by Gnarly, Bart
◊◊◊
“It’s a lot to handle,” Michael said, taking a pull of his scotch.
“Yeah,” I breathed, holding my glass under my nose. “The blood running through my system ruined the world.”
“Dr. Carver doesn’t think that, you know,” Michael clarified. We are sitting in his old boss’ office. Michael had broken the desk drawer to get to the liquor stash, but otherwise everything else was untouched. He was seated in the interview chair and had placed me in the boss’ position. I swirled my drink as he continued. “As far as we know, you haven’t infected anyone. You may still be dormant. Have you had much contact with other humans?
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“Swapped any body fluids with anybody?”
Sissy.
“Yeah,” I said again.
“Did they display any strange behaviors afterwards such as poor speech, affected mobility, and a desire to consume human flesh? I mean, hear me out. With the exception of the whole eating people thing, those are normal signs that a woman has been with me so I would understand if you thought she might have been a zombie afterwards. Just think carefully about it.”
I laugh and shake my head.
“So a little wobbly in the knees but otherwise a normal girl… woman… Shit I’m making a generalization here. Maybe it was a boy?”
“You wish!” I roar. “Nah. I likes the girls.”
Well, that answers the question about wither the scotch is doing its job.
“And she wasn’t a zombie afterwards? Wait!” he suddenly blurts. “It’s the end of the world out there and you’re getting some ass? How the hell did that work out?”
I roll my head on my neck and look at the wall. “Well,” I began, “I guess I was just in the right place at the right time.”
The hall behind us erupted in screaming. In a moment we were both on our feet making our way toward the door. As I leaned against the frame, holding myself steady, I looked at Michael and realized had consumed more than I thought. He looked cartoon drunk and I wasn’t thinking clearly. Down the hall, trays and glass and bodies were crashing.
“Breach!” Michael screamed, and ran toward the clatter. “Run!” he bellowed. “Breach!” A zombie appeared from a side room and seized him by the shirt. “David?” he asked as the zombie fell upon him. I shuddered and backpedaled at the sight. The zombie looked like some middle school kid.
While the tiny shuffler tore at my drinking buddy I turned and ran for Stephanie’s lab. I burst through the door and spotted her bent over a counter, apparently looking at a sample.
“Stephanie? Dr. Carver? There’s been a breach. There are zombies in the building. We have to leave. Doctor?”
“I… I don’t know what to say…” she said, unmoving.
“Doctor, we can discuss this when we are safe…”
“But I’m not going to be safe, Kyle,” she said, holding up a spent syringe.
“The hell is that?” I blurt.
“It’s you, Kyle. It’s your blood. I shot myself with it several hours ago.” She pushed herself off the counter and turned to face me. Her skin looked unhealthy and dull, and she was sweating freely. “I can feel it…”
“Doctor, we need to get you out of here.”
“You don’t get it, Kyle. I am infected. You blood didn’t protect me. It killed me! I’m going to be one of them, now, Kyle. Your blood has done it. Oh god, I can feel it burning in me. I’m hungry Kyle, but I want to vomit. Oh god, I can feel it! So hungry! It’s burning! It’s burning! IT’S BURNING!”
For a moment I debated burning the whole lab down; Stephanie and Michael and all the others, myself included. I didn’t want to live if I could do this to another human.
The banging behind me brought me back to the present.
“Burn it down!” Stephanie screamed at me. “I’m so hungry! Burn it down!”
Obediently, I grabbed several bottles of alcohol and drenched the room. Then I lit the counter torch. I turned the gas supply on, threw the torch into the alcohol and ran. I blasted through doors and hallways, listening to the sounds of screaming, destruction, and death behind me. The hall shook when the gas ignited and the screaming changed its pitch. I blasted out a set of doors and into the street. I was on the other side of town, and the evening air was filled with the moans of the dead. I had no weapon. I had no transportation. I was good as dead.
All in all, it was an average day.
◊◊◊
The boy swung his arms at the flames. The hunger told him to run. The hunger ordered him to flee, but he couldn’t. His leg was melting under him and his arm was actively burning now. There was no pain in the wounds, just hunger. He found a piece of a leg and fell upon it, flames fighting him for the flesh. He chewed on the charred limb and savored the sensation as the fire took him into the blackness.
CHAPTER 9
The Sheriff
It turns out that I’m allergic to alcohol. Not that I experience anaphylactic shock or anything, I just break out in asshole behavior. The normal run of the mill drunk experience. I yell. I throw things. I attack animals and scare people. I feel depressed. I take unnecessary risks with zombies. I crash cars.
In short: I get sad. I break things.
The last great example of this behavior was after I discovered I was immune to the bite of a zombie because I was a carrier of the Z Gene. I had just learned that my blood contained the genetic mutation that had caused the people of the world to transform into decomposing consumers of living flesh, mindlessly wandering the countryside until they rot. All the devastation in the world, all the chaos, all the disorder, the end of the postmodern age, all came from blood like mine. The doctor that told me this tried to use my blood to cure herself. She injected 10 cc of my blood into hers.
She became infected.
My blood killed her.
Her lab at the university became overrun and had to be put to the torch. I made it back to the safe house, but just barely, and not without the help of Bertha Mason.
It was late and I was on the run, trying to find a safe route home. Four slow shufflers sprouted behind me. I had no weapons and facing them bare-handed would be suicide, so I kept plugging along, keeping my eye on them to ensure they were not getting too close.
Then something changed.
The shufflers started to increase their speed, and soon we were running. It made no sense. I had never seen a deadhead behave this way before. It was as though the hunger was becoming more intense, driving them to push and to strain harder for food. Zombies that were in such a state that they should not be able to do more than lumber along were galloping clumsily at me.
I panicked. I saw them staggering excitedly at me and I panicked. I was sprinting a straight line in the opposite direction, not caring where I was going or what path I was taking. Dumb, yes, but I had no other plan than to get away from the mini horde behind me.
Then more showed up. My right side became flanked by several more fresh-looking runners. These had newly turned as evidenced by their rosy complexions and the amount of fresh blood spilt across their torsos, most of which was their own blood, of course, but some of it would be the result of a recent feeding.
I was screwed.
I knew that if they reached me, they could not turn me into one of them, but that wouldn’t stop the monsters from killing me good and proper like. I would still bleed out as they ate me bit by bit, until they had filled their stomachs and temporarily satisfied their hunger.
But I had no intention of dying in the street today.
I turned and headed into a neighborhood, hoping to find some fences I could vault, or a shed that would offer shelter. I knew that I couldn’t hide forever, but I could make it a lot longer hiding in a barn or a house than I could running. If I kept running, either the zombies or I would collapse, and I didn’t want to test and see who would go first.
I needed an open door that wasn’t broken down.
I needed an open window that could be
defended.
I needed a gate that could be secured or a balcony that could be sequestered.
As bad as it sounds, I needed a cage.
The stumblers behind me had fallen a ways back, but the runners had not lost much ground. There were two of them, and they were fast enough that I was afraid to turn and face them. I was sure in my ability to neutralize one of them with sheer blunt effort, but that would leave me open to attack from the other. I needed a quick way to kill or cripple the zombies, or a way to bar myself from them. Whatever I chose I would have to do it fast. My legs were growing weaker by the step and a sharp pain was blossoming in my side.
The houses on the street began to give way to more industrial buildings. Off to the left, there was a row of metal buildings that looked like mechanics’ garages. They were all matching, with two roll-up doors to one side and two regular doors on the other. On one of the buildings, a roll-up was elevated a few feet. Not enough to see inside, but breached just enough that I could slide under and hopefully bring it down before my buddies catch me.
What the hell, right? I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?
I made for the door. The zombies must have sensed my eagerness, because they began to growl and moan wildly as I pulled away. At the door I crashed to my stomach and rolled under. Hopping to my feet as quickly as I could, I jumped onto the door and let my weight drag it closed. The deadheads outside slammed against the metal and flailed riotously against it. I found the lock and slid the bar home.
Then the moaning in the building began.
It was hard to hear at first over the clatter against the roll-up, but it quickly became apparent that I was not alone in the room. I spun to find that I was in a two-story garage. The two roll-up doors opened to one open space, with an office and a loft to one side of the room.
Littering the floor was a small pack of zombies. There were at least four in the main area and I could hear more in the office. The loft was closed-up with cyclone fencing.
In a word, I was screwed.
Outside was death. Before me was death. Shamefully, despair began to rise up within me. I felt my chest shudder as I accepted that this was the end. The shufflers in the room began their slow progression toward me and the noises in the office intensified. I hung my head and spotted a wrecking bar. My eyes rose to meet the grey eyes of my roommates.
“Well,” I said to the closest one, “if I’m destined to go, I might as well make a show of it, huh?”
He grunted a short response.
“Good enough for me,” I said, scooping up the bar and cocking it back.
I swung through in the first one, taking off a large piece of his head, then spun to continue the swing. I brought the bar crashing down hard on the second. His skull caved under the blow, spraying blood and casting brains about the room. I felt like a macabre Jackson Pollack. The third moved in and I jammed the wedge end into her face before swinging the curved cat’s paw into the neck of the first. With a yank, the hook tore through its dead flesh, leaving a massive gash and sending the zombie into a spin. The fourth zombie pushed the second aside and moved in, scratching the air at me. I screamed and swung the bar level into its neck. The head tipped forward obscenely and flopped about unsupported. The third grabbed me and, holding the bar at the ends, I smashed the middle of it into the open mouth of the creature. Teeth broke and shattered, but still she chewed on the steel and tried to pull me into her mouth. I lifted the bar, raising the monster’s head, then brought the tool down in a rush that dislocated the zombie’s jaw.
“Behind you!” screamed an urgent voice above me. I turned to find the source and spied a woman upstairs behind the fencing. “Behind you!” she screamed again pointing off to my right. Sure enough, the zombies in the office had heard the commotion and were staggering out to investigate.
“Here!” she screamed, moving to the chain-link door. “Up here!”
I moved for the stairs, blasting one of the office zombies in the mouth as I went by. The wrecking bar clanged happily as it destroyed the creature’s upper jaw.
“Run!” she pleaded.
I sprinted up the stairs and allowed my new human companion to slam the barrier behind me.
“Thanks,” I panted.
“What the hell are you doing here?!?” she bellowed at me.
“Huh?” I blurted.
The four original zombies were falling over one another, trying to navigate and having very little success after so much damage had been done to their heads. Three zombies had come out of the office. The one I tagged in the face was turning circles but the other two were crawling up the staircase.
“Why are you here?!?” she demanded.
Outside, my pursuers were still pounding upon the door. By the sounds of it, all of them had made it, slow and fast zombies alike.
“Me?!?” I yelled, losing my patience after surviving such a close call. “I was running for my life, as I’m sure you must have noticed! I slid into your shop, trying to find a place to escape to, but finding your collection instead.”
And she slapped me. Hard. With unfettered passion. There was a rage I was not prepared to find. She screamed at me and went to hit me again. I scrambled to my feet and backpedaled away from her.
“What are you doing?!?” I cried.
“Why are you here?!?” she roared back.
“I told you!” I answered. “I was running, and I needed a place to hide.”
“You killed them!” she bellowed, descending into sobs. “You killed them!”
“What?” I sputtered. “Who?”
The woman fell to her knees and hid her face in her hands. She shook her head and quivered with the flood of emotion that had taken her.
As this point, I was completely lost.
“Lady?” I ventured. “What just happened?”
She raised her head from her palms and gave me a cold stare. The look was as dead as anything a zombie could have given. She then pulled herself across the loft to the fencing overlooking the floor below. She rested her forehead against the cyclone and began to weep.
“Lady,” I repeated, “I’m not sure what your problem is. I mean, I’m grateful and all that you saved me, but the mood swing is giving me serious fuckin’ whiplash. Mind telling me what the hell is happening here?”
She didn’t reply. Not a word. The woman just sat there, crumpled against the fence, fingers hooked in the wire, crying at the scene below.
“Lady?” I pressed.
“They were my family,” she huffed.
“Ah shit,” I whispered as the truth hit. Her whole family had turned and I just smashed them into submission. “I’m… I’m sorry,” I offered weakly. It occurred to me that she might have not been saving my life, as much as she had been preventing my ending theirs. “I didn’t know they were… I’m sorry.”
She didn’t turn to look at me. She didn’t respond at all. I was talking to a catatonic for all anyone could tell.
I looked around and a new thought occurred to me. The loft was nothing more than a storage space. There were windows to the front and rear, but no plumbing. In fact, it didn’t look like anyone had spent much time up here at all.
“Listen, ma’am,” I began. “It’s been months. You can’t have been up here the whole time. You would have needed food and supplies. Fresh clothes. Water. What were you doing up here?”
She didn’t answer. Still, the woman just sat there, watching those who used to be people pull and climb one over the other in a driven attempt to mount the stairs. One zombie had made it to the top and was pressing against the gate. A padlock was fastened tight and it appeared that the zombie couldn’t get through.
“Settle down, kid,” she said. The woman was watching me with a disappointed look. “They can’t get through.”
“Famous last words,” I mumbled loud enough that she could hear me. “I just came from a lab at the university and the professors there said the same thing.” I kicked the fence so it bounced off the zombie�
��s head. “They’re all dead now.” The zombie beyond the fence growled pushed his face into the cyclone again.
“His name’s Glenn,” she said, eyes focused on the grey face. “He was the first employee my husband ever hired, and the last to become a zombie.” She pushed herself up off the ground and walked to join me at the gate. “He kept me alive all this time,” she continued, “after everyone else had gone.” Her eyes bounced from one face to the next. “My cousin. My sister. Ruth and Todd. James. My husband.” The last word came out sideways.
I tried to guess which was which, but they all looked like a mangled mess to me at this point. Honestly it was hard to tell male from female in some of them.
“Glenn showed me how to find food. How to stay away from the zombies. How to stay protected but still have an escape route. And now…”
I looked about the space again and spied a ladder by one of the back windows. I walked over and took a peek through the glass.
Dozens of zombies had gathered in the yard below.
“They’ll be gone after dark,” she promised.
“How can you know that?” I asked.
She turned and again gave me a look of dissatisfaction. “Because,” she said with a small bit of attitude, “it happens every night.” She came and stood at my elbow, looking down upon the group below. “Come dark, that whole group will have wandered off.”
“Where?” I asked. “Where do they all go?”
“Don’t know,” she said simply, “and frankly I don’t care. All I know is that by midday, they will all have gathered at the window again. Shit,” she growled, “I never look at them much.” While she didn’t take her eyes off the crowd it was clear that it was difficult to keep looking. She continued, as though punishing herself for some unsaid offence. “I can’t help it. I see the men they were. The women that used to come here. My old friends and neighbors and strangers that I never knew but now known only as some dead thing bent on killing us. God!” she blared at the window. “I hate this! I hate it! Why is this happening?” She was looking over her shoulder at the gate again. “Why?” she asked, her voice no more than a whimper.