from around here?”
Dwight gave him the super-abridged version of their story and why they were headed for Chicago. When he was done, Gables nodded. “Well, you heard right about the zombies. There are none in the city. That’s the good news. The bad news is, the guy who cleared them out is a lunatic. Some kind of street thug with delusions of grandeur. He’s who we thought you were.”
This confused Dwight, since in all his time at sea, theirs was the only pirate ship he’d seen. “Why?”
“He’s got some kind of pirate fetish. Watched Pirates of the Caribbean one too many times, if you ask me. He has a boat just like yours, and he has an outfit like the one you’re wearing, except yours looks store-bought. He had his tailored. I guess he’d have to, seeing as how big he is.”
“Holy Christ,” Dwight said. “Sounds off his rocker.”
“I wish I could just dismiss him as crazy. He’s a tough bastard, and he runs Chicago like a police state. It’s a pretty violent place. He does the pirate thing for real, and he leads all the raids personally. His orders are shoot to kill, and any survivors… well, if they’re men, he kills them. With his own hands. If they’re women…”
“I get the picture.”
Hector approached and whispered, “We’re running low on food.”
Dwight said to Gables, “Are you willing to barter? We don’t have much food, but we have a lot of ammo. Some batteries.”
Gables shook his head. “We’re low on everything. Sorry. But I hope you change your mind about Chicago. You seem like a nice guy, and Captain Meth-Mouth will probably tear you limb from limb.”
Captain Meth-Mouth? Dwight fought to keep from laughing. How could anyone take someone like that seriously?
Instead of showing off his incredulity, he said, “I appreciate the advice. Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” Gables said. “Anywhere but here.”
“Stay away from Detroit. We barely got out of there alive.”
Gables laughed. “That would’ve been good advice even before the zombies.”
They wished each other well, and as Gables and his crew sailed away, Dwight turned to face his people. They’d gathered around him, waiting to hear what he had to say.
“You heard them,” he said. “What do you all think?”
“This is bad,” West said. “He must have an army, if he’s able to keep the dead out of his entire city. We’ve got a ton of ammo, but we don’t have enough soldiers. I say we cut our losses.”
“We need to get supplies,” Hector said. “We can’t turn back. We need to stock up in the next day or so, or we’ll be eating our own boots before long.”
Ellis, a shaggy-headed, constantly grinning man stepped up. “Dude, he calls himself Captain Meth-Mouth. One, what kind of clown does that? And two, if he’s a meth-head, we can take him. No sweat.”
West regarded him with disgust, but he didn’t say a word.
Dwight cleared his throat. “How about a compromise? We don’t have to fight this Captain Meth-Mouth. We could always barter. Or maybe we can even join him. It sounds like Chicago is safe, just so long as you don’t cross him.”
“People like Captain Meth-Mouth don’t barter,” West said. “They take. And I don’t live with any scumbags. I don’t imagine anyone else here would, either.”
“Good point. Do you think we
could maybe sneak into the city and get some supplies? And then make off for our next destination?”
West grimaced, rubbing his stubbly chin. “It’d be tricky, but possible. It depends on how disciplined his men are.”
“And they’re probably street thugs, just like him. Right?”
“Maybe.” West didn’t sound convinced.
“Say we do that,” a voice from the crowd said. “Say we succeed. Where would we go next?”
Dwight turned to see Kelly had joined the conversation. She’d been with him since the later Miami days. He and Jocko had saved her from a drug dealer who had kept her in his whorehouse, selling her for food and alcohol. The bastard kept four women as slaves. One had died in the confrontation, and the other two, twin sisters, decided to try their luck on their own. Only Kelly joined the crew of the S.S. Stevenson, and since then, she’d been Jocko’s girlfriend.
When Jocko died, Kelly withdrew from everyone else. She still did her tasks, but she didn’t interact much with the others. This was the first time she’d said anything in months.
“We can’t go back.” This from Jo, a waitress they’d picked up in Norfolk. “We’d never survive Detroit again.”
West nodded. “We’re trapped in Lake Michigan.”
Dwight tugged on his beard for a moment, rubbing at the rough strands of kinky hair. “What if we did here in Chicago what we did in Miami? Just sort of float out here and raid the city every once in a while?”
“No way,” Hector said. “We didn’t have Captain Meth-Mouth to deal with in Miami.”
“He’s right,” West said. “In Miami, all you had to deal with were zombies and the occasional scumbag. It’s too dangerous here. We might get away with it once, but I wouldn’t dare try it more than that.”
Dwight cursed and forced himself to stop playing with his beard. “I’m open to suggestions. Anyone?”