Our Last Bow

by Edward Punales

  The white teeth still floated there, as did the open jaws they sat in. They formed the front of a large and very intimidating shark.

  It wasn’t moving, and instead lay motionless, its limp body still twisted in the agony of its slow death.

  I was in the aquarium.

  Quickly, I removed my bag from my back, and began to rummage through it, until I found the brochure for Brooks. I flipped through until I’d found the page about the shark exhibit. The pictures in the magazine showed a very large tank, with clear blue water, inhabited by at least a half dozen species of sharks. At the bottom of the picture could be seen the silhouettes of the guests admiring these impressive creatures.

  I looked back up. The shark with the open mouth had drifted away, back into the dirty fog it had come from.

  I stood up, and decided to explore the area a little bit; mostly to check for zombies, partially to see what had become of this place.

  I passed by some smaller tanks, with less impressive fish that were just as dead as the sharks. All the tanks had that same greenish-brown complexion as the shark tank. It reminded me of a fish tank that my brother had once. He never cleaned it, and the fish kept dying. We eventually threw it away.

  On the ceiling I could see a few plastic fish hung up by string. There were a few others on the wall, and some more that had fallen on the floor.

  The place was made up of long hallways, with tanks on both sides, and big open areas in front of the larger tanks. Normally they would have been crammed with people, and illumined by the blue light of the tanks, and by the overhead lights on the ceiling. Now the only light was my tiny flashlight that shone down dark barren hallways that stretched out like dark tunnels.

  Sea creatures killed by neglect continued to glide past the glass around me. My drowsy mind wandered through the building, trying to find a trace of the wonder this place once held.

  Next to the dolphin tank, I’d found a small play area for little kids. It was on a little square of rainbow colored carpet. In its center was a miniature yellow submarine, with small doors to accommodate younger children. I wasn’t sure if the fact that it was yellow was a reference to the Beatles song, but it looked cute all the same. The carcass of a baby dolphin floated nearby, its dead eyes seemingly entranced by the bright yellow paint of the children’s play house.

  Eventually, the smell of dead fish and salt water became too much, and I was starting to get a headache. I decided I needed to find place where I could try to get away from the smell.

  Using a discarded map I found on the floor, I was able to find my way to an employee break room. The door was the same blue as the carpet and walls, and had a sign that read Employees Only. I opened it, and found a long white hallway with three doors; one at the end that read Feeding Area, and another two along the left wall. One read Utility Closet, while the other read Break Room.

  I entered the break room. The lights still didn’t work, but it was much smaller than the cavernous guest areas. The smell of fish was still there, but nowhere near as intense. There were a few small round tables, a refrigerator, a long counter that ran along one wall, a door to a bathroom, and a couch. I took my gun and backpack off and put them on the floor, before sitting down on the couch. My legs ached as they finally became free of burden of supporting my torso. My body sank into the soft leather folds of the couch. My breathing slowed, and my heavy eyelids were finally allowed to fall over my eyes. I wasn’t thinking about zombies, or danger, or trying to be safe. My mind didn’t have the ability to think about these things at that moment.

  I just wanted to sleep.

  Then I was in my living room, playing Halo with Stanley.

  It wasn’t exactly the same. The onscreen icons, like health bar, ammo counter, radar, and the like looked slightly off, both in shape and their position on the screen.

  The TV we played on was slightly bigger than the one in our home. The living room was slightly smaller and the color of the walls was a warm light brown, and not the all-white of real life. And the kitchen seemed closer to the living room. Not that I noticed any of these things at the time.

  Stanley sat on the floor, his legs crossed. For some reason we could never figure out, he always preferred sitting there instead of the sofa. We used to joke that he wouldn’t have any furniture in his own house when he eventually moved out.

  Sitting next to me was Suzy. Her head rested on my shoulder, as she sat watching the action on the screen. The sound of her breathing always relaxed me.

  “Got you again.” Stanley said, after I’d died. The death animation that played on the screen was slightly different from the actual one from the game.

  “No, you cheated.” I said with a smirk.

  “How?” he asked.

  “You…you gave me a messed up controller.” I said, holding the black controller up to him.

  “No you just suck.” He said.

  “You do not suck.” Suzy said, kissing me on the cheek. “You were just distracted. You’ve had a lot on your mind lately.”

  “Yeah,” Stanley nodded. “Like sucking.”

  I flipped him off in that playful way that only friends and family can flip each other off and he did the same.

  Suzy giggled her sweet giggle. It was the first time I’d heard it in a long time. It was a sound that was worth it for its own sake; a soothing mini-symphony that only she could produce.

  “Seriously, is something up though?” Stanley asked.

  “Yeah, you seem a little stressed.” Suzy asked, putting her warm soft arm around my shoulder. I did feel a little off, a little worried. I felt as though some grave problem sat at the periphery of my awareness; some nagging, distressing issue that required my immediate attention, but which I could not recall.

  I struggled to figure out what it was, but couldn’t. And I think part of that was because I didn’t want to.

  I just shrugged and said, “Nothing. Nothing is wrong.”

  “You sure?” Suzy asked. Before I could answer, the scene changed.

  I was sitting at a large white table. I sat in-between Suzy and Stanley, while my mom and dad sat across from us. We were the only ones at the table.

  The table was in a park. The sky above was the dark blue of evening. The trees that dotted the park had been adorned with Christmas lights. It felt cool, but not freezing.

  On the table before us we had bowls of macaroni salad, rice and beans, mashed potatoes, and trays of pork, chicken, and ham. It was a regular thanksgiving feast. But no turkey. We didn’t like turkey.

  The park we were in had other white tables, with other groups of people. They were all familiar to me. At one table sat a few friends from school, another had some distant cousins that I rarely saw, another had some of my dad’s coworkers that I’d met.

  I put my arm over Suzy’s shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek. She leaned on my shoulder. Across the table, my dad was telling us about something he saw on the History Channel, about how the Third Reich had supposedly been aided by extraterrestrials during the Second World War. Mom just nodded, with her patient loving smile that naturally came to most mothers. She looked over at Stanley, Suzy, and me, and asked if we liked the food. We said yes.

  I took two spoonfuls of mashed potatoes, before I noticed her. She sat at a table under a large tree, a few feet away from our table. She wore a blue dress that ended just above the knee, with a black belt that went across her waist. She had a pretty oval face, with dark hair. The area just above her left ankle had been bandaged. She was talking with some man that I couldn’t recognize. I recognized her though.

  She spotted me, and waved, with a big friendly smile on her face. I waved back, and suddenly felt very happy for her. I could vaguely recall that she’d been very sick recently, but I couldn’t remember the affliction. But she seemed fine now.

  I did remember her name. It was Lola.

  Then I woke up.

  I wasn’t in the park anymore. My family and all those people were gone.

 
; I was in the break room of the Brooks Aquarium. Again, I felt the ache in my legs and back from all the running and stress. For the first second-and-a-half, my mind struggled to figure out what had happened.

  Then I realized it had all been a dream, and I finally broke down.

  I put my head in my hands. A deep suffocating misery set in. It was the kind that strangles you, pushing out all other sensations and perceptions, until there is nothing but pain. Pure, aching, unrestrained pain.

  Throughout this whole mess, between the hiding, the running, and the scavenging for food, I’d tried not to think about what had happened.

  But that dream, it was too perfect; like my subconscious mocking me. My fatigued mind couldn’t compete with the flood of emotion and longing that followed; the recollections of the people who used to make up my life and what had happened to them.

  X

  Let me tell you about the worst day of my life.

  It was about two days after I’d tried to escape through the front gate. Dave had made sure to keep me updated about the town, telling me the progress the military was making in trying to clean out the zombies. It didn’t sound like our side was winning.

  I wasn’t able to find out how my family was doing; getting information on the status of individual people or families was next to impossible.

  The computer rooms weren’t much help. The Colonel had ordered that they were only to be used for military business, and that anyone caught using them for other reasons would be detained.

  “It’s just an emergency precaution,” Dave had reassured me. “Everything will be fine in a few days.”

  Then one morning, it all went to shit.

  I’d been able to get about two or three hours of sleep, when Dave shook me awake.

  “Get up, we’re leaving!” he said. The orange light of dawn spilled in through the window, revealing his haggard, nervous face.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, quickly getting dressed.

  “The base has been overrun; we have to get out of here now!”

  He grabbed my arm, and pulled me outside. A green roofless jeep had been parked in front of the barrack’s entrance. We jumped in, and he floored it.

  The base was in chaos. Dozens of zombies traveling in packs roamed the base. In the distance we could hear the sound of gunshots, as soldiers tried to fight them off. Buildings were on fire. In front of the supply depot, I watched a pair of zombies rip apart the body of one of the scientists who’d drawn my blood.

  Dave ran over a few zombies in military uniforms, before ramming the gates.

  “Get down!” he said just before we hit the twenty-foot wall of chain link. I did, and heard the crash as the gate opened.

  I got up, and looked behind us as we sped away. A few of the zombies we’d run over still tried to crawl after us. Some crawled using their arms; their legs crushed beyond repair. Others scooted along using their legs, after their arms had been crushed, and they could not longer push themselves off the ground. All receded behind us, until they were nothing but little specks in our rear-view mirrors.

  “When did this happen?” I asked.

  “Sometime during the night.” Dave answered.

  “How did they get in?”

  “I don’t know. Someone left something open, then two came in, two became three, three became ten, it’s all fucked up!” Dave was having trouble keeping his composure. I could only imagine the things he’d seen during the night.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. There’s a fortress city called Brooks not too far from here.”

  “You sure it’s safe?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot. If we keep driving and don’t stop-”

  “What about my parents!?” I said. “What about Suzy and Stan? We can’t leave them.”

  “Ben we’ve been over this. There is nothing we can do!”

  “Yes there is! We have a jeep! We can go back and pick them up. We can take them with us!”

  “The town is overrun. It’d be suicide to go back.”

  “They might still be alive!” I was shaking in anger and frustration.

  “We can’t risk it! Your parents wouldn’t want you to do this!”

  “Stop the jeep!” I said. Dave didn’t stop, but he did slow down, and turn to me. “I can’t leave without knowing for sure that they’re alright. You can go on ahead, but I can’t.”

  There was a long pause before Dave looked away from me.

  He shook his head, and said, “Fuck it.”

  He turned, and went onto a road that would take us around the base, and back to my hometown.

  “Thank you.” I said.

  “No problem.” Dave’s expression was blank. “Besides, you’ll need a car.”

  We had to enter from the eastside of town. According to Dave, that was the side of town that had been hit least by the zombies.

  From a distance, it didn’t look like much had changed. Nothing was on fire, there wasn’t any smoke, and I couldn’t hear any screams. I started to relax. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as we’d thought.

  Then we passed the city limits, and the smell of blood and decay hit me in the face. I couldn’t see any zombies, but I could hear them, their unearthly moans echoing down the roads.

  We passed the houses, and saw the windows and doors stained with blood. I’d expected to see bodies on the sidewalk, but there were none, at least not at first. Besides the far-off moaning of the dead and the humming of the jeep’s engine there was nothing. Just an eerie silence, as we made our way to my house.

  We were about two blocks from my house, when I heard the gunshots. I felt both relieved and terrified at the same time. Dave sped up. My house finally came into view, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

  There had to be at least twelve of them, clawing at the walls and windows of the house. The windows and doors had been boarded up. I could see two figures standing on the roof of the house; one of them was holding a rifle. With every shot that was fired, another zombie fell to the ground. I took a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment. I could see that the two people on the roof were Stan and Mom. I felt lightheaded from relief, and turned to the ground.

  On our front yard lay another dozen or so zombies, sprawled immobile on the grass. These zombies on the ground all had bullet holes through their foreheads. I smirked, before finding my father among the bodies.

  My eyes went wide, and I felt my stomach go cold. He lay on his back, his eyes open. A rifle sat in his right hand. He wasn’t moving.

  “Dad!” I shouted. He didn’t blink, or turn his head. Mom and Stan turned, as did the zombies.

  “Shit.” Dave said, as the zombies began to leave the house, and make their way to the Jeep. He hit the brakes, and the jeep came to a jerking halt.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, my eyes frantically switching between my dad and Dave.

  “I’m waiting for them to get on the road.” He said. I turned, and watched as the zombies began to shuffle onto the road. Up on the roof, Stan was waving at us.

  “Hey up here!” Stan shouted.

  “Stan shut up!” Dave said. “I’m trying to get their attention!”

  Stan immediately stopped. Some of the zombies began to turn back to the house, following the sound of Stan’s voice. Dave began to honk the horn, and they quickly started making their way to the road again. My dad’s limp body hadn’t moved an inch since we’d arrived.

  Once most of them had gotten onto the road, Dave put the car in gear, and slammed on the accelerator. The jeep sped down the road, and I saw him struggle to keep the steering wheel straight. I counted; ten zombies exactly, with six standing directly in front of the jeep. The other four were standing off to the side, near the sidewalk.

  “Hold onto something!” Dave said. I held onto the bottom of my seat, when we smashed into the zombies.

  The first six were simply pulled under the car, crushed under metal and rubber. One of the four
on the sidewalk lunged at the jeep, and tried to pull Dave out of the driver seat. Dave swatted it away, and drove down the road another ten feet before stopping.

  He stood up in the driver’s seat, rifle drawn, and surveyed the area behind him. The six zombies we’d run over still lay on the road. They weren’t going to be a problem for a little while. Of immediate concern was the four still standing on the sidewalk.

  “Stan fire!” He said. Between the two of them, Dave and Stan were able to clear out the remaining zombies in seconds. After the sidewalk zombies had all fallen, Dave and Stan turned to the ones that had been run over. Two had had their head crushed under the tires, but the others were still active, and possessed some limited mobility. They stopped moving after another few rounds.

  Once it was safe, I jumped out of the jeep, and ran to my dad, who still lay motionless on the ground. I grabbed hold of his shoulder and began to shake him, tears streaming down my face.

  “Dad! Dad!” I shouted. He didn’t say anything, and just started up at me with blank, dead eyes. Dave knelt down beside me, and began to take my dad’s pulse. The front door of the house burst open, and out came my mom and brother, who ran over to where we sat with my dad.

  “Is he okay?” Stan asked. I wanted to hug that little annoying bastard, but we had to deal with Dad.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “He slipped and fell off the roof.” My mom said. Aside from Dave, she was the one doing the best to keep her composure.

  “When?”

  “About an hour ago.” She turned to Dave. He’d finished inspecting his pulse and was looking at his neck.

  “He’s dead.” Dave said. “He must’ve broken his neck when he fell. I don’t think he felt any pain.”

  My brother collapsed to the ground on his knees. I didn’t say anything. My mother knelt down and took both myself and my brother in her arms.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay.” She kept saying.