It’s not quite as easy for people to turn back around after a thing like that. They still don’t become zombies, but mentally and emotionally, most folks collapse. Cannibalism can do that to you. It’s the perfect precursor to a nervous breakdown. A damn good share of the survivors we found were perfectly healthy physically, but fell into a comatose state when they came out of their zombie fever and found that they’d eaten their kids. We found a lot of these types of survivors huddled in their attics or closets, just shaking, crying, and raving, many still caked with the blood of their loved ones.
We called them the part-time cannibals. I reckon it was not the most sensitive term, but, as any war vet will tell you, only humor can get you through living in hell. These part-time cannibals could be rehabilitated, of course, if they weren’t too far gone. We would tag them for therapy and ship them out on the buses when they came to round them up. But some of them had such a case of the crazies that it was hard to tell them apart from the zombies. Others were still in the first stages of the virus, too, and you couldn’t be sure if they were going to recover.
That was where the serum test came into play.
It was simple. David called it “holistic.” The serum was made almost entirely of clean human plasma. Each batch was separated into vials, similar to individual doses of eyedrops that you’d break off of plastic strips. In the human body, Z1V1 takes time to spread. But a small portion of clean tissue can show infection instantly and violently. A few drops of blood from a hopelessly infected person would go gray, curdle like a hot bucket of old cream, and then start popping and spraying inside the tube as it just grew greener and greener. That was when you knew you had a terminal case and you had to pop a round into the back of the poor bastard’s skull. But if the serum didn’t have a reaction, it meant that the cells in the person’s blood were conquering the virus and that they’d be clean in a few days, and would be mentally sound, as long as you could keep them from gnawing off your face in the interval. Which brings me to the difficult part of all of this: drawing the blood from the zombies and part-time cannibals. I would hold my rifle steady on them. Ed would pop them with the taser. Bill would pin down their necks, usually with a chair or broom, so they couldn’t bite if they regained their motor skills too quickly. But David was quick. He would run in there with the syringe and get their blood before they could move again, and then we could run the test. Depending on the outcome, I’d either put my rifle away, or I’d put it to use.
* * * * *
We’d been scouting Yeehaw for a week when it happened.
The old hick town was nearly deserted, and the lack of action had made us all too bored and relaxed. We’d spent the day searching one empty house after another. No zombies, no part-timers, no living people; just dead bodies. It was just the four of us and a tree line full of well-fed buzzards. Most of us had started to feel like we were wasting our time and that we should just declare the zone vacant. But Ed was a by-the-book cop, an old-fashioned kind of dude who took his job seriously. There wasn’t a shower curtain in town he wasn’t going to pull back, not a car trunk he wasn’t going to pry open. He was going to have us peer into every crevice in Yeehaw before he’d ever file a damn report.
“Anything in the master bedroom?” Ed asked David as he came back from it. We were searching through the last house on a dead-end road. It was one story, but it seemed to go on forever.
“Nothing of interest.”
Ed turned to Bill.
“Find anything in the bathroom, Bill?”
“Just a foot-long floater in the bowl,” he said. Everything was a joke to Bill, and the jokes were always foul or negative. They made David and me laugh sometimes, but not often. Ed enjoyed Bill’s comedy about as much he would enjoy removing a tick with a burning-hot spoon.
“As long as you didn’t take it, sticky-fingers,” he replied.
Bill had been busted house-lifting twice by Ed. First he was caught taking jewelry from some old maid’s ballerina box. Then, in another house, he swiped photos the tenant there had taken of his girlfriend. They were as nasty as anything you’d see in Hustler. One more strike and Bill was out. Not free of patrolling, though. He would have liked that. Instead Bill would be reassigned, which almost always meant clean-up duty, mopping up mangled corpses in a demolished city. Ed held that threat over Bill’s head like hangman’s noose whenever Bill got cranky or too sarcastic, and it always shut him right up.
Ed turned to me.
“You find anything in the garage, Hank?”
“Not a body. Not even a car. I reckon these folks evacuated when the news hit.”
“Yeah, it looks like most of Yeehaw jumped on the turnpike,” he replied. “But we’ve got to be sure. Search the kitchen. David, get the other bedrooms, and Bill, hit the other head.”
Ed began jotting down notes in his log and the three of us separated. We always stuck pretty close to each other in case of an attack, but most of the time if a zombie was in a room, you wouldn’t even have time to enter it ’cause it’d come charging out at you. Once you walked into the house, they knew you were there. So if we came through the front door OK, we broke up and searched to save time. We’d individually find part-timers, but if they hadn’t already lunged at us, then they were starting to recover, which meant that they’d be so sick they’d be slower than cement.
I entered the kitchen, and the whole look and feel of the room made me sentimental. I instantly longed for the simpler, better times, before the plague. You rarely came across rooms like this when scouting. Most places were a mess. You could always tell that either violence had occurred, or people had dashed out in a mad panic, leaving behind tornadic wreckage in their haste. But this kitchen looked as if the owners had just gone out to pick up milk and would be back any minute.
There were curtains on the window that were decorated with a soft flower pattern. The fridge was an old, brown model with silver handles, and pots and pans hung above the stove on a magnetic strip. The wallpaper was vertical stripes, and an oversized wooden fork and spoon set hung on the wall by a Girl Scouts calendar. In the middle of the room was a small, wooden table with a big, open cookie jar in the center. The floor was old yellow tile, and two doggie bowls were plopped down on a big mat that said “Dolly.”
That’s when I heard the howling.
There was a screen door near the fridge, leading out to the backyard. The window on it was up, and a muggy wind blew in, making the curtain dance like forgotten laundry on the line. Carried on that wind was the sound of the howling, coming from somewhere in the yard.
Normally we’d investigate any noises as a group. But after seeing the Dolly mat and the bowls, I had gotten excited when I heard the howling. I wondered if the family had left the dog behind for some reason, as sad as that would have been. I was happy to imagine that I might adopt her if only I found her first. I thought I’d get dibs that way. A dog wasn’t like jewelry or naked pictures; it would have to come back with us. And if one did, I wanted it to be mine. No arguments or paper-rock-scissors, just mine.
I went out into the yard. The howling had stopped, but there was a yip and a yelp, like playful barking. But all I saw was brown crabgrass and some withered vegetable plants drooping in their bone-dry pots. A rustling of palmetto bush led me toward the woods behind the house, which really was more a mesh of vine and shrub than trees. The yelping got louder as I came forward, expecting to see a pup, but instead I got her.
She was a foul-looking lil’ zombie, full-blown. She couldn’t have been more than 7. Her blond hair was still in pigtails, tied with pink bows at the end. Her eyes were glossed over like they get when you’ve got the sickness, and her mouth was a mess of fractured teeth, all jagged and chipped from gnawing on bones. Her skin was the color of fetid swamp-bog, and the reek of her putrefaction could knock a maggot off a turd.
She could have jumped at me in the usual frenzy, but instead she yipped and yapped at me, still making the puppy noise. When I looked down at her
little buckled shoes, I knew why. She was squatting there over a furry, bright-red pulp with fangs and a black snout sticking out at one end. Hung around a pile of this gore like a sad halo was a leather collar with poor Dolly’s name engraved on it.
This little Zombina already had herself a meal, and something about it registered in what was left of her brain, making her yap like a puppy. The sight of all this jolted me, even though I’d seen my share of horror since Z1V1 first hit. I wanted to vomit, but calmed my gut down to a belch and then started to steady my rifle. But this ghoulie-girl had a belch of her own brewing, and when I turned back to shoot her, she burped a mist of dark blood with such force that it sprayed all over my face. My eyes started to burn as my mouth tasted the nauseating copper, and for a moment I couldn’t see, but I shot anyway.
* * * * *
By the time David got over to me, I had wiped my face clean with a sanitizing wipe from my bag. I was still spitting out what I hoped was only dog blood, but I was prone to having a cheek full of Redman, and I think he was so used to me dippin’ that he didn’t really notice. I was glad he didn’t, because I was damn scared.
“Good God,” he sighed when he saw the remains of the girl lying there in that puddle of a dog.
“God ain’t got nothing to do with this,” Ed said, coming up behind him. I noticed his pistol was drawn. “You OK there, Hank?”
“Yeah, just rattled.”
“You should have called for us before going back outside.”
“Sorry, Ed. I just thought we were in the clear.”
My eyes felt like someone had poured Tabasco sauce in them. I rubbed at them with the back of my hand. Even through the blur, I could make out Ed’s curious expression.
“You sure you’re OK?”
“I’m fine, fine. Just the damn dry air.”
David handed me a jug of water, and I splashed it onto my face, trying to wash out my eyes without looking like that was what I was doing. Bill came walking up as I did, and I was grateful for the distraction.
“What’s all the hubbub, Bub?”
“Hank found a full-blown one. Be on your toes.”
The one thing Bill did take seriously was a zombie. He armed himself and went silent, scanning the surrounding brush. I was worried about more of them ghouls being around too, because they tended to move in packs, like coyotes prowling on garbage night. But beyond being worried about them, I was now even more worried about myself. That little Zombina had hosed me good with all kinds of fluid: blood, spit, bits of mucus, and who knows what else, all from the mouth of a zombie. I had not heard of the virus being spread this way, but it made sense to me that it would be possible. But I surely didn’t want to ask David and find out. I didn’t want him or Bill to know, and I damn sure didn’t want Ed to have any inkling. I’d end up tagged and shipped off to one of those rehabilitation centers that were all so overcrowded, packed in there with all those part-time cannibals, screaming and thrashing all night long with raging sickness.
Because there was nothing to do for it once you had it. There was no cure or painkiller to ease you through or help you recover faster. You just had to ride that mean sucker to the end like a roller coaster that you wished you’d never hopped onto to begin with. Like the flu, you just had to sweat it out, and like a junkie going cold turkey, the hunger was supposed to be a living nightmare.
I didn’t want to end up like that. I didn’t want to turn into a zombie either, but I didn’t want to go to rehab. I hadn’t been bitten, and so I wanted to think that I would be fine. So I told myself I would be, and then I tried my darnedest to believe it.
* * * * *
There’s a feeling of uncertainty that you get sometimes when drinking or doing dope, that moment when you wonder if it’s working. That’s why there are so many drunk-driving arrests. Folks aren’t sure if they’re sauced, and they talk themselves into believing they’re sober. The very fact that they have to contemplate it should tell them that the booze has had an effect. But alcohol and dope make you trick yourself, and I reckon the virus does that too.
The day after I got puke-sprayed by that undead brat, I started asking myself if I felt any different. I would run my hands through my hair just for the sensation, and then I’d wave my fingers in front of my face and snap them in my ears. Of course, the only surefire test would be to sneak a vial from David’s medical kit, but even if I could manage to swipe the equipment without being caught, I doubted I could use it correctly. I’d seen the kid administer the test plenty of times, but I wouldn’t trust myself to do it right. I’d just end up with the same fears and doubts I was already suffering from.
“You doin’ all right?” Ed asked as I ran my hand through my hair again.
“Yeah, why?”
My bowels churned at the question.
“You just seem a little off,” he replied. “Can’t say I blame ya, either. Zombie kids are the worst. It’s a damned vile thing to see, and then it never leaves your mind’s eye.”
I began to fear the concern of my teammates and see it as their subconscious way of admitting that they suspected me of infection. I tried to shrug it off as sheer paranoia, a delusion brought on by post-traumatic stress, insufferable heat and too much dehydrated food. But the fear was there now, germinating within me. The only thing stronger than the fear was the hunger. It was so fathomless that it crept out of my guts and strained my bones till they ached. It festered in me and grew worse when I tried to satiate it. I’d scarf down jerky or a protein bar as we marched through the streets, and it would only make me hungrier, as if my stomach was insulted by this offering. That night we ate our dinner rations as usual, and I tucked mine into my sleeping bag when no one was looking, knowing that the meal would only cause pain.
I lay down to sleep early, telling myself I had indigestion, or maybe acid reflux. I told myself it would pass, and yet I still kept it all a secret from my team, because deep down I think I knew it was something more. My heart sank like an anchor at the thought, so I tried to think of nothing as I lay there staring into a sky without stars.
* * * * *
“Hey, you awake there, or what?”
It was Bill. We were on our 12th day of patrol now. We were scouting behind a convenience store, and I had zoned out again, staring at the back of his ear. The flesh there was spongy and pink, the lobes appearing to have the chewy texture of gummi worms but the savory flavor of pork ribs.
“Huh?” was all I could offer as a reply at this point.
Bill snickered at my spaced-out manner.
“Listen, hoss,” he said. “If you’ve got some cheba or somethin’ else that makes this daily grind more bearable, it’d be great if you didn’t bogart it.”
He came closer to me, and the stink of his sweaty flesh was as alluring as any lady’s perfume I’d ever smelled. We were alone in the back alley with the dumpster and crates, Ed and David searching the insides of the store. The intimacy was like that between a jungle cat and a small, unwitting marmot: Only one of us was really aware of the dangerous dance. I could feel my mouth salivating as my stomach seemed to implode.
“Come on, brother,” he said. “Don’t hold out. Give it to me.”
I looked into his eyes and thought of sucking them out of his skull and juggling them with my tongue like a hacky sack. There was garlic on his breath, so his tongue would be well-seasoned. I wondered if his teeth would pass through me whole if I swallowed them.
“I don’t even care what it is,” he said, “just as long as it takes me away from here.”
It was more than an urge. It was like a reflex.
I had my rifle, a knife, a box cutter, and plenty of other things I could have used as a weapon. But the mechanical advantage is calculated by the mind of man, and I wasn’t operating on that wavelength any longer.
I went at Bill with my mitts.
I think he would have screamed if he’d only had the time. I moved with a speed that was unfamiliar to my body, lunging at him like an Olymp
ic diver. I knocked him backward in a tackle, and he hit the gravel with a crack, the air escaping his lungs as his spine snapped on impact. There was no hesitation then. I went face first into his neck, chewing, tearing away the sinew in huge strips. I didn’t just eat the flesh — I inhaled it. The eating was a delirious frenzy of blood mist and meat so fresh it was still steaming. I don’t remember really thinking about what I was doing. There certainly wasn’t any feeling of shame, remorse, or even uncertainty. I wasn’t even afraid of being caught by the others. The only feelings I had were of satisfaction and relief, like a morphine addict getting back on the nod.
However, you know, the flesh wasn’t quite enough.
I began to pulverize his skull by bashing it into the ground. I dug my thumbs into his eye sockets for a good grip and wrapped my fingers around his head. I whacked his skull on the fractured gravel over and over again — like trying to bust a stubborn coconut. But my strength, like my speed, had been elevated, and soon the back of his skull split open with a little hiss, and I was able to start prying the halves apart. His brain spilled out, bloody but intact, like a newly born baby, right into my grip.
The taste of it was like French kissing an angel.
Growing Dark Page 3