Then I noticed the blanket behind the back seat.
It was light green, and patterned with little sunflowers. It reminded me of the blankets my grandmother would keep in her closet, and lend to me when I stayed over at her house. They had this stuffy closet smell that I always associated with my grandmother. She was a sweet old thing. She died about two years before the zombies showed up, and if there is a God, I thank him for that.
It looked soft, and comfortable. I walked toward the back of the car with the broken back window, and was about to reach in to get the blanket, when it moved.
I took a step back, rifle raised, flashlight shining down on the blanket. By the beam of light, I was able to make out a human shape curled up under the blanket. The light from my flashlight must’ve disturbed it.
“Hey.” I said, and immediately regretted it. The movement under the blanket became more intense and I took another step back. The barrel of my gun and the flashlight stayed on it, never daring to move. I’d forgotten about the darkness around me, and stayed focused on the blanket. Whatever was under there, it was having trouble getting it off.
“Hello.” I said. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted this thing to be a person. Any person. Somewhere in my scared paranoid mind, I let myself hope this was someone who hadn’t been infected.
The thing under the blanket was finally able to reveal its face, and my hopes were quickly dashed. Yellow eyes stared out at me from a pale, oval, feminine face. Stringy black hair that had once been lush and full, flowed down to her shoulders and clung to her cheeks. White hoop earrings could be seen sticking out through the clumped-up hair. She pushed off the blanket, revealing the strapless dark blue dress that ended just above the kneecaps. A black belt with a gold colored buckle wrapped around her waist. A bite mark sat on her left ankle. Dried blood from the wound coated her ankle and black stiletto heels in red.
She snarled at me, and I took off. I ran back to the rest stop. For a moment I thought I’d heard the sound of cloth ripping, but I didn’t stop to look. I just kept running. I swung open the door, bolted inside, and tripped over my bicycle that I’d left lying on the ground.
The rifle went off when I landed on it, and put a bullet hole in the cash register in the gift shop. My face smacked into the hard tiled floor, and my knee crashed into the metal of the bicycle. I blacked out after that.
I’m not sure how long I was out, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. I opened my eyes, and for the first ten seconds had no idea where I was. Then it all came back to me; a flood of unpleasant memories.
“Shit,” I mumbled as I got up. The smell of gunpowder had filled the area. I turned around, and saw the zombie. She stood right in front of the glass window; blankly staring at me as I got up off the floor. She was naked.
I rubbed my eyes but that didn’t help. Her blue dress was gone. As soon as she saw me move, she started growling again. I stood up, swallowing the pain, and limped over to the big window, rifle clutched in my hand. She reached out her arms, and began to try and claw at me through the glass. I peaked over her shoulder, and saw her strapless party dress hanging from the back of the SUV. It must’ve gotten caught there when she climbed out. That had been the ripping sound.
She just stood there, in nothing but heels, growling at me from the other side of the glass.
Her angry yellow eyes bore into me, and I thought about putting a bullet right between them. I tried to figure out how I could do that without breaking the glass. The only thing I could think of was to go back outside, draw her away from the window, and shoot her. But it was so dark out. Even under ideal lighting conditions, I was a terrible shot. Plus, I was getting a little sick of wasting bullets.
I thought then that maybe it didn’t matter. She couldn’t break through the window, and I wasn’t worried about her using the doors. They required her to grab the handle and pull it open, and that would require more brain power than the average zombie had to spare. For the moment I was safe. Besides, there weren’t any other zombies that I could see. Why worry about one stupid zombie when it couldn’t kill you?
IV
“What do you do if you see a zombie?” the young instructor asked his students crowded in the makeshift classroom in the hotel boardroom. Of the twenty-six people in attendance, only six raised their hands, and mine was one of them.
“Yes.” he said to me.
“Scream like a bitch, and run the other way.” I said.
“Benjamin!” My mother said. Suzy covered her mouth as she laughed next to me. Suzy’s mother Diane, whose idea it was to come here, just sat silently.
“Sometimes, yes.” The instructor said, nodding nervously. He was dressed in a leather jacket over a grey tank top, with ripped blue jeans, and black boots. His ebony black hair had been spiked up, and had a shiny quality to it. A tattoo of a Chinese symbol I didn’t understand (and neither did he) sat on his neck. He reeked of cologne.
He claimed to be a wild game hunter who’d recently taken up zombie hunting. I’d thought about asking for some credentials when the class started, but I don’t think they handed out Zombie Hunter licenses yet. It was an emerging field after all.
His assistant, a young brunette in a pink tank top and short shorts, sat in the corner texting, as the instructor continued. “There could be situations wherein the best course is to simply retreat and get yourself somewhere safe. But there won’t always be a safe place to run to.”
We were in a survival course. In the months following the incident at the Maryland hospital, more zombies were being spotted across the country. It was usually only one or two per attack, but the number of attacks had been increasing in frequency.
While scientists studied the few zombies that had been captured, and the army began planning out defensive measures, people started to get scared. As happens in any situation where people are scared, other people found ways to make money off it.
In addition to the cheaply made TV movies, “non-fiction” disaster books, over-produced documentaries (the ones with the slick young host with perfect abs, excessive dramatic music, and the educational value of a dog turd) Zombie survival classes started springing up all over the country. Typically they’d be run by a young man or woman, who had a decent fashion sense, and a way with words. It also usually helped if the man was well muscled, and the woman had breasts you could use as earmuffs. The quality of the lectures varied from banal to downright stupid.
I didn’t even want to go. The only reason I was there was because Suzy’s mother Diane was making her go. Like Suzy, Diane was a natural worrier, who regularly fretted about the oncoming apocalypse. Unlike Suzy, Diane was as dumb as a lobotomized hamster. She was the kind of person who’d buy products from late-night infomercials, and unironically watch conspiracy videos on YouTube. But she was kind, and loving, and that made up for it somewhat.
Diane dragged Suzy to this thing, so Suzy dragged me to it, and my mom came of her own accord because she thought it’d be fun.
During the course of the hour long class, Alex, our eminent instructor, imparted two basic types of advice: things that the government and news had already stated, and things that were totally untrue, and would more than likely get half the people in this room killed if they ever encountered a zombie. The only time he’d introduced anything noteworthy was at the very end.
“Before you leave, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to a revolutionary new weapon, to defend yourselves from the living dead.” His smile as he spoke seemed too big to be natural. “And you can only get it right here.”
Just then, Alex brought out an old blue water cooler. He opened it, and the room was immediately filled with the smell of death and decay. He put his hand in the cooler, and pulled out a small plastic baggy. Inside the bag was a small lump of red flesh, in a shallow pool of blood. He held it up, and the entire class recoiled in horror.
“This ladies and gentlemen, is a Zombie Diversion Grenade or ZDG for sh
ort.” Alex said, triumphantly holding the foul smelling bag in the air, as if it were some kind of sacred holy artifact. I leaned forward in my chair. Mom was right, this would be fun.
“A very simple device; just an old piece of meat in a little bag. As I mentioned earlier, zombies have an acute sense of smell.” Alex said. Everyone nodded. I nodded. I was pretty sure it was bullshit, but I wanted to see where this was going. “They can detect you from dozens of miles away, with nothing but the scent of your flesh, carried on the wind. But with this.” He held the bag high above his head, and some of its gooey red contents began to drip, and fall onto his jacket. Professor Alex ignored this, and pressed on. “You can distract them.” He held up his index finger. “Allow me to demonstrate. Sharron.” His lovely assistant put her phone in her pocket, and walked over to him. She stood directly in front of the class, and Alex moved over to the left side of the room, bloody bag in hand.
“Now Sharron, pretend to be a zombie.” The lovely assistant rolled her eyes, before initiating her impression of a zombie. She slumped her shoulders, started vacantly into space, and began to growl as she slowly made her way toward Alex.
“You see how the zombie fiend approaches, eager to sink its teeth into my tender flesh.” The girl continued to shamble over to her would-be victim. Alex lifted the little bag into the air. “But, observe what happens when I deploy the ZDG.” He tossed the little baggie to the ground, where it hit the carpet with an audible squishy sound. It sat on the carpet in an undignified slump, its red stinking contents bleeding out onto the floor. The girl’s vacant stare shifted to the ZDG, and she began to shamble toward that instead.
“Now the zombie will instantly pick up the scent of rotting flesh, a stench far stronger than your own, and will immediately go after that instead, leaving you free to retreat.” The young assistant went back to her corner to text, and Alex picked up his foul smelling baggie, and put it back in the cooler. He draped a small towel over the puddle that had formed on the floor, before turning back to the audience.
“Having a ZDG could mean the difference between making a clean getaway or falling victim to the living dead.” Alex’s tone was serious but not quite grave, like someone in a life insurance commercial. “They’re small, safe, and you can store them in your refrigerator or freezer until you need them. I sell them on my website for $14.99, plus shipping and handling, but you can get them now for only $9.99. Also, if you buy two, you can get a third one free.”
Of the twenty-six people in attendance, only four made a line. One of those was Diane. She walked away with three. Alex was kind enough to give her a garbage bag to put them in, so they wouldn’t drip and cause a mess in the car.
“So you ever use these when you’re out zombie hunting?” Suzy asked him before we left. Diane and Mom had already left to the car. Me and Suzy were the only ones left in the room with Alex as he was packing up.
“You bet. All the time.” He said, his smile still a little too big for comfort. He winked at her. I tried not to think much of it.
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He nodded.
“Even though zombies lack a sense of smell?”
He looked up at her, and smiled that nervous smile again. “I’m sorry?”
“Zombies can’t smell.”
“Yes they can.”
“No they can’t. They’ve done tests in laboratories.”
“Well, you can’t trust everything you see read in the papers or see on the news.” He voice sounded polite, but slightly annoyed.
Suzy opened her mouth to say something, but stopped. She just said, “Okay,” and we left. It wasn’t until we’d left the room that she started to go off.
“Can you believe that guy, tricking people like that?!”
“Yes.” I said. “And he seemed to have done okay too. At five bucks per student, he’s probably walking away with a decent haul. And that’s not including all those nasty bags of meat he sold.”
“But to deceive people like that, how can he live with himself?” she sounded hurt.
I shrugged. “Times are tough. Economy ain’t what it used to be.”
“This isn’t funny.” She said.
“It kind of is.” I replied.
“Some of those people could get killed.”
“No they won’t.”
“Yes they will. If the zombies show up-”
“They won’t show up.” I said. I was exasperate. “It’s just…people keep acting so freaked out about this, like the world’s ending.”
“And why shouldn’t they?” Suzy asked.
“Because they’re just jumping to conclusions. They watch all the news reports trying to scare us to get ratings, and think it’s accurate. People have this thing where if you give them a positive scenario, and a negative one, they’ll automatically think the negative one is more likely, for no other reason than because it’s negative!”
Suzy didn’t say anything at first. I continued. “I know this is all scary, and you want to be prepared, but…” I felt at a loss for words. Suzy put her hand on my shoulder.
“I just don’t want you to stress out.” I said.
“I know.” She kissed me on the cheek. “I know.”
“And I’m telling you to trust me. There will be nothing to worry about.”
Again she was silent.
“I mean, you know you’re more likely to get struck by lightning than to actually see a zombie in person right?”
She nodded. “I know.”
“So why worry?”
“I just…I just have this feeling.”
“Look at me.”
She did. I stared into her big brown eyes. Nothing in the world was brighter or prettier than those eyes. I took her hand in mine and said, “I promise, nothing is going to happen.”
She nodded. We left and went back to the car. My mother and her mother were waiting there in the front seat. We drove home.
The ZDG’s didn’t keep. After a few days they began to stink up Diane’s freezer, so she just threw them away.
A few days later, Suzy was at my house, watching me and Stanley play Street Fighter II on an emulator. A few months before, I’d tried to teach her how to play, but she became discouraged when she kept losing, and I kept getting frustrated with her. I later apologized for my behavior, and promised I wouldn’t act like an asshole the next time she played. She declined my offer, but she still liked watching other people play.
I was in the middle hundred hand slapping the shit out of my brother’s Ryu, when my dad came and said Suzy had to go home. He wanted her home before sundown, as he didn’t think it was a good idea to go out at night. By that point, I’d stopped complaining about the paranoia, and just lived with it. I thought it was cute, harmless, and that we’d all have a big laugh about it later.
The sky had already turned into the pale orange color of dusk when we got in the car. My dad sat himself in the front seat, and I sat in the back with Suzy. We talked about comic books and listened to some electronic dance music from Germany on the car radio. My dad didn’t mind. It was the same music he’d listen to while at the gun range. Sitting in the front passenger seat was my dad’s hunting rifle. It sat with the safety on.
We got about halfway there, when Suzy decided to call up her mom and tell her that she was coming home. Diane didn’t answer. The sun continued to set, and Suzy kept calling. All her calls kept going to voicemail.
“I don’t know why she wouldn’t be answering.” Suzy said after the seventh attempt. Her brow furrowed, and she looked to be on the verge of tears.
“Maybe she’s in the shower.” My dad said. Even at his most paranoid, he tried to at least sound calm.
“No, she takes showers in the morning.” Suzy started to hyperventilate. I put my hand on her arm.
“Relax. It’s probably nothing.” I said. She just kept looking at her phone.
“Oh shit.” My dad said. From the back seat, I saw Suzy’s house come up on the right side of the road.
The house’s open door was smeared with blood that dripped onto the ground.
My dad stopped the car and Suzy immediately bolted out.
“Mom!” she screamed as she ran across her lawn.
“Suzy wait!” I said bolting out after her.
“Hold on! Just wait one second!” My dad said, taking the gun out of the passenger seat. He was clicking the safety off when we heard the moaning. Suzy stopped on the lawn. Dad climbed out of the car with the rifle in his hands, and scanned the yard. I slowly walked up to Suzy, my ears listening to the moaning that we’d only ever heard on TV, or through computer speakers. It was coming from the house.
“Kids get back in the car.” My dad said, as he walked up to us.
“Mom!” Suzy shouted at the house, tears streaming down her face. The moaning got louder.
“Both of you get back in the car.” Dad said, as he came up next to us. “I’ll check the house. Stay in the car.” The moaning got louder, and Suzy took off again, screaming for her mother.
“God damn it.” My dad swore. Suzy ran through the front door, and we followed. We hadn’t even ascended the first step when we heard her scream.
Suzy stood in the living room, just before the hallway that led to the bedrooms and bathroom. The hallway had one door at the end that led to Diane’s bedroom, and another door on the right wall that led to Suzy’s bedroom. The hallway was all-white, except for the trail of blood on the floor. The trail began at the front door, traveled through the hallway, before ending at Diane’s bedroom. And standing in front of that door, was a short bald man, in a green t-shirt and jeans.
He seemed to be pushing against the bedroom door. The side of his shirt had been ripped off, revealing a large red gash that ran along his side. A purplish scab had formed over it, stopping any blood from coming out. Whoever’s blood it was that trailed along the floor, it wasn’t his.
Our Last Bow Page 3