Dawn of the Living-Impaired

by Christine Morgan

  “Oh for fuck’s sake! Spare me the morality lesson. Next you’ll be telling me again how it was all your fault, so you owe her, you’re obligated.”

  “It was. I do.”

  “It was an accident. She’s been using it to chain you down ever since. You were going to break up with her anyway --”

  “Shh! She’ll hear you!”

  “So what? In case you didn’t notice, we’ve got serious problems. Either weapon up and come with us, or stay here taking care of your crippled girlfriend until those things overrun this place.”

  The sirens. Rising and falling, ceaseless ululation. Urge to howl in sympathy, in concert, in answer.

  Sirens, shots, screams.

  Her hand rests, trembling, upon Baxter’s head. Between his ears, fuzzy triangles perked upright, listening. Her fingers stroke his fur. Black with brown. Shepherd-mix, they call him.

  Urge to howl, urge to growl, urge to bark.

  No.

  Training and discipline.

  On-duty.

  Working.

  Dedicated.

  Good Boy.

  Baxter sits beside her Chair. Alert. His harness on, straps buckled, handle with its rubber grip ready. Vest. Collar. Leash.

  She speaks. “Ron?”

  The others turn to her. The Mate furtive. Shame-faced. Hangdog. Guilty. The Bitch irritated. Sneering. Impatient.

  “Go,” she says. “Just … go.”

  “Julia …”

  “See? You heard her. She knows. Come on.” The Bitch, grasping the Mate’s arm. Claiming. Possessive. Vindicated.

  The Mate pulls away from the Bitch. Approaches. Kneels. Looks stricken, but that smell, that coward-yellow smell, is stronger.

  “This isn’t right,” he says. “If we got a van or something --”

  “Take a look out the window,” says the Bitch. “The roads are a crazy nightmare. We’ll be lucky to make it on foot.”

  More screams, more shots. A dead-moaning, low, but louder. Gaining. Growing.

  “I can’t just leave you like this.” The Mate, touching the Chair, touching a wheel, looking from it to the metal crutch-sticks where they lean. “If we --”

  “No, Ron,” Julia says. Like her posture, her voice is defeat, is surrender, is resignation and loss and hurt. “You have to leave. You have to go, now, while there’s a chance.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve got Baxter. He’ll take care of me. He’s my Good Boy.”

  The tail, wag-thump. Despite urge to growl, howl, bark. Despite urge to snarl.

  “We’ll find help. As soon as we’re somewhere safe, somewhere defensible --”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Hurry up, Ron,” the Bitch says. Strong legs. Straight spine. Whole. Healthy. Pack on her back. Gun at her hip. Looks and smells alive. Eager. Triumphant.

  “We will,” the Mate – the Abandoner – goes on. “We’ll come back for you. I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

  “Sure.” Her hand, on Baxter’s head, trembles more, and she buries her fingers in his thick scruff-fur.

  Silver-white poison smile from the Bitch. “Sure,” she echoes.

  The Abandoner stands. His throat hitches. He gulps. “Jules, I’m so sorry … about this, about … everything …”

  Wanting permission, forgiveness, absolution. Wanting comfort. Wanting reassurance.

  Urge to snarl.

  Coward. Wretched, weak, yellow-slink coward.

  “You’d better go.” Julia turns her face away. Shuts her eyes. Lips pressed together. Submission, surrender, but moment of dignity. Moment of head-held-high.

  Voices. Hallway. Neighbors and friends. Not all. Some hadn’t come home since it started. There’d been arguments – it was an internet hoax, it was the end times, it was a movie promo, it was aliens/terrorists/God. Some left. Some stayed. Grouped together, or locked in alone. Furniture, wood, and junk tumbled into the stairwells. Televisions, radios. Waiting for it to get better. Or worse.

  Calling. “Angie! Ron! What’s the hold-up? Are we bugging out of here, or what?”

  “On our way!” replies the Bitch. She hefts a ball-bat.

  The Mate/Abandoner hesitates. Starts to lean over, as if for a kiss. Withdraws. “I can’t. What if they get here first? What if they find you, and … and …”

  More dead-moans. Close. Very close. Screams.

  “Holy shit! It’s Mr. Parkins!”

  A shriek. A shot.

  “Did he bite you?”

  “No, no, thank you, Jesus, thank you!”

  “Dude, you blew the landlord’s head off!”

  “But he was okay, he was okay this morning!”

  “He fucking wasn’t okay anymore!”

  “Where’s his wife?”

  “Hell if I know!”

  “Move it! We gotta go, we gotta go now! Haul some ass!”

  The Bitch grasps the Mate/Abandoner’s arm again. “Come on!”

  “I … I can’t …”

  “There’s nothing else you can do for her now!”

  “She’s right,” Julia says.

  “Unless,” the Bitch adds, with another poison smile, “you want to put her out of her misery before they do get to her.”

  “Jesus, Angie!”

  He looks shocked. Looks disgusted, looks appalled.

  But he considers it.

  Julia knows that he does. She flinches. She clutches Baxter’s collar.

  Urge to snarl and this time yes, this time snarl, hackles raised and teeth bared. No longer sitting. Ears forward. Eyes narrowed. Snarl and growl.

  “Go!” Julia cries. “Just go already!”

  They go.

  The door closes. Their steps sound in the hall, diminishing, moving away. Voices mutter, indistinct. Outside are car-horns, car-alarms, the dead-moaning, a rattle of shots, an explosion. Another dog barks, far away, blocks away, confused. Glass breaks. A man laughs, mindless mad-laugh, cackling.

  Julia sobs. She slumps in the Chair, covering her face. The tears drip through her fingers. Baxter goes up on his hindlegs, hooks his forepaws over the armrest, pushes his muzzle at her, licks her chin. Nuzzles and chuffs. She hugs him. The tears wet his fur.

  “Oh, Baxter. Oh, Baxter, what are we going to do?”

  Finally, the sobbing stops. He trots to the table, fetches the tissue box, brings it to her. She wipes her cheeks, her eyes. She blows her nose.

  “Good boy,” she says. “Crutches? Baxter, bring me my crutches?”

  He does so, fetching them one at a time, carrying them by the leather pads fitted around their middles. Julia puts her arms through the cuffs, braces the rubber-tipped ends, and heaves herself upright. Baxter stays poised and alert at her side, watching her, as she maneuvers on her thin and twisted legs. She turns the door-lock and hooks the chain.

  They go to the window. They look out.

  Smoke billows and blows. Cars are on the sidewalks, on the lawns, upside-down in the streets. Bodies sprawl. People run. The dead moan and stumble. There is blood, so much blood, blood in smears and streaks, blood in widening puddles, blood in splatters.

  Two children crouch atop a truck that has fallen sideways; the dead crowd around it, their dead arms reaching, their dead hands seeking. A man tries to clamber over a fence, they catch his feet, they drag him down, his scream is short. A boy on a bike weaves through the throngs. He has a gun. A dead man lurches toward him. The boy fires. The dead man’s head splits apart. Slimy chunks spray across a stop sign. His body blunders another two paces before collapsing in a motionless heap.

  Tires screech as a car skids around a corner, bumps up onto the curb, plows into a brick wall. The hood crumples. The horn blares. A dazed woman staggers out. She calls for help. She moves toward a man in a police uniform. He turns. Half his face is gone in a raw, ragged flap of meat. He falls upon her, and what’s left of his mouth chews into her throat.

  Teenagers in boots and black leather, with wild hair and metal studs
through their lips and eyebrows, charge in a hunt-pack. They whoop war-shouts as they swing crowbars, fire-hatchets, shovels. They leap over corpses. They smash skulls. The ones they hit drop and do not move again. Then a bald, wiry, naked man with one arm ending in a mangled stump bursts from an alleyway. The teenager he springs at thrusts out a defensive hand, catching the bald man by the chin, but two fingers poke between the rows of teeth. The bald man chomps down. The teenager squeals, yanking back a bleeding ruin.

  Another teen, matted magenta dreadlocks flying, rushes up and buries an ax-blade in the back of the bald scalp. Then, with barely a moment’s acknowledging gaze, let alone a word of apology, decapitates the one with the bitten hand. Metal studs glint as the severed head bounces into the gutter.

  A big, bearded man hurls a trash can through a storefront. More glass shatters. An alarm warbles. He starts grabbing items, stuffing them into a pillowcase. He doesn’t notice the grey and broken form of an elderly woman crawling on her elbows, not until she sinks her teeth into his hamstring.

  Julia yanks down the blinds. The room goes dim and shadowed. She totters gracelessly to the Chair and drops into it, sobbing again. Baxter ignores his training and huddles halfway on her lap. She hugs him and pets him.

  Good Boy.

  They wait.

  He needs to go Outside, but he can hold it.

  No one comes back. Not the Mate, Ron, who is only the Abandoner now. Not the Bitch. Not anyone.

  The shots and screams heard through the window gradually taper off. The dead-moans increase. They see a man jump from a ledge, watch him plummet, watch him land in a crumpled and blood-leaking heap … and see him stir, see him struggle to his feet … see him move in a listless, hitching gait to join the other wandering corpses.

  Baxter knows his duty. He brings the case with Julia’s medicines. He brings her bottles of water, soda, and juice, gripping them gingerly in his jaws. Then the fridge-box for keeping the drinks cold is less cold. The lights are off. The television stays dark. The oven-box and microwave-box for cooking her food do not work.

  “The power’s out,” she says. “That means no elevator, either. We’re stuck here, unless we take the stairs, and …” She hits her own leg with a curled fist. Self-hate, self-anger in her look and in her smell.

  The need to go Outside is becoming urgent, but when he stands by the door, Julia shakes her head. “We can’t, I’m sorry, not now, we just can’t.”

  She has other food and eats that. Food from the fridge-box and freezer-box as it warms, before it spoils. She fills Baxter’s food and water dispensers to the top. She fills other bowls and jugs with water.

  “In case we lose that, too,” she says.

  Soon he needs to go Outside worse than ever. He might have to use the floor, piddle like a puppy. Humiliating. Not Good Boy, but Bad Dog. He whines and prances. She puts down papers. Piddle-papers, for a puppy. Hot stream gush and trickle, and shame, but he goes. Then he skulks behind the couch with head low, with tail tucked under. He cringes from the scolding that is sure to come … but does not.

  “It’s all right,” she tells him. “It’s okay, you had to go.”

  And she, though she doesn’t go Outside, doesn’t make the whoosh-watering flush in the bathroom, either. Not after the first time, when the sound seems huge in the dead-moaning stillness. Not when it’s followed by a thud overhead, and heavy thumps and dragging from somewhere upstairs.

  They eat, they sleep, they wait. Baxter guards the door. Without the heater-vents blowing, it is cold. He fetches Julia’s slippers, a blanket.

  Another day passes. And another.

  Still, no one comes back.

  “They must not have made it,” Julia whispers. “Ron, and Angie, and them. Or they did find someplace safe, but couldn’t risk returning. If they even would have. Ron, maybe … if Angie let him … that bitch …”

  Sour smells begin to seep from the fridge-box and freezer-box. Rancid and spoiling. They leave it shut. Julia eats food from the cupboards and cans.

  “We’re on our own, aren’t we?” she asks. “Even if anybody else survived, they won’t know we’re here.”

  Baxter pushes his nose under her hand until she strokes his head. He thumps his tail dolefully, dutifully. He gazes up at her with the big sad eyes.

  “Do you think they’re all dead? They can’t all be, can they? Not the whole world.”

  They sleep. The rooms are becoming stinky, stinky from the spoiled-smells in the kitchen, stinky from the piddle-papers and the bathroom because they both still have to go. Julia could use a B-A-T-H, and Baxter almost starts to wish for one himself.

  But Outside is no better. When Julia inches open a window, the rot-smell floods in, mixed with smoke smells and burn smells. There are fires, buildings on fire but no firetrucks with wailing sirens to make Baxter want to howl.

  “Maybe it’s wrong of me, selfish, to keep you here,” she says. “Maybe you’d do fine out there on your own. I haven’t seen any … you know, animals … affected. And the … people … don’t even seem to notice them. They only want to … go after … other people.”

  It’s true; there are animals everywhere. Rats, gulls, crows, and pigeons have a feast. So do the possums, and the raccoons. They see cats, countless cats, darting into and out of myriad hiding places, flattening their ears and hissing at the dead.

  Once, a horse goes by, dried blood crusted onto its empty saddle, reins trailing, ignored by the shuffling corpses as its hooves clop hollowly on the pavement. Another time, of all things, a pot-bellied pig waddles, snuffling down the street.

  And dogs, yes. Dogs, singly or in pairs or packs … Baxter’s ears prick up whenever he hears them barking, squabbling over whatever they’ve been able to forage and scavenge and scrounge. He doesn’t bark in reply. But he yearns to.

  “What will we do when our food runs out? Our water? Even if we could find some stuff in the other apartments, how much? For how long? Then there’s my medication … I was almost due for a refill … down to my last few pain pills before hitting the reserve stash … what then?”

  She decides they should look around while it’s quiet. In a kitchen drawer is a tenderizer mallet, sturdy handle, blocky metal head. Julia sets this in her lap. She adds a big knife and a flashlight. She unlocks the door and looks out. Baxter is beside her, ears up, muscles tense, nose sniffing.

  Nothing moves. The rot and blood stink is thick. Mr. Perkins lies splayed on the rug. Old and fat. Greasy-grey. A bite-sized chunk gone from his arm. Most of his head gone from his body, pasted in lumps to the wall.

  Julia wheels the Chair into the hallway. She cannot get it past Mr. Perkins, and Baxter takes the man’s pajama sleeve in his teeth. He pulls and drags until the Chair can go by.

  “Good Boy,” Julia whispers. A faint giggle comes from her; it sounds not-right. Then she almost cries. The Chair leaves tracks in the slime that came from Mr. Perkins.

  Some doors are shut. Some are open. A cat, Little-Tina-from-201’s cat, Princess, fluffy and squash-faced, hisses at them with tail puffed, and runs downstairs.

  In the open apartments, clothes and things have been scattered, half-packed, left behind. Pictures are down from the walls, gone from the tables. There are more fridge-boxes of spoiled food. They find a few cans and packages, which Julia puts in the Chair’s shopping-basket. They find a goldfish bowl, where the goldfish floats upside-down at the top.

  From the end of the hall comes a slow creaking sound. The door to Mr. and Mrs. Perkins’ apartment stands ajar. The sound is behind it. Julia pushes it with the tenderizer mallet. Inside, hanging from the ceiling fan with a rope around her neck, Mrs. Perkins sways and turns, back and forth. Her dangling legs below her nightgown are dark, bloated. One of her slippers has fallen off. The bare foot is swollen, almost black.

  Julia makes a half-gasp, half-shriek, noise and puts her hand over her mouth.

  Back and forth goes Mrs. Perkins. Swaying. Turning. Slowly revolving. Curlers in her hair. Dr
ied urine on the floor. Dried blood on her chin, splashed down her front.

  Mrs. Perkins lifts her head. It lolls, crooked, against one shoulder. The rope digs into her throat. Her eyes stare, milky, clouded. She tries to dead-moan and only gurgles. Her fingers, bunched like bent sticks, reach for Julia. She chews hungrily at the air.

  Baxter growls. He puts himself in front of the Chair. Once, there were cookies baked here, and a tin by the clock held doggie treats. Maybe the tin still does hold doggie treats, but he does not want them. Julia sobs. She rolls the Chair backward, into the hall again. Baxter follows. She closes the door.

  A clumsy thudding of footsteps. A shape staggers out of the stairwell … a boy … Matthew-from-upstairs … who would sometimes throw a ball for Baxter in the park.

  Not anymore. Matthew dead-moans. His hair sticks up. His jeans are torn. He rushes at Julia as fast as he can. She screams. Baxter leaps, barking. Matthew does not stop. Baxter snaps at him, Bad Dog to snap at a boy, but snaps anyway. Matthew still does not stop. Baxter jumps on Matthew, knocks him down, holds him pinned there with forepaws on Matthew’s shoulders, snarling into Matthew’s face. Matthew struggles.

  “Baxter, move!” shouts Julia.

  He springs aside. She rolls. The Chair’s wheel runs into Matthew’s ribs. Matthew gnashes his teeth – he is missing one, a gap in the white row – at her feet where they ride propped on the footrests.

  Julia raises the tenderizer mallet high in both hands. She brings it down hard. She spills out of the Chair as she does so. The mallet’s heavy metal-block head crunches into Matthew’s forehead, breaking his skull, driving bone-edges into the cold wet brain-mush.

  The Chair squirts backward down the hall, shooting out from under Julia as she falls. She lands partway on Matthew, who has gone limp. Uttering terrible gagging groans of revulsion, she pushes herself off the boy. She collapses, crying, on the rug.

  Baxter goes to her. With nudges and nuzzles, he coaxes her to get up, to haul herself into the Chair with her arms, while bracing her thin and twisted legs. They return to their own apartment. Julia curls on the bed and hugs Baxter. He rests his chin on her chest until she sleeps.

  She does not want to leave again.