“Look,” Kathryn said, “this one has the keys in it.”

“It’s probably out of gas,” Maureen acknowledged, “most of the ones with the keys left in them are out of gas.”

“Well,” Kathryn stripped off her business suit jacket and searched the mercifully empty streets, “we’re gonna have to give it a try.” She climbed behind the wheel and unlocked the passenger door so that Maureen could climb in the other side.

“I never thought that I’d be caught dead in a Hyundai,” Maureen said as she shut herself in.

“Yeah,” Kathryn commented, “but I’d rather be caught dead in a Hyundai then caught by the living dead.” She tried to turn the ignition over but the car coughed like a sick old woman.

“See,” Maureen said, looking around cautiously, “the piece of shit’s dead. Now let’s get the hell out of here, we’re makin’ way too much noise.”

Instead of answering, Kathryn tried to turn it over again, and this time the car sputtered to life.

“Hot damn!” Maureen said and squeezed Kathryn’s arm. “Let’s cruise.” Maureen was a huge woman; bordering on morbidly obese. Her thin, patchy, gossamer strands of blonde hair framed her red face and the blotches of psoriasis which traveled up and down her exposed arms were shaped like small countries on an oceanographic map. Kathryn was glad that they had found a car, not for her sake, but for Maureen’s. She was not sure that the heavily breathing fat woman could escape quickly enough in the dreaded event that they should become cornered.

But now that Kathryn had the compact car started, she was faced with a new problem. This model was equipped with a stick shift; a four on the floor.

“You know how to drive one of these?” She asked Maureen. ”

Maureen looked at her confused. “Put it in drive,” she said.

“Well hell, I’ve never driv…” Halfway through Kathryn’s sentence the passenger side window shattered and a white arm roughly grabbed Maureen by the hair. The big woman screamed, scratched and pushed at the chest of an attacker who’s face could not yet be seen. “GO! GO! GO! GO!” she shouted. Kathryn threw her arms up in vexation and scanned the car’s controls. But she may as well have been staring at the console of an airplane and her panic was giving her even less chance of figuring it out.

“GO KATHY GO!” Maureen continued to buck and kick at the form which was trying to enter the cab.

“I’M TRYING! I’M…” As she pawed the gear shift the clutch inexplicably popped and the little car scooted a few feet, momentarily shedding the assaulter whose gruesome white face then came into view as it stumbled: one eye gone from a rifle shot which must have missed the brain. But the car soon stalled and the abomination was on them again. Maureen scooted across the seat in an effort to avoid the cold white hands of the monster but this move only squashed Kathryn up against the driver’s door; making it impossible for her to try the ignition again. For several seconds all she could do was try and catch her breath as her friend fought for her life against one of the living dead. She couldn’t even reach the door handle. But then, just as she was contemplating what it would be like to roam the city as a shuffling corpse, the sound of a gunshot reverberated off of the high buildings. And she heard Maureen’s voice go from high pitched wails of terror to sobs of relief. A second later she felt the considerable bulk of her robust friend ease up and off of her. Maureen was shivering as if she were wearing soaking wet clothes in sub zero temperatures. “OH Jesus, OH Jesus, OH Jesus.” She kept repeating.

When Kathryn could turn around again she saw that the back window of the Hyundai was smeared with bright red flecks of rose colored blood. As Maureen recovered enough to climb out of the car, Kathryn leaned over across the upholstery and inspected the slumped over body of the dead-dead man. His second eye now shot out also. She tried to start the Hyundai again, but it was as dead as the felled ghoul; out of gas after all. Kathryn got out of the driver’s side and looked back over the roof of the car towards the source of the snipe.

“Just in the nick of time,” an approaching voice said and Kathryn locked eyes with a man in a plain green soldier’s uniform with a matching helmet. A long rifle hung from a strap around his neck. This was obviously the marksman who had re-executed their deathly pale stalker. The man’s round and puffy face seemed much too swollen for his trained and trim body.

“OH, Thank you, thank you sir!” Maureen gushed as she took two uneven steps over trash and rubble towards her savior. Kathryn suspiciously brushed her long brown hair off of her alabaster cheek. “How will we ever be able to make it up to you.?” Maureen continued.

“Well,” said the man, “I’m not sure that you can.” And Kathryn was wary of his weird grin and the facetiousness which she sensed in his tone. She walked around the deceased car and stood at her friend’s side; her taut yet curvy body evident even under the business skirt and long sleeve white blouse. “But I might be able to think of something your friend here can do.” The man quipped. Kathryn understood what he was getting at perfectly, but Maureen didn’t seem to get the gist of it. She took another step towards the man and was now standing no more than four feet from him.

“Well,” she smiled, “if there’s anything that we can do, I’m sure… I mean, you saved our life. We really don’t know how to thank you.”

“Hey,” the man held his palms out innocently and continued through an earnest smile, “don’t mention it.” He then quickly raised the rifle and shot Maureen in the throat. She didn’t fall at once, but could only stand back and cover the wound in shock. Then she took her hands away from it for some desperate reason and a straight line of blood shot fifteen feet across the asphalt every time that her heart beat. Kathryn rushed to her friend’s side and dropped to her knees, almost catching her as she collapsed onto the cluttered street. Oblivious to the gunman, she tore off a strip of her blouse and pressed it against the wound; but Maureen only gaped for air, her mouth opening and closing like a manatee out of water. Kathryn heard a second loud boom; as if she were an inch from two cars colliding and now there was a hole in Maureen’s forehead to match the one in her throat. The big woman’s eyes grayed over and stared into the distance of the next world.

Kathryn scooted away from the body and stared up at the murderer from the seat of her skirt. He was chuckling, yet his weapon was pointed at the ground.

“You’re not going to kill me?” she asked.

“Why would would I shoot a smokin’ hot fox like you?” the man answered.

“But um… But I… you shot you… killed her. Why did you kill her?” Kathryn stuttered through the shock.

“I was doin’ her a favor.”

Kathryn mulled this over for a few seconds. “And you won’t do me the same favor?”

“No,” the man answered, “I’m not going to shoot you.” A gleam twinkled in his eye that must have been similar to the one Adam and Eve saw with as they bit into the apple. “But don’t worry,” he finished, “there will certainly be favors involved. Now March!” He raised the gun again.

“No!” Kathryn resisted defiantly, “kill me here but I’m not going with you.” She meant it. She did not want to see what this violent cretin had in store for her.

“Look bitch,” he began, “there are worse things than gettin’ shot: now get up and make that nice ass a yours march before I show you what those things are.” Kathryn didn’t move.

“MARCH!!!” This mean bellow frightened her enough to where she got up and began marching in the general direction of where he had his gun sight pointed. They walked for perhaps ten blocks without speaking, around stalled cars, crude makeshift sandbag forts and fire blackened barricades. Finally they rounded a corner and Kathryn found herself staring at a huge edifice of crushed cars. They stretched in between two buildings to create an impressive blockade. There was a doorway sized opening which had probably been left there intentionally by the crane operator. A second soldier stood in this entrance, listlessly smoking a cigarette. The men nodded at each other as they passed. On the other side of the junker wall there was a long segmented vehicle painted camouflage and covered with nets of black mesh. It reminded Kathryn of a mechanical caterpillar. Reacting to a shuffling sound off to her left Kathryn caught sight of a dead MAN IN A SUIT AND TIE as he stumbled out of an office building. He did not have to push the exit lever since all the glass doors had been busted or shot out. Before Kathryn could even cry out, yet another boom raped the silence and the zombie jumped as a head shot met with its scalp. A JFK sized flap jutted out from the side of its exposed skull right before it fell. There was a sniper atop the caterpillar which Kathryn had failed to notice and he had skillfully lopped the dead man’s brain off.

There was a wrought iron door in the center of the long bus which opened down like a draw bridge. The soldier softly tapped Kathryn in the small of the back with the tip of the powerful gun. Feeling that she had little choice she climbed inside. There were several other women within the capsule/cell. They laid haphazard under freckled spots of sunlight which circled in through small, perfectly round holes in the wall, as if coin blanks had been knocked out of them. None of them spoke to Kathryn or offered up any theories in the way of explanation. Some of them wore clothes which were dirty and disheveled, others still looked halfway presentable. The soldiers were obviously on patrol to collect prisoners and this made Kathryn wonder why Maureen had not also been spared? The draw bridge like door clanged closed behind her.

Then as she looked around the cab the similarities began to hit her: even with their tatted hair and torn clothes; even with their grimy skin and wept away mascara; even with their stinking underarms and chipped nails: all of the women confined within the car were at least fairly attractive.

2.

“Well it has to be better than wandering around out there,” a pale girl with tired, purple chevrons underneath her pretty hazel eyes was saying, “I mean, at least we’re away from those dead things.” Some of the women shook their heads yes, but most were too exhausted to answer. Kathryn and the others had been led into a brightly lit room where they sat at small exam desks like school children or collage students. There was a blackboard on the wall but there wasn’t anything written on it and no chalk could be found on its built in shelf. There was no apple nor was there a teacher’s desk to set one on. The room had no windows but there were two doors: one which they had been led through after exiting the caterpillar and a second door which was in the complete opposite corner. On each desk a glass of ice water had been placed and most of the women drank greedily.

After about fifteen minutes, the door which they had been led through opened and a man sauntered in. He wore a similar uniform to the one sported by the men who had captured Kathryn, only he had a baseball cap on rather than a helmet and there were two silver bars on the shoulder of his long sleeve shirt. His polished boots were free of dust and grit and tufts of thick black hair sprouted out from underneath the hat at wild intervals. He looked the ladies over with maddening turquoise eyes and even though his movements were controlled and strict, Kathryn sensed that he was deranged inside his mind.

“Hello Ladies,” he began, “my name is Captain Enervy.” The women straightened up and cocked their heads to listen even though he was speaking at a drill sergeant’s pitch. “I have some very good news for all of you: we are now inside a guarded and heavily armed compound. You are completely safe from the monstrous creatures which have, unfortunately, taken over a large part of our city. This is a situation that our forces are working hard to rectify. In the meantime you will be given food, lodging and you will be able to wash whenever you wish. You will also sleep in a warm bed.” He paused here and some of the women began to rejoice; clutching each other’s hands, cheering and even crying. But Kathryn, who had watched her friend executed, did not join in the celebration. “All that we ask in compensation is that you women comply with our orders which includes supplying companionship to and satisfying the needs of our troops.” The joyful chatter ebbed quickly and the happiness decelerated down into a bleak silence. Captain Enervy proudly surveyed the scene, ready to gauge the women’s reactions and field objections. After a few confusing seconds one woman stood up.

She wore nothing but a grungy tank top and a pair of tattered Levi’s. Her hair was cropped into an extremely short crew cut. But even in this unflattering apparel she was a breathtaking beauty: boson brown eyes large atop chiseled cheekbones.

“You mean,” she said, “that you want us to have sex with them.” Captain Enervy looked the woman right in the face and Kathryn saw a flash of the temper which he was making an effort to conceal.

“Yes,” he answered simply, “we want you to have sex with them.”

“Jesus,” the standing woman said, “you guys are unbelievable. Instead of using your weapons to help people you want to turn the world into one big brothel.” Kathryn felt like telling the dissident to pipe down; she was sure that the girl did not realize how hot the fire she was playing with could scorch. Perhaps her introduction to this army had been kinder than Kathryn’s violent, murder splattered initiation. Oblivious to these grave dangers however, the girl continued. “Well I won’t do it. I refuse! I will not! I will not! I’d rather take my chances with the walking dead than have some sweaty grunt rape me every night. At least the dead are honest and up front about their intentions.”

Captain Enervy slowly strolled around the room, addressing everyone except the short haired woman. “I strongly suggest to all of you that you stay here with us in comfort and safety. I’m sure that, at some point, some of you may have to perform acts which you might find distasteful or immoral, but I assure you! There will be no rough stuff and you will be treated with respect as brides of the regiment. And I implore you…” Here he paused for effect, “I implore you to consider the heinous alternative.” The room fell silent as the women’s troubled, overloaded minds contemplated this difficult choice. The defiant woman continued to stand but she didn’t shatter the break. Finally, after about half a minute, Captain Enervy seemed to be speaking for her.

“Of course, if anyone feels that they have a better chance out there, with those shuffling ghouls, then they are free to go. Private Gliet!” He called out to a man at the back of the room. Kathryn hadn’t noticed the man before and she wondered how long he’d been standing there. She even supposed that it was possible that he’d been there for the duration of Enervy’s announcement, but she didn’t think so. He was a tall soldier: perhaps six foot two or three, in marvelous physical condition. Although his features seemed tainted by a trace of mental retardation; almost as if he were a mongoloid.

“Show this nice young lady the way out.” Captain Enervy said as Kathryn shivered and trepidation traveled up her delicate spine. Private Gleit nodded and gestured towards the standing woman like a waiter ready to show someone to their table. He held his arm out towards the second door; the one located on the opposite side of the room from which they had entered. The woman took a few timid steps, perhaps starting to sense what Kathryn already knew: that this seemingly carefree release from the regiment was too good to be true. And so it was.

As the woman approached the threshold, Private Gliet simultaneously accosted her while swinging open the door. The sunshine which flooded in was even brighter than the room’s white lights. There was no floor or stairway beyond the frame: just the thin air floating invisible over a twenty five foot drop. Before the short haired women even had a chance to scream Private Gliet hurled her out head first. When she did scream, it sounded as if her voice were floating up and out from an elevator shaft. At the bottom of her drop were the dead; hundreds of them crawling and falling over each other like salamanders in the mud. They did not even have the sense to catch her or break her fall. So when her vivacious frame met with the hard, packed down sand something could be heard snapping: perhaps an arm or a leg. They converged upon her quickly however; pulling her apart like lions raking at a bison carcass. Mercifully the screams didn’t last long as they soon pulled out her voice box. Her clothes quickly disappeared along with her skin. The carnage ended as someone who had once been someone ate her beautiful face.

Back up in the room panic ensued. Private Gliet, his mission accomplished, stood at attention with his back to the wall. The women roared and screamed and cried and several of them stood up on their chairs. They stomped their feet on the seats like cartoon wives in white aprons afraid of a kitchen mouse; as if trying to put as much distance between themselves and the dead pit as possible. Kathryn did not get up, but she buried her face in her hands and tears sizzled out from in between her fingers. Captain Enervy stood upright with his hands still clasped behind the back. The mad violence which always seemed to be spinning in his eyes momentarily quelled.

“Now!” He shouted spiritedly, “if there are no more conscientious objectors, I suggest that you all get some sleep.” He paused here to salute the moaning women. “Report for makeovers at 0900.”

3.

The salty smell of the nearby sea tickled their nostrils and billowy strips of evaporating clouds dissolved in front of the unbridled sun. The group rode on the back of a flatbed wagon; much like a hayride only devoid of any leisure or fun. They were being pulled along by a tractor which was driven by a heavy set, thick legged matron who was also wearing the now familiar uniform of the regiment. Only this version came with a skirt instead of pants. She had no holster for a gun, but a long truncheon hung from a loop on her accessory belt. The words: PENIS ENVY had been carved neatly down its shaft.

All of the women had gotten a chance to shower and they were furnished with toothbrushes, deodorants and other sundries. Not having a fresh change of duds however, they had had to put their soiled clothes back on. They did not see any soldiers along this path save for the matron and talk among the passengers soon turned to crude escape plots.

“I wouldn’t,” said Kathryn. Then she pointed to a distant tree line. Barely visible in the rising haze was a tall chain link fence with looping scribbles of razor wire and spikes at its highest point. As they got a little closer to that spot and rounded a bend, the dead could be seen clinging to its tiny octagons in between crawls of climbing vines; like grotesque butterflies on a screen door.

“We’re still inside the compound,” she whispered, “they must have gunners perched atop the perimeter: not so much to keep us in as to keep the dead out, but I’m sure they’d shoot anything that moved.” As if on cue a distant spit of machine gun fire crackled in the morning air and the peering dead peeled off of the fence. It was 8:45 AM.

Finally, the tractor ground to a halt in front of what had been a department store. Mannequins stood naked in front of the shattered out display windows and fallen clothes littered the aisles. Some of the panels were missing from the ceiling and sunlight made its way through the voids, taking over the job of the snuffed electricity. Otherwise, it looked basically alright. The heavy set woman who had been driving hopped down from the tractor seat.

“My name is Sergeant Marge,” she shouted, “what I need for your ladies to do is go inside there and pick yourself out some clothes. If I were you I would select something short, bright and sexy. You will also find a large assortment of cosmetics inside. I suggest that you paint those pretty faces up bright and rosy; the more the soldiers like you the faster they’ll be finished with you and you can go on back to your barracks. Do not use any hairspray as the men don’t like the way it feels and DO NOT select any outfits with pants: DRESSES only! Don’t worry about the living dead as this sector has long been cleared and you are behind friendly lines.”

Here one of the women, a thirty something brunette with thick, preened eyebrows, scoffed and whispered to her friend: “Yeah, real friendly.” This prompted Sergeant Marge to stop her instructional speech and walk through the crowd where she met the brunette. She put her chin one centimeter from the woman’s cheek and spat at the side of her face, “DO NOT interrupt me!” The woman froze and stood at attention. The big woman turned as if to walk away, before quickly spinning around, drawing her club and bringing it around in a three quarter circle onto the back of the woman’s leg. The brunette hit the street and cried out in agony as she tried to massage life back into her throbbing calve. Satisfied, the sergeant continued.

“So,” she picked up her lost thought. “You will be safe at all times. You’re all welcome to try and escape, although I can assure you that it is impossible and even if you did manage to breach our security you would still be without food, water or shelter. Not to mention that you would be at the mercy of the living dead, who, as we all know, are not capable of mercy.” She paused here, and looked around, waiting for her words to sink in. “While, on the other hand, if you’re smart and go along with our curriculum: you will be well fed, comfortable and in no danger. Hell,” before finishing this sentence, she even had to scoff at herself, “you might even find that, after a while, you’re startin’ to enjoy it.” The women said nothing, although the way most of them shuffled in place clearly indicated that they had their doubts. “Alright! I need you little whores to make yourselves beautiful. I’ll expect to see you back here and lookin’ like super models at eleven hundred.”

4.

When the sun was at its pinnacle, Sergeant Marge led Kathryn and the others down towards the beach on foot. It was a little treacherous walking on the sands since some girls had selected high heels or pumps. As they approached a sentry post which led onto the dunes two guards looked Kathryn and the others over lustfully. A wolf whistle was heard as one of the men feigned masturbation and leered like a chimp. Some of the girls had a little trouble climbing a high sand cliff in their prissy shoes. But the ground leveled off at the top and they all looked out over the omniscient ocean. A chubby cloud suddenly blocked off the sun’s rays and the waves whipped a dark blue like an endless dream of troubling shadows.

The soft and salty squalls teased the teased hair of the forced prostitutes as they were led towards several tents. The structures were small and circular, lavishly draped in velvet like a knight’s quarters. Triangular flags, tugged straight out by the ample winds, flapped atop each bungalow. As they approached the initial doorway, the first woman was ordered inside. She put up no opposition and disappeared behind the curtain. It did not take much imagination on the part of the group to know what was going to happen to her next, and even if it would have, they would soon be experiencing similar treatment themselves and would have no need to vex their imaginations. After three more stops it was soon Kathryn’s turn and she was ushered into one of the tents.

A black man sat at the edge of a wide cot; wearing only an army green t-shirt, dog tags and loose fitting boxing shorts. He was slowly breathing through a cigarette and made no more movement then a waiting spider. There was no floor save for the sand of the beach as Kathryn demurely stepped inside. There was a bottle of Crown Royal Whiskey sitting on a nearby backpack and two collapsible director’s chairs across from and facing the cot. At last he moved a little.

“Sit down,” he said, “you want a drink?”

Kathryn thought about this for a beat, decided that she’d never wanted anything more, and shook her head yes. Although the man had yet to look at her, he somehow caught her nod and poured her a sip in a plain plastic glass. She sat down across from him in one of the chairs. “Stuff’ll be gone pretty soon,” he said, “be a real shame to never drink Crown Royal again. Who knows what kinda shit we be resortin’ to drinkin’ after that; mother fuckers be goin blind and shit.” Kathryn didn’t answer or react in any way. After a few seconds, she did take a sip of the hard brown liquid. When she commenced coughing the man spoke again: “Yeah, I know you scared, but you got to ask yourself: who worse? ME!? Or them hordes out there? Any sane individual know the answer. If there are any sane people left that is. Hell, I ain’t that scary.”

In the pause, the man poured himself another. “What’s your name?” He asked.

“Kathryn,” she answered blandly.

“Hmmm, how you feelin’ Kathryn?”

It was an odd question, and after mulling it over for a couple of seconds, Kathryn just felt compelled to answer honestly. “I feel a little under it,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he half laughed, “no wonder, me too.”

He got up and walked over to a basin of water; bending over to splash some onto his tough and leathery features. As he toweled off he said: “Well, we best be gettin’ on with it. Climb up on that cot over there.”

Without much vigor, yet resolved to her fate, Kathryn walked over and laid down on her back. She didn’t even have a chance to settle in before the man was on her; his service revolver pressed up against her temple and his breath on her cheek. She gasped in shock.

“What you think huh?” he raved, “you think I’m like these animals roun’ here HUH! You think I force myself on some poor girl ain’t willin’ HUH!” Kathryn’s only defense from this offbeat attack was to close her eyes tight, forcing a hot tear to leak out and streak across her cheek. “What I want with you white bread? Me I gots… I mean I had… a wife and baby a my own. I know they out there somewhere,” He waved his arm in a gesture which represented everywhere. “I know they…” He stopped talking and jumped up suddenly. Kathryn rose up to a sitting position as he knelt down in the corner of the hut and began to weep roughly. When he had quieted some, she got up from the cot and walked over to where he was doubled over. Putting her petite hand in between his muscular shoulder blades she softly spoke.

“It’s okay,” she said, “We have all lost someone that we loved.”

After a couple of more minutes of sobbing, he slowly picked himself up and walked back over to sit on the cot. Kathryn stayed where she was, her knees in the sand. He swallowed the final gulp of whisky and began speaking on a new subject:

“Enervy is a monster,” he said, “not just a close minded grunt, but a dangerous killer. When he picks you, and sooner or later he will ’cause he always picks the pretty ones, you as good as dead.” Kathryn could only stare at him. “He like to make porno and snuff films; force chicks to fuck the dead, evil shit like that. I only wish that there was somethin’ that I could do for ya.”

Kathryn shrugged and smiled faintly. “Wait a minute,” he said suddenly as if a thought had just occurred to him, “wait a minute.” He leaned over and reached into his backpack; retrieving a handsome military issue buck knife complete inside a camouflage sheath. He got up quickly and offered it to Kathryn. “Hide this, don’t show it to that dyke Marge, don’t show it to any of the bitches in your barracks, don’t show it to no one. When Enervy picks you, wait until you get him by himself. When he turn around you bury this spike in his black heart ya hear me? It’s your only chance.”

Kathryn looked at the knife. It was long and intimidating, but she supposed that she could hide it inside her bottoms. She smiled gratefully and took the bracketed blade. “Thank you,” she said.

“Yeah alright,” He sauntered back over and reclined onto the cot. His relaxed posture a sharp contrast to the madness he had demonstrated throughout their rendezvous. “By the way Kathryn, my name is Granderson. Pleased to meet ya.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“When that dyke Marge comes back you tell her everything was cool; you had a good time.”

5.

Several days passed inside the stainless steel barracks which may have been more accurately described as a cell. Kathryn didn’t do much of anything during this interlude aside from lying forlornly in her bunk and praying that she wouldn’t be selected for a second and surely more intimate date. Now and then the dull, mirrored door would roll open and Sergeant Marge would call out the name of the next unfortunate escort.

Kathryn didn’t make many friends throughout this period, nor did she want to. Sporadic spurts of conversation floated past her ears intermittently, but the topics were limited to such small talk as the good condition of the food, the affable temperature of the cell and the crisp and clean sheets. No one seemed eager to touch upon the subject of their forced sexual encounters or the horrific encounters they’d had with the dead which had led to their imprisonment here. Kathryn didn’t much want to talk either, even though she’d been fortunate enough to avoid being blackmailed into intercourse; at least so far.

She hid the buck knife underneath her mattress since that was the only place to hide anything. At times when she felt the most dread, she would finger the blade which Granderson had loaned her, praying that she would have the courage to use it when the crucial moment came. Then she closed her eyes and drifted into a rash phantasm:

She was trapped inside a burning mobile home which had been surrounded by the dead. She could see the tops of their squash colored heads moving past the small, weak, roll out windows. She fled into the hallway bathroom and closed herself off inside a cramped closet. But the moaning marauders were relentless. They shredded their hands and forearms, even bashing their soft heads against the aluminum siding until she could sense that the panels were starting to give. Then they were walking inside the blaze; becoming the fire, awash in flames, willing to endure any Hellish barrage to get at her. Until they wrapped their cold burning arms around her and the last sound she would ever hear were chained up dogs howling in the distance. She awoke to Sergeant Marge calling out her name, in the same gruff pitch as the pit bulls from her nightmare.

She rolled over on her side before rising and slid the knife down inside her pink underwear.

Once outside she discovered that it hadn’t been night after all as the hot sun blushed in an endlessly clear sky. There was no clock or fixed schedule inside the barracks, making it impossible to tell the time of day. They did not return to the tents, but rather walked for a short stretch along the shore until they came to a lavish beach house. Its picturesque balustrade affording any onlooker a scenic view of the tumultuous pacific.

As Kathryn climbed the wooden stairs which led up from the beach, she recognized Captain Enervy sitting leisurely on a deck chair. His tan and muscular body covered only by a pair of oak green army issue swimming trunks. “Hello,” he said with surprising friendliness, and then as he looked past Kathryn, “that will be all Marge.”

The Sergeant saluted and said, “I’ll be at the bottom of the stairs if you need me Captain,” with that she turned and exited. Enervy studied Kathryn for several seconds before sipping an icy drink in a tall glass. His gaze did not seem as disquieting in this relaxing setting although he did not ask her to sit down or offer her a beverage. Finally he said, “Do you know why you’ve been brought here?”

Kathryn’s mouth turned up at the corners, “for sex,” she said bluntly.

Enervy chuckled petulantly, “because there are some things going on here at the base that I think you should know about.”

“Why tell me about them?”

Enervy got up then and began to pace. This reminded Kathryn of the military manner which he had displayed in the classroom and of his potential for being gravely dangerous.

“Because I like you. I’ve liked you from the first time that I saw you.”

“That’s nice,” Kathryn said sarcastically. He seemed to get a little peeved at this.

“You don’t understand, there are dangers everywhere. My offer to you could save your life.”

“Offer?”

“You could become an exclusive. An officer’s mate if you will. A position which would give you a chance to get out of the barracks; living in an officer’s quarters with only one man. In a monogamous relationship. Yet before I can offer up these luxuries, I need to have a sense of your attitude towards this promotion. Not everyone gets a chance to avoid the camp’s pitfalls.”

“You mean like the pit that women fell into when you ordered her murdered.”

Enervy grimaced again, he seemed to be getting annoyed at the way that she kept shooting him down.

“That was very unfortunate,” he said, “but she was trying to instigate a riot. We cannot have anybody stirring up controversy or inciting rebellion. DISCIPLINE!” He shouted with such force that Kathryn was taken aback as he began raving, “We must have order here or else every women in that room, including you, would have had to die. Every woman in that room would have to be sacrificed to preserve order and… wouldn’t that be a shame to waste all that beauty?” Here he smiled slyly and with a wave of his hand finished, “one bad apple, you see.” He sat back down and took a sip of the drink. His anger having passed as quickly as it came about. This gave Kathryn the courage to say:

“So you’re a good guy, is that it?”

He hatched a peevish grin, “There are no good guys or bad guys, only survivors.” He got up from the chair and stepped towards her. “It’s a difficult call, I understand. But I’m afraid that it’s one you’ll have to make rather quickly.” He was standing right in front of her now and she tried not to step back from him or seem intimidated. “I’m afraid that humanity no longer has any time for courting. And I personally have many responsibilities here at the base, so I won’t be able to wine and dine you.” He took her firmly by the shoulders and kissed her softly on the mouth. Her heart began to beat as if she were searching for a bomb in a maze of industrial pipes. She could feel the knife pressing against her abdomen as his hands traced down the small of her back and squeezed her buttocks. She knew that the time for action was now; it would only be a few seconds before he pressed against her and discovered the knife. But she was frozen by fear and stress. She leaned back, almost feinted and then was righted by his strong arm. When she went limp however her muscles contracted and the knife slipped and dislodged from her underwear. It hit the wooden deck with an audible thud. It then bounced under the railing and onto the sands below.

“What was that?” He shouted, “You bitch you… who sent you here to kill me?”

Kathryn couldn’t answer, the scene was too much for her nerves and she was going in and out of consciousness. He let her go and she collapsed onto the deck. Enervy abandoned her felled frame and walked over to the railing.

“Sergeant!” He shouted. Marge walked out from under the deck into view and looked up at them. “Fetch me that weapon.” She looked at where he was pointing and walked towards the knife. Enervy stormed back over and lifted Kathryn’s dizzy head off the wood planks. “Now bitch,” he began, “you’re going to tell me what you’re doing here or I’m going to cut your fucking eyes out!”

Marge stomped up the stairs then. “Hold her down Captain,” she said, “I’m going to teach this little hussy a lesson.”

He did so. “Don’t kill her Sergeant,” he said, “I need to find out some information from her.”

“Oh don’t worry Captain, don’t worry about anything.”

What happened next flabbergasted Kathryn to the point where she didn’t know if it was real or imagined: Sergeant Marge stepped around Captain Enervy and, in one swift motion, plunged the buck knife into his unprotected eye. He wavered, wavered and a stream of yellow liquid shot out from his retina. Sergeant Marge quickly reached over and extracted the knife before plunging it back in again as if she were hacking through a watermelon. This time the Captain fell; the blade still protruding from his eye; its handle covered by a wash of blood and other internal fluids which dripped down onto the deck and Kathryn’s fair forehead. She could feel his heavy body pinning her down and before her mind revolved into blackness, she heard Sergeant Marge say:

“Get up murderer, you’re going to have to answer for killing the captain.”

6.

When Kathryn awoke she was being marched down the beach. Sergeant Marge had her arm twisted behind her back; tangled in with the club like a splint.

“March whore! March whore!” She kept shouting and finally Kathryn’s feet began to walk for themselves, even though she had lost her shoes at some point and the grains of sand felt like miniscule shards of glass. They soon abandoned the beach however and Kathryn’s brown toes burned on the hot asphalt. Before long they came to a block building with the anagram Y CA hanging from the second story bricks. The second letter in the abbreviation was obviously missing with two bare, rusted prongs sticking out between the Y and the C. As Kathryn was being marched through a locker room she began to hear the moans. Like the cries of the prisoners of Dante’s Inferno themselves. She tried to run but Marge tightened the splint. “Don’t even think about it bitch.”

They came to the room which was the source of the ungodly noises. There had once been an Olympic pool at its center but the water had long been drained. Now the dead were crawling around on the hard floor; trying to climb out; sliding back down the walls and falling over each other; writhing like fat snakes. Marge marched Kathryn right to the edge of the pool. The dead made no reaction aside from continuing to try to escape. Kathryn braced her self for the cruelest of deaths but before she could be thrown in, she heard the sound of applause or rather; one man clapping.

Sergeant Marge whirled around as Granderson walked out of the shadows laughing heartily.

“Captain Granderson,” she said, “this woman murdered Captain Enervy and then she tried to attack me. I was taking her to the pool.” Kathryn stared at Granderson, desperation in her eyes. He shot her a reaffirming look that gave her hope.

“How was he killed?” He asked Marge.

“With this sir, she must have stolen it from one of the officers.”

Granderson nodded and retrieved his own gore splattered knife from the Sergeant. “Yes,” he said.

“Captain Granderson, this may be an inopportune time to bring this up. But you’ll be needing a replacement for Captain Enervy. I’d like to respectfully submit my name for serious consideration.”

“Don’t worry Sergeant Marge,” he answered, “you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

“I’m glad to hear that sir, I have done my best for the regiment.”

“Mmm hmm, mmm hmm,” Granderson was staring at the knife and seemed to be thinking about something else.

“What about this wretched underhanded bitch sir? Do you want me to toss her into the pit?”

Kathryn stiffened in terror.

“Well,” he said while hatching a smile, “why don’t you let me worry about her?”

Marge looked around slightly confused and then, perhaps not wanting to defy the Captain, she released Kathryn from the wrestle hold.

“Will there be anything else captain?”

“I don’t think so,” he said before quickly pulling out his service revolver, “at ease Sergeant.” He pointed the gun and shot the thick bodied soldier right between the eyes. The back of her head exploded before she blinked once in shock and fell onto the tiles like a folded up lawn chair. Kathryn stepped back agape; this was the third time in less than a week that she’d watched someone executed at point blank range before her very eyes and the impact which the shock had upon her did not lesson with repetition. Granderson casually strolled up to them and nudged her body over the edge of the pool with his boot. She hit the pond of dead and bounced around like a dingy in a hurricane; before her body went under their solid surface and disappeared in a violent whirlpool of gore. He then looked at Kathryn and smiled wide.

“Ah, thank you, thank you so very much Kathryn for doing what I could not: I’ve wanted Enervy out of the way for some time now. But the sycophants within his faction never would have stood for it. I would have been tried for it and well… the trials around here usually end the same.” He gestured towards the pool. “But this: this senseless self defense at the hands of a whore. Why it’s practically perfect and I even get rid of that dyke Marge to boot. Too ambitious that one. Now I’ll follow you, through those doors.” He said before sticking the revolver in between her two shoulder blades. As she’d done so many times in the last few days, Kathryn began to march. He continued: “And with Enervy out of the picture my faction will take over the entire compound with me as commander in chief. Tantamount to a king nowadays.” Kathryn noticed for the first time that the colloquial street lingo he’d been using back in the tent was gone and he was now talking with the brio of a college professor. They crossed through a tiled opening which had no door and into a shower room. “Now as a reward for so bravely assassinating my biggest political rival I’m prepared to make you a star.” Kathryn rounded another corner and standing in front of a row of shower stalls she saw a video camcorder perched atop a tripod.

“A porn star maybe, but a star none the less.” Kathryn could hear an awful gurgling sound coming from one of the stalls which was obscured by a curtain, like a dog which had been run over by a milk truck whimpering and wounded on the road. She slowed down as she approached the source but Granderson urged her on with the gun. “I’d like to introduce you to someone.” He quipped. Grabbing her mane tightly so that she could not run. Granderson pulled back the shower curtain revealing a monstrous spectacle.

There was a purple faced dead man standing in the shower stall. He was held in place by an intricate web of barbed wires which made deep laceration in his beige skin. There was no blood flowing from these fresh cuts however and his upper lip had been either been lopped off or had disintegrated from decay. There was no teeth in his mouth and both of his arms had been surgically amputated at the forearm. He looked up at them with a savage longing in his bright teal eyes.

” This is Corporal John,” Granderson said, “he may be dead, but he does have one attribute that not every zombie has;” here Granderson paused and pulled a toga off of the hideous creature’s midsection. “You see old John here still has the fire down below.” Kathryn tried to bolt, but this only tightened the grip that Granderson had on her long hair. He continued as if she had not even tried to escape: “That’s right: John here, long lost buddy of ours, will respond to sexual stimulation.” Kathryn struggled and cried, but the Captain was much too strong for her. “So what I want from my actress is very simple Kathryn,” he reached up over his head and switched on a boom box which had been sitting atop the block divider wall. The familiar riffs of the Rolling Stones ‘Start Me Up’ strummed out. “You just listen to old Mick Jagger here, where ever he may be. Because he’s got some good advice for you and we’re goanna find out if your hot enough:” He switched on the camcorder. “We’re gonna see if you can make a dead man cum.”

7.

Private First Class John Wilkes Scooter Benson was glad that he’d joined the army. God knows where the hell he would have ended up if he’d went to college with his pencil necked high school buddies; probably roaming the streets like some possessed puppet, looking for some poor bastard’s entrails to munch on. Whew, he shivered. As it were he was situated inside a safe compound. He slept in a firm but comfortable bed inside a five star barracks. Chowed down on a hot breakfast, before reporting to his cushy duty. And while there were still poor bastards out there somewhere, scavenging for their very lives, he pulled on clean, laundered and starched socks every morning. Hell, next week it was going to be his company’s turn with the women. They… His thoughts were interrupted by a flash of motion on the far right of his peripheral and a quarter of a second later he emptied a clip into a walking corpse who had once been a very attractive woman in a yellow sun dress. Not long after the big slender bullets ripped her apart his two way crackled out a garbled spiel.

“What’s goin’ on over there tower sixteen? Over.”

Scooter picked up the two way. “What the hell da you think’s goin’ on? I got a walker two blocks northwest and I just took her head off. Over.”

There was a brief pause and then the radio barked again, “10-4. Over.”

Scooter had seen them riding by on the back of the flat wagon. Jesus they had looked good; some of those dresses didn’t cover much more than a napkin would have. They must have sent a rescue squad over to the Playboy Mansion to come up with those bitches. One more work week and he would get to sample the goods: if you could even call this work that is. Sitting in an armored tower shooting at these slow, stupid, mothers like they were clay ducks. He’d played video games which were ten times harder. Hell, some of the guys were even bringing twelve packs up into the towers with them. May as well drink as many cold ones as possible before the supply was gone forever. Sniper command knew about it but they didn’t give a shit. Hell some of the guys aim was even a little sharper with a couple beers in em, took the edge off. And the… His thoughts were boggled again by a stir of dust a great distance away; out past the old fish hatchery, which was barely visible on the farthest rim of the firmament. It looked like a dust storm kicking up or fog maybe.

“What the hell,” scooter muttered and picked up his binoculars. But he wasn’t really prepared for the sight he beheld once he lifted the field glasses to his eyes: THE DEAD! Hundreds of them, thousands of them, millions of them marching across the exposed prairies down past the old dilapidated foundries towards the outskirts of the town. Like maggots on the carcass of a deceased world; shaking and squirming and deathly white. Ready to attach themselves to any living or dying population. Scooter lowered the field glasses.

“Holy fucking shit!” he said.

8.

In her bare feet Kathryn scrambled across a high asphalt parking ramp. She could not see the beach, but she could hear the roar of the ocean splashing up against the concrete barriers and continuing on up underneath the beams which held the structure she was standing on in place. The drum like pop of automatic gunfire came from every direction; challenged in pitch only by the locust like drone of the moaning dead.

Back inside the Y CA from where she had just fled, Kathryn had stood up straight in front of Captain Granderson and told him to shoot her in the chest rather than force her to copulate with the grotesquely disfigured and demonized Corporal John. The officer looked out from behind the camcorder and grinned like a hyena, but just as he was preparing a fresh wisecrack, an invisible force slammed into his shoulder. He screamed in agony as a small geyser of blood leaped from the new wound in a vivid splash. Before he could even collect himself a second projectile struck him in the opposite shoulder, causing him to fold down onto his knees. Kathryn took a step forward towards the front of the stall as the shooter came into view; With his one eye twisted into a cruel taffy like laceration, which resembled a mass of egg yokes mixed with ketchup and tarter sauce, Captain Enervy approached them. Thick spiraled designs of dried blood on his bare chest. His good eye shining as blue as a whirlpool whipped by a cyclone; relishing the prospect of retribution and vengeance.

“Hello Granderson,” he said, “didn’t think you were going to get rid of a soldier of my caliber that easily did you?” Granderson didn’t answer but only writhed in agony on the hard shower floor. a huge circumference of gore widening around him. “You think I don’t know the people who want me out of the way around here? Your coup is through asshole and another bullet’s too good for you. Now get up and march to the pit.” Kathryn would have backed into the stall and hid, but with Corporal John zoned into the booth she had little choice but to stand her ground. Finally Enervy noticed her and turned towards her.

“Ahh, the little cunt.” he said, “still think you’re an assassin? I ought to throw you in the pits.” Kathryn said nothing, but could only stand dumbfounded by the awful sight of the maimed soldier. “Nah,” he said after a few seconds. “I think I’ll just blow your fucking head off.” But even as he pointed the gun at her to carry out this threat, Granderson sprang up from the floor. The two men locked onto each other as the gun went off again. The bullet ricocheted throughout the block partitions before hitting Corporal John in the head. His brain exploded like a stink bomb full of thick black ink and his horrid body collapsed only to be held up by the web of wires. This sight drove Kathryn into a near frenzy of fear and she shot around the two struggling men to escape down the hallway. She heard several more gunshots as she exited the building but would never know who shot whom.

Now she was crossing over from the asphalt and back onto the beach; grains of sand digging into the balls of her red feet like metal shavings. Wasps sang around her and she slapped at her head dizzily, before realizing with a rising sense of terror that it was gunfire in the air which was making the buzzing noise; gunfire which was narrowly missing her pretty head. She dropped onto her stomach to avoid the bullets, but a lump in the sand brushed up against her: It was a severed head with a hole the size of a grapefruit underneath its blood soaked hair line. She screamed and rose again. Running down the beach in an aimless panic.

She ran for a great while without reason or direction, zigzagging through a field of the living dead. But they were slow and cadaverous and she managed to avoid most of them easily. Periodically, some of them exploded and were hurled fifteen feet into the air; their frail bodies cracking apart like wooden figures on a firing range. Although Kathryn, in her distress, did not even realize that she was running through a mind field.

Ultimately, she came along to a line of soldiers. Slowly retreating as a massive front of the dead converged upon them. They fired their impressive weapons continuously; the large pellets seeming to evaporate in the cold flesh of the creatures like snow melting onto a hillside; only the occasional shot finding its target and obliterating an evil brain. They also coated the creatures with the incinerating spittle from a squadron of flame throwers. But, just as in the dream which Kathryn was now recalling in a deja vu, the wall of flames had a minor effect.

After Kathryn ran around and then past the battle, the soldiers began to be overcome. The sheer numbers of their maggot ridden opponents defeating their ample firepower. And the dead covered them over like the tide washing out the sands; their screams piercing the air like a bite pinching through flesh.

She continued on at a full sprint; darting in a line concurrent with the fence; the dead clinging to the links like fancy colorful insects pinned to a cloth; an endless mass of their decaying brethren swelling against the ramparts behind them. Hundreds of thousands of white ghouls as far as the eye could encompass. Kathryn fell for the second time, filling her eyes up with the coarse sand. For a few seconds she could only crawl slowly before she sensed a great violence around her and rose to run down the beach blindly. She bounced off of mysterious forms now and then but had no way of knowing whether or not it was one of the soldiers or one of the dead. After a few frightful seconds of this she could feel the warm ankle deep waters of the Pacific sloshing through her toes. She dropped to her knees and frantically washed the sand out of her eyes. When she could open them again, she saw the flags of the tents; the knight’s quarters where she had first encountered Granderson and the girls in her group had first encountered the lust of the regiment. The fabric was being ripped apart by the dead; who were perhaps hoping to find even more quarry inside the makeshift huts.

Instinctively, she began slowly backing into the waves until the warm waters were at her waist. Thankfully, the flesh eaters did not seem to be following her into the depths. Most of the soldiers gamely fought on against long odds rather than flee into the ocean. Perhaps the instincts instilled in them during their training spurred them on to make a stand or maybe they just did not want to get their precious guns wet. Now the water was at Kathryn’s neck as the fence collapsed in many sections under the great push of the lifeless yet living throng. The creatures crawled across the hot sands as if blind and hungry like a million infant crabs searching for a slimy meal in the wet dirt. The death shouts of the regiment were somehow louder and more painful than the steady moan of the cold crowd; as if the souls of the soldiers were suffering more misery than even the tortured, solid ghosts who confronted them. But even if they could defeat the dead in terms of agony, they could not defeat them in battle. The last pocket of the regiment was cornered and torn apart like strips of red rags. Kathryn sighed, nearly cried, turned from the horrid scene and began to swim.

END.

The old woman didn’t answer. She was carrying a lit wicket inside an archaic, silver, antique candle holder and the hot wax was dripping down onto her wrists. There was no need for this of course as the hallway was already ablaze with light courtesy of the best bulbs which G.E. had to offer. Plus the cold afternoon sun, which was brightened by the high piles of leftover snow outside, shone fearlessly through every available pane.

She was wearing a long, red, flannel granny gown with green trim and printed patterns of silver bells tied together with mistletoe. Her endless white hair, which was generally piled up in a bun, hung ragged and scraggly all the way down past the backs of her knees.

“C’mon. Let’s get you back into bed.”

After he’d pulled the blankets up to her chin, he noticed large beads of sweat dotted up on her gray and wrinkled forehead.

“Jesus, Mother you’re sweating… and it’s freezing in here.”

He turned on the electric space heater and scooted it a little closer to the bed.

“Seymour!” She barked suddenly, causing her grown son to jump. She rarely spoke at all anymore, as her dementia was far advanced, so the sound of her voice startled him.

“Jesus, Mother?!”

“Seymour! There was a man in the backyard.”

“No now there wasn’t, Mother. It’s ten degrees outside.”

“Yes there was!” She snapped. “A man came under the fence while I was tending to my garden; a wild man.”

“Mother, don’t tell me you went out to that garden. Why there’s a foot a snow coverin’ those plants over. No wonder you’ve gone and gotten yourself a fever. It isn’t fit for man nor beast out there.”

The old woman didn’t say anything else and for a moment he thought that the garrulous spell had passed, so he said: “Why don’t you get some sleep, Mother? I don’t think anyone’s going to bother you.”

But instead of regressing back into her usual catatonic state, the old woman exploded: “Don’t you patronize me boy! I was fightin’ in these factories when you were shittin’ figgie pudding!”

“Mother?”

“Now I SAID that there was a man out there, in the backyard. A man who slithered underneath the fence and all that red snow. A man with eyes like blue fire. And if you don’t believe me see for yourself: he bit me!”

She pushed the blankets off and clawed back the long sleeve of her granny gown revealing a rancid and inflamed bite mark.

“Hell’s bells Mother, how in the world did you get that?”

But the old woman was done talking. Her body straightened out on the bed as stiff as an ironing board and her mind refracted into the voiceless nostalgia of lost and darkened decades.

Seymour shook his head and went into the bathroom to open the medicine cabinet. By the time he’d fetched the bandages and Mercurachrome he could already hear the old woman snoring softly. He though that it must have stung like hell once he applied the disinfectant, but the old woman made no reaction.

“Jesus, Mother,’ he said to himself more than her. “we may have to take you to see Dr. Burke tomorrow.” After he’d finished bandaging her up he turned off the light and walked out of the bedroom scratching his head. How in the world had she received such a nasty looking bite? He checked all the doors and windows but they were either bolt locked or screwed down tight. There was no sign anywhere that anyone had broken in, and even if someone had: why in the world would they want to bite an eighty nine year old woman?

He plopped down on the couch and began watching a hockey game on the large color television. He didn’t know what the score was or who was even playing; content to just watch the players skate around. Could she have really been out in the backyard? Perhaps she’d been attacked by a dog?

Concerned, he got up and began walking towards his mother’s room. If she’d been out in the snow, maybe the bottom of her nightgown would still be damp?” He opened the door just a tiny crack and listened carefully. But he could no longer hear the old woman’s rasping breathes. He switched the light back on.

“Mother?”

No reply.

The old woman was as pale as vanilla and lying like a corpse in a casket. He tried to shake her awake but she didn’t move a wrinkle.

“Mother! Mother!”

He fumbled through the top drawer of the vanity until he came up with the old woman’s ancient, gold plated, compact mirror. He held it under her nose for several seconds but no foggy breath clouded its silvery surface.

“Oh no, OH NO!” He said as he grabbed the phone on the night stand and began dialing. “Alice it’s Mother. I don’t think she’s breathing.” An inaudible squawk lisped out from the other end of the line. “No Alice I don’t think she is. You’d better get over here. Yes I’m calling the ambulance now. Hold on let me check.” But as he took up the old woman’s wrist to feel for a pulse, as Alice had no doubt instructed, Seymour’s dead mother leapt to life and sank what was left of her halitosis inflicted teeth into his forearm. He screamed more with surprise than with terror and dropped the phone onto the rug. With the damage done, the old woman’s frail body dropped back onto the bed. Where she writhed into a couple of convulsions and then seemed to lose consciousness. Seymour jumped back and inspected the fresh bite. Blood was oozing up into the teeth marks like swamp water filling up muddy footprints.

“Dear Lord, Dear Lord,” he kept repeating.

“Seymour, Seymour,” the receiver called out from the carpet. After a few seconds of sucking on his wound like a mother cat he picked it back up.

“It’s okay Alice, I thought that she wasn’t breathing for a minute, but now she’s up. You’d better be gettin’ over here pretty soon anyway, I’ve got to be gettin’ down to the mall.” After he’d hung up, Seymour covered the old woman over with a blanket. She had quieted back down even though her eyes were open and blazing like the torches of a lynch mob. Once he was out in the kitchen, he let the tap water run over the wound and down into the sink. Once the blood had been rinsed from the teeth marks, the indentations were a blue color and the viscous cuts still smarted even under the flow of the faucet.

He thought that he heard a new noise coming from the bedroom. But when he crept back over to open the door slightly, all was silent. He looked at the clock and thought that Alice should be arriving pretty soon.

Once he was in front of the mirror he tugged on his white beard. It looked so authentic that there was no longer any need for the frost white fake one he had donned in previous years. There probably wasn’t any need for the foam belly anymore either but he pulled it from the closet and strapped it on anyway. A furry red jacket with white trim hung from a solitary plastic hanger. It was the same one he put his arms and shoulder blades into every year from Thanksgiving all the way up until Christmas Eve; the familiar and famous garb of Saint Nicholas.

#

“You look a little under the weather Seymour,” Stan said, “or at least equal with it.” He was referring to the blizzard which had quickly converged upon the mountain town and was now raging on outside.

“Ah, it’s just Mother again.”

Stan took a sip of scalding black coffee and said, “ya know Seymour, there ain’t no shame in putting a dying person in a…”

“…nursing home I know,” Seymour finished the sentence for him.”I can’t do it Stan. Not after the way she cared for dad all those years.”

“Well, it’s none of my business but…” Before Stan could finish, the eye of the walkie talkie which was attached to his belt winked yellow and then red before spitting out a line of garbled static. After a couple of seconds the white noise translated to words: “Stan 109, Stan 109.”

Stan held the speaker up to his mouth, “you got me.”

“Stan, you better get down here. I think we got a shoplifter at Spencer’s.”

He sighed before pressing the talk button, “be right there.” He got up from the lunch room table he’d been leaning his buttocks against. “Gotta go big boy.”

Seymour felt so weak and feverish that all he could do was nod.

“Look, don’t think about any of it tonight,” Stan offered as parting advice, “just have a good time makin’ the kids happy.”

But as Seymour walked past the store fronts out in the mall, his limbs felt stiff and their joints aflame. Breathing was difficult as if the oxygen were igniting a liquid fire inside his chest. He doubled over in discomfort and pawed the bite which was now hidden underneath his red and white sleeve. It throbbed with each beat of his heart and when he pulled the cloth back to inspect it he saw that it was practically glowing with a seeping green liquid.

“Look! It’s Santa.” Then the children were all around him. Usually, he enjoyed the walk through the mall. It gave him the opportunity to pass out his surplus of small, striped red and white hard candy canes to the excited kids.”HO HO HO,” he made himself say. But what he really wanted to do was floor the first snot nosed brat who tried to touch him. He shook his beard like a wet dog and sighed. What the hell was he thinking; he loved children, he’d always loved children. Maybe it was just that awful episode with Mother which had put his nerves on edge.

The sleigh was centered underneath a huge skylight in an expansive circular section in the center of the huge cross shaped mall. Above the glass roof, the ubiquitous cloudy beard of God shook out its mighty dandruff in the form of millions of snowflakes. There were eight living deer hooked to the front of the sled. They had been fastened up with reins and cordoned off in a small, chain link pen which doubled for a petting zoo. There were some cumbersome, clumsy, artificial antlers which had somehow been fashioned to their heads to make them look like the real deal. Many children were already mulling around the small enclosure and were busy feeding the creatures some smelly, small brown pellets which could be purchased from a nearby gumball machine for twenty five cents.

There was a very sexy teenaged girl, with legs much too long for both her years and for the elf costume she was wearing, standing over next to a display of empty but very colorful Christmas presents. Her long brown hair was so thick and shiny that it still looked stunning even underneath the absurd, pointed hat. She had worked carefully with the holiday shades of green and red to create an extremely alluring look with brushed on streaks of eye shadow.

There was also a thick, tired looking, rotund, middle aged woman who was stationed behind a big Polaroid camera which had been mounted near a check out desk. She wore a miserable expression and was shuffling her feet aimlessly. Seymour remembered a year when she was much more affable, but that was long before they had converted the entire mall into a non-smoking establishment.

“Jesus Seymour,” she said, “you’re fifteen minutes late.” She pointed to a long line of parents with their children; kids eager to tell Santa all about their Christmas wishes. “Look at these brats.”

“Okay, okay, Charlene,” he said, “let’s not make a federal case out of it, let’s just get some of the kids through the line.

Charlene sighed as if she knew he was right and unclipped the red velvet rope which separated the first customers from Santa. As he situated himself up inside the sleigh, a crud chewing (rein)deer watched him settle into his seat without much reaction. It was an actual mountain sled which had been donated by the local hunter and trappers museum. The door panels had been painted a dark maroon color and tacky, plastic, mistletoe which was sprayed gold was draped over the top half of the refurbished leather seat. The running boards were held in place by a network of wires which were hooked onto some temporary ground rods like a carnival ride.

“Hey Sarah.”

“Hey Seymour.” The ultra-attractive elf acknowledged his greeting.

The first kid of the day climbed up onto Seymour’s lap and proceeded to act like a repulsive brat. “I want an XBOX and a skateboard and a GI Joe and a…” Seymour was shaking his head yes when the boy paused: “hey? Why aren’t you writing any of this down?”

“I don’t have to write any of it down; my elves are recording it all.”

“The boy looked around as if checking for recording equipment and locked eyes with the vivacious Sarah instead. “She’s got pretty big tits for an elf.”

Before Seymour had to say anything else, the Polaroid’s flash popped and Charlene shouted, “Next!”

Next turned out to be a sweet little girl who was dressed like a miniature Mrs. Claus in strawberry red and snow white. All she asked for was some sort of urinating doll and was quickly taken down. A few more like her and Seymour thought that he might be able to get caught up a bit, but these hopes were dashed when he took one glance at the ever lengthening queue.

But as child after child rotated past a makeshift north pole, and request after request fell onto Seymour’s rapidly deafening ears, he felt worse and ever worse until his chest felt like there were two rats inside his breast plate fighting to devour his lungs. His arms and legs were heavy and cold like scrap metal from a dissected refrigerator and every time Charlene snapped a new instant photo, he felt as if his eyes were looking into a welder’s torch with no visor or at the detonation of an atomic bomb.

“Are you okay Seymour,” Sarah, the breathtaking elf inquired.

“Yes, I’m fine kiddo,”

“Maybe we should close early? You don’t look so good.”

“Oh no no sweetheart, I’m fine. These children deserve a Santa. Now call the next child up please.”

She did as she was told and for awhile the pace of the visits quickened. Child on, spiel spat, photo snapped, child down, cash garnered, next. This rush ensued until a roll of film got eaten up by the Polaroid. While Charlene busied herself with ripping it out and replacing it, a cigarette hanging from her withered lip despite the NO SMOKING sign which was only a few feet from her head, and while Sarah had her hands full trying to fend off the verbal advances of a fourteen year old boy who had wormed his way inside the red and green velvet ropes, Seymour slumped down in his seat. Charlene cursed as the new roll of film refused to cooperate. The lovely Sarah told the boy, who was much too old for Santa but much too young for her, to get lost. Perhaps, with all this aggravation on their plates they simply didn’t realize. Or maybe, when Seymour tilted his head back and closed his eyes, they just thought that he was taking a power nap until the camera was flash ready again. Whatever the case, they did not notice when Seymour passed away at 4:46 Mountain time.

Even when the amorous teenaged boy gave up and strutted away; even when the camera was repaired and ready to photograph, even when the children who had been so very, very good, were cleared to tell their tale to Santa; they still did not notice Seymour’s heavy and stiffening head.

Not until a darling little girl; with a look that could challenge the style and overwhelming cuteness of Shirley Temple herself, began slapping the face of the deceased Saint Nick did they take notice. The little girl snickered and hopped down. Only to be replaced by a huge boy who was obviously much too old and oversized to subscribe to such childish fables. While Charlene and Sarah glanced at each other in confusion the boy began running through his list. After a few seconds he paused and said: “Santa? Are you asleep?”

“Sarah,” Charlene shouted as she snapped what was sure to be a peculiar picture, “Is he alright up there? He doesn’t look so good.”

“I already asked him that once,” Sarah replied, “he says he wants to finish out the shift.”

“Well Jesus,” Charlene said as she tilted her grey head in an effort to look past the youngster on Seymour’s lap, “it looks like he’s passed out or something. Is he drunk for God’s sakes.”

Sarah walked up to the sled. “Seymour doesn’t drink. Wait a minute; I think he’s coming around.” Indeed, Seymour had began to stir and when his eyes re-opened they were as red as his jacket. Thinking that Santa had revived the boy continued with his delayed wish list.

“Seymour? Are you all right?” Sarah tried to whisper. Seymour, his face strangely glazed and distant, did not answer or even seem to hear her.

“… and a go-cart and a scooter and the Kim Kardashian DVD…” The big boy rambled on as a low guttural growl escaped from Seymour’s slightly parted lips and his face took on the countenance of a desperately sick and hungry animal.

“Seymour?”

Of all the items the boy had listed as potential gifts there was one thing that he certainly did not want for Christmas: and that was to have the first three fingers bitten off of his left hand. But that is what he got in the next instant as a Satanic new Santa, which was no longer any kin to the kind and respectful Seymour, chomped the digits off as if they were ketchup laced french fries. As the oversized child drew back his squirting and maimed hand, the first of what was sure to be many screams rose from the crowd. Sarah stepped away totally stunned; her gaping mouth as perfectly round as a moon while Satan Claus continued to chew the boy’s fingers; gore ruining his beard like the blood of a slaughtered animal running from a steel trap in the snow.

For a few awe stricken seconds, the parents and kids who had been waiting in line paused. As if there was a chance that this horrific spectacle could somehow still be a sick joke or even part of the show. They faltered like this for a few heartbeats like deflated flags in a weak breeze, before terror took hold and they dispersed in a wild zig zag of panic. People punched, kicked and pushed past each other as vicious as carnivorous zombies. The riot was on.

Seymour stood up; the nonplussed boy still locked in his grip. For a second he swayed drunkenly, his eyes maniacal. Then he bit a patch out of the child’s scalp as if it were a juicy cantaloupe. Sarah turned and bolted down a carpeted ramp; somehow finding her way out from the fog of shock. Charlene left her post behind the camera and bravely bustled up to the sanguinary soaked Santa.

“Good God, Seymour,” she said without much steam, “stop!”

She reached out and grabbed the gore splattered flap of the boy’s jacket. But even as she did this, the demonic Santa released the boy and switched his grip onto Charlene’s shoulders. When he bit into her cheek the blood squirted out as if from a torn ketchup packet. The sound of her scream was drowned out only by the boom of gunshots. Stan was pointing his pistol straight out from where he’d been seeking cover between two twirling display holders in front of the Sunglass Hut. The bullet struck Satan Claus in the chest; the impact knocking him back down into his seat; but it had no other effect.

“Stop Seymour! Don’t make me shoot you again!”

But the monster who used to be Seymour didn’t stop. He rose and continued to bite patches out of both the boy and Charlene, that pair now rendered unconscious inside the sled. This prompted Stan to empty his gun into the red and white clad target. The final projectile, however, grazed the gray antler of one of the (rein)deer and the balsa horns exploded into dull confetti. This panicked the animals and they were so spooked the no constraints could hold them. They quickly trampled the chain link petting zoo. The reins connecting them to the sleigh pulled it right out of its stanchions and away from the flimsy rods that no one had thought would be needed to help contain the docile deer.

Sparks shot from the tile floor as the sled gathered speed and mowed over what was left of the audience. A mother and several small children were tromped over and clomped on by the deranged (rein)deer. As the sleigh reached maximum velocity, a man was dragged for several yards along with Charlene’s dead body. After the man fell off and rolled violently into a Pepsi machine, Charlene’s felled carcass could still be seen hooked onto the door. One young mother, who had unfortunately fallen, had her legs scissored off by the skating blades. The detached limbs lay like reddened octopus meat, separated by several yards from her floundering body.

As the storefronts blazed past in a blur of neon commercialism, Seymour stood up and peered out over the crowd like an evil pharaoh; his eyes swirling with tiny cyclones of madness. At this juncture he let out a terrible and peevish laugh; perhaps owed to the fact that he was still an immature child of a creature inside his diseased mind. Or maybe the motion of the onrushing sleigh awakened some thrilling memory of fun, which his rotting pulp of a brain still manged to conjure. No one can say for sure. But whatever the case, the sound of that revoltingly jolly wail was disgusting and blood curdling; hearty and horrible it fell onto the sensitive ears of the shocked shop keepers.

The (rein)deer did not slow down as they reached the exit. They simply veered off from the doors, which were separated by stout aluminum frames, and aimed for the much wider berth of the department store’s display windows instead. They mercilessly trampled the seasonally garbed mannequins and crashed through the wide showroom-type pane with a sonic shatter. A large sliver of glass now protruded from Seymour’s chest. But even as the wound pumped fresh blood and the shard jutted out close to where his heart must be, he didn’t seem to notice.

Outside the blizzard flew with such a robust bluster that the plows and road graders could not keep up. A thickening layer of powder, which was near perfect for sledding, covered the parking lot. It was already dark outside and headlights reflected off of the menacing procession as the train continued on, careening off of cars and threatening to mow down aloof pedestrians. Then a sleigh, with eight tiny (rein)deer and one lifeless yet blood thirsty Santa at the helm, flew down the wide thoroughfare of the mountain town’s Main Street. The quickness of the sled had pushed Seymour back down into his seat where he foamed at the mouth at snapped his teeth at anyone who was even remotely close to the carriage. At the intersection, they bustled right through the red light causing a fancy Christmas lady who had been driving a Honda Civic to swerve in order to avoid them. She had to cross over into another lane where a huge YELLOW semi obliterated her small compact. The truck hit her so hard that the little import seemed to pop and burst like a balloon and the lady was thrown out into high drifts as dead as Seymour, while the big truck slanted and plowed into a ditch askew.

A few blocks from this accident a young family, perhaps thinking that this obscenity was some type of holiday parade float, pulled up next to the sleigh. A small girl peered out from the back seat and the evil Santa showed her his red and white teeth. Which looked as if he’d just chewed a ball of dentist’s dye to reveal cavities. Charlene’s corpse bobbed up and down along side the carriage, reddening the fresh flakes. The family, then realizing that they were dealing with something deplorable, quickly sped away.

Near the edge of town, they passed a speed trap and soon red and blue lights and sirens could be seen and heard trailing the sleigh. The following conversation was heard by many a curious townsfolk on the police radio band:

“What have you got car four?”

“Uh, this is four, we’re in pursuit over.”

“Request license plate number of suspect over.”

“Um, no plates, suspect is dressed in a Santa suit and appears to be dragging a dead body through the streets over.”

Pause.

“Clearance to shoot out the suspect’s tires over.”

“Um, vehicle doesn’t have tires. Appears to be a sled pulled by some type of dogs. Over and out.”

And they pushed on, until the traffic thinned out and the tall towers gave way to shorter three story buildings. Then they were outside the city limits, where they rode past the unmarked county roads, all boundaries and lane lines obscured by the relentless snows. The drifts were so high that they covered the snow fences and the barbed wire barricades, leaving no boundaries to obstruct the octet of deer and their cargo. Soon the hills slanted, chopped long ago by the ax of God they dipped into steeper slopes where the angry police vehicles could not follow. They climbed all the way to the top of Mount Paydirt. Its flattened peak gazing down at Gordon’s Gorge five hundred feet below; home of the Great Northern Paiute Grand Valley Indian Reservation.

Without pausing for a beat, the entire caravan ran off of the cliff and began the long plunge to the sharp, man-sized boulders below. For a few seconds, they looked amazingly graceful as their forward progress held onto the neat design of the jumping (rein)deer. Like a postcard with a silhouette of Santa Claus and the outline of his eight dependable beasts. Then it all fell apart as the heavier animals were grabbed by gravity and became entangled in the reins. The sled soon turned upside down in midair and Seymour was thrown from his lofty perch. He fell silent and solemn, too devoid of humanity even to react in defense of his own well being.

Far down below: in a house which did not have a Christmas tree or a wreath on the door, a young boy had seen the beauty and grace of the sleigh’s brief flight, before it turned into a tangle of falling creatures and twisted reins like the strings of a fractured puppet show. A child with chestnut brown eyes and shoulder length black hair. He was the only one who had glimpsed the entourage before they vanished below the precipice of the rock face. When the cervids finally found the thankless terrain at rock bottom, they exploded into chunky red ribbons of brown furry gore like slabs of dead meat. At the same time Seymour’s brain burst apart on the Sanskrit; his body shattered by an impact that not even someone who was already dead could survive.

“Mama, mama,” the small Native American boy said while pointing out his bedroom window. “I just saw Santa Claus.” The silhouette of his washboard hipped mother appeared in the doorway but she did not answer. After a few seconds of this silence, the child turned to her and said in a confused voice, “Didn’t you see him?” But she still didn’t answer, so he reached over and turned on his bed side lamp: the ceramic fixture was a depiction of a Paiute warrior riding atop a spotted black and white mustang. “Mama?” He said again as she shuffled within range of the bulb’s weak light. But that was the last words that he spoke, for by now he could see that there was something wrong with her eyes.

END.

This neighborhood had once been very nice. A stately row of elms had been planted on a queue inside an island curb which separated the two way traffic on the snow covered street; when there was still any traffic left to separate that is. It was amazing how hard it was to tell where the roads began and ended once the plows ceased in their routine.

At the end of the tree line one of the living dead had gotten lucky; down on its knees with its ghastly face covered in red snow as it devoured the remains of, what I tried to tell myself was, a large dog. I sighed and tried to force my mind to move on even as my legs were already running.

All the houses looked pretty much the same: upside down Vs with two handsome cupolas jutting out from steep composition roofs. I moved quickly from domicile to domicile, desperately flipping over door mats, feeling along the top ledge of doorways and trying knobs. Like a terrified mail carrier fleeing from a vicious Pitt Bull or a squirrel searching for a hole. Sometimes I would pause briefly to suck in a breath in the hidden conclaves of the entranceways.

Finally, after what seemed like a thousand houses, a golden key winked up at me from the bare concrete which had been covered by the mat. I hadn’t wanted to break in, since I might need fully functional locks or unbroken glass to keep the dead out later.

It was much warmer inside as I quietly unfastened the tennis rackets from my boots and spun the bolt lock behind me. The living room was dark and unperturbed. Someone had done a nice job of removing the window panes and replacing them with small colonial era style sills. I took two steps and that’s when I began to hear the gurgling noises. I tiptoed into the kitchen, pulling a large carving knife from a wooden brace as the noises grew faintly louder. After an interlude through a small laundry room, I came to a heavy wooden door which was painted a Betsy Ross red. The gurgling noises were coming from behind it. Why I didn’t bolt from the house then I can’t say for sure, but something would not let me and I willed myself to twist the knob.

A giant mural of Cinderella greeted me from the opposite wall and there were toys all over the floor: Barbies, stuffed animals and half drunken bottles. It was an L shaped room and I could not see its one remaining corner. I held the knife out in front of me and slowly stepped forward as the source of the noises came into view: above a small pink play pen I saw a women; or what had once been a woman hanging from the ceiling fan. There was a makeshift noose, which had been fashioned from what appeared to be some type of electrical cord, pressing right through her impossibly small broken neck. Her feet were still kicking a few inches above a tipped over ‘Snow White’ child’s stool. There were many nasty bites visible through her torn jogging suit. Evidently, she had chosen to take her own life rather than wait for the change; perhaps not realizing that, if her brain were not destroyed, the change would occur anyway.

When she saw me she began to kick and wave her arms wildly and a vicious snarl replaced the painful sounding gurgle. As I approached her the flailing reached a hurricane pitch and she spun around on the cord like a Satanic pinata. A foul smell permeated the room and I realized that she had defecated into her jumpsuit once her neck had snapped. I grabbed her Reebok covered foot and stopped her from spinning. I then righted the stool and stepped around behind her, being careful tostay out of the reach of her grasp. I fingered the carving knife as I stood up on the tiny bench and wrapped my arm around her waist. I was preparing to hold her steady enough to cut out, or at least cut through, her feverish brain. Her arms were trying to grab me, but she must not have had the brains, or maybe brains is the wrong word to use, she must not have had the intelligence, totry and remove the cord from her warped throat.

But then, just as I prepared to grab her forehead from behind and slide the blade through the soft spot behind her skull, disaster struck: she grabbed my forearm and made a final insane kick; knocking me off balance and causing my feet to lose touch with the stool. The already taxed fixture couldn’t support both our weights and it came out from the ceiling in a rain of plaster. Before I knew that I was falling I was on the carpet. Before I knew that I was on the carpet she was on top of me. She was still pretty fresh and her muscles were working better than most. Her grip was strong and I braced for the lethal and dreaded bite. But when I didn’t come I realized that this was attributed to something odd: her head had been dislodged from its original position: the neck being so severely broken that her noggin now rested up on her shoulder blades, on the opposite side of what had been two very firm breasts. The mouth had no fixed position and consequently she was not able to pull me toward her rotting and stinking yellow teeth.

This gave me the fraction of a second that I needed to push her off of me and scamper to my feet. She also stood, surprisingly lithe, her head hanging upside down and her long hair dangling past her knees. Before she could advance again I picked up the knife. She somehow found the I.Q. to grab her own head, like someone selecting a papaya from a fruit bin, before placing it right side up on her purple shoulders. She then prepared to attack me with the violence of someone who has already seen Hell once.

Just as she organized this however, I struck like a cinematic swash buckler; driving the carving knife through her retina and I suppose through her brain since she slumped like someone shot by a sniper; the blade still sticking through an eye which was spraying yellow liquid like crazy string all over a depiction of the Seven Dwarfs.

As she hit the floor dead for the second and final time, she rubbed up against the play pen. And that’s when I noticed her: a real live baby, lying on her back, staring up at me nonchalantly.

27 December:

The baby and I have retreated down into the cellar. The door has been borrowed from an old meat locker. Which is perfect since it has several strong bolt locks. There is also an outer storm door which is held in place by a large, long wooden plank supported by two stainless steel brackets and one trenched in window with a half oval of vertical culvert pipe dammed into the ground to keep the yard out. I was going to cover the glass over, but for now it’s completely whited out by the abundant snow and I don’t believe that there is anything down here that I could use to cover it over anyway. There is a washer and dryer down here, a small storage room and a square plastic sink with a hole in the bottom so that the water can tilt down into a drain which is located in the middle of the bare concrete floor.

I would liked to have made a more thorough search of the house for food and supplies, but when the pale sun began to ache through the cold silver fog and as the moans in the streets grew louder and more frequent, I knew that it was time to hide. I thought that I heard the storm door rattling earlier, but most of the dead give up on locks fairly easily; since there’s still much easier prey to hunt above the grass. There is a good supply of Enfamil cans stacked up in one corner and before we went down the stairs I did manage to grab a loaf of bread and some sliced ham. With this supply of formula, the baby should have enough nourishment to survive for several weeks, but there isn’t much else in the way of grub down here. Although I must admit that I’m not very hungry right now. After the sights I’ve seen, I don’t care if I ever eat again.

28 December

I can feel the frost seeping through the cool gray cinderblocks. There is a furnace down her but it hasn’t done much rumbling and I fear that the heat may have been shut off. I feel hungrier now as the ham has gone green and the Roman Meal blue, but I have decided that we should perhaps remain down here for another day. At least the baby has formula and once you’re up there and out in the open there’s no way to stop or even pause for longer than a few seconds. It’s certainly no place for a small toddler up there and leaving the youngster to her own helpless devices is now out of the question. She looks to be about ten monthes old as she already has several small serrated teeth jutting out from her soft gums. I’ve carefully searched her body for bites and having found none I have decided to name her Victoria. I did find some diapers underneath the formula cans and I have been able to launder her body suit which is a good thing since she periodically spits up. I was in the process of putting our clothes in the dryer when I heard something sniffing at the outside of the window. At first I thought that it was a snake; but then I noticed that the long trunk had a snout at the end. After that apparatus had cleared the pane for me I found myself staring into the pink eyes of a baby elephant. I quickly realized that this was not some drunken illusion as I’ve never been more sober in my life. With no caretakers left, the animals must have been driven by starvation to escape from the nearby zoo, and are now fending for themselves. I opened the window and patted it on the head as it snorted out its approval, blowing its warm breath in my face, before stomping off slowly through the glittering yard with a majesty that is somehow better than this rank predicament.

I can hear something bustling through the rafters and I have a terrible fear that rats may gnaw on the baby, if I should give into exhaustion and nod off. Keeping her warm down here is another problem but I did find several towels in the dryer and I have wrapped her up in them.

Going to the restroom could also become a problem, I urinated into the plastic drain today, but I don’t even want to think about number two. The baby is beginning to cry louder. It is very unnerving when I can’t quiet her since someone ( or something ) may be listening. At least I have the means to mix her up another bottle. Yet I can feel myself getting weaker, we may have to make a break for it tomorrow. But to where?

29 December

I finally got the baby asleep and lay her down on a towel which I had spread out over the hard floor and this gave me an opportunity to dig through the storage area. I emptied several totes before my efforts paid off and I found an old heart shaped box of Valentine candy which had been pretty well preserved in the cool temperatures of the basement. As I stuffed piece after piece into my mouth the sugar rushed to my head and I became dizzy and later nauseated. I wretched into the sink but when I turned on the faucet to wash away my spew no water come out from the fountainhead. That service must be severed also and I’ve had to wipe the vomit off as best I could with a dry wash rag. Now that the water has permanently ebbed, the washer will no longer function and the baby’s lone jump suit could become very messy. Who can say how long it will be before the electricity also fails? Realizing that I needed the strength, I laid down in a chilly corner of the basement and slowly bit into the final two pieces of candy. My throat was dry and I decided to risk opening the window so I could scoop a batch of snow into a plastic cup. As I crushed the snow and drank it, I could hear the elephant roaring some blocks away and I wished that I could be that free, mighty and beyond challenge.

Once I finally slept I dreamed that I was riding in a new Corvette; leaving the cruel and infested city behind on a clean and open freeway. But then the grand engine begin tapping, I was out of gas and oil. Black figures appeared upon the edge of the shoulder. Where they congealed into a crowd which surrounded my deceased vehicle like the dead sea.

I woke up to a similar tapping noise at three a.m. For several disoriented seconds I didn’t know where it was coming from. Perhaps, my exhausted mind reckoned, it was still part of the hideous dream. Then turning to the window I saw the actual source: a hideous face peering at me through the glass; weakly scratching its stiffened fingers against the pane; looking at the baby like a starving peasant lamenting through a bakery window. I simultaneously swung the window open and stuck the carving knife into its hungry mouth repeatedly. It kicked and writhed for a few seconds before its brains leaked out past its lips and fell onto the floor like raw veal. Now the cadaverous bastard has expired outside our window. The three choices seem to be: dragging the wretched dead bum inside: going outside, pulling him away from the window and risk being spotted from the street or staring at that decaying face for every merciless tick of the clock. The third choice, although probably the safest and easiest, is surely an E ticket to madness. I have had to turn all the lights out since there is no way that I can stop their glow from being seen from the street. Maybe I’ll just leave the body there for tonight, since were going to make a break for it tomorrow.

30 December

I noticed bites on Victoria this morning, which I fear may have come from the treacherous rats. She will no longer accept the bottle, which I carefully prepared from the formula and crushed snow, and she slaps at me violently without reason. After repeated attempts to feed her she bit the plastic nipple uncleanly off. No matter, there are some reserve nipples and I will try again later. Some strange looking blue blotches have developed around her eyes and she claws at the air and grabs at her throat.

Several rats have been staring at me from a beam above the furnace. They seem to have madness and malice in their eyes and I fear and perhaps even sense ( and this is going to sound crazy, ) that they are formulating a plan against Victoria and I.

I heard some kind of disturbance out in the white street and as I peered over the dead body of our disgusting friend, I was treated to the site of several of the living dead feasting on the remains of the elephant. Its once proud head askew and flattened like a blown tire; its sightless eyes as dim as the gray snow. The freezing temperatures must have killed it. I won’t accept as fact that they brought it down.

I’ll have to try and make sure that the baby gets some sleep. I’ll want her to be refreshed if we’re going to get out of here tomorrow.

31 December

Victoria had a pretty rough time last night as she commenced coughing sometime slightly after one. Her fever raged, but there was no way to bath her since the sink is now dry. I tried to scoop some more snow to fill the sink up with, but our decaying friend has been lying on top of it and the brown liquid which seems to be seeping from him has contaminated most of the powder. Eventually, with some ingenuity and effort, I filled the square basin with as much fresh snow I could gather, but that didn’t seem to quell her skyrocketing fever. Pressing a palm against her forehead was the same as touching a hot engine. Sometime around 2AM her lungs locked up and there seemed to be no breath at all coming from her nickel sized mouth. At 3AM she turned as purple as cabbage and all hope seemed abandoned. But just as I had lowered my face into my hands, to see with closed eyes the black edifice of utter despair and grief at my precious Victoria’s death, she rose up like Lazarus and began to walk. Oh, imagine my joy as my precious Victoria survived a debilitating fever and learned to walk in the same night. It appears as if she can communicate with the rats and sometimes she whispers to them softly in a language of babble. I can no longer keep my eyes open. It has taken every ounce of my strength to save the baby’s life. I’m only glad that I succeeded.

New Year’s Day: 1 January

Just another day; staying alive. I can no longer get the baby to eat and I have resorted to eating the dry formula with the plastic scooper myself. The baby ran up into the rafters with the rats and didn’t return for several hours. When she came back she looked pale and dirty: cobwebs smattered in her light, silky hair. I know now that the rats are planning to corner me and strip my bones clean with yellowing overbitten rows of small, sharp teeth. I no longer know which side Victoria is on, but still, I can’t help but love her. She was such a loving and caring baby when I first found her and I wish that those days were back. I tried to wipe her clean with a dry wash rag but she only snarled at me and ran up into the dark beams again. I’m very hungry and thirsty and had resolved to try and slither up and search the kitchen. But as I approached the door the knob was moving slowly as if someone were trying to open it from the outside. It made me wish, not for the first time, that I had a gun. Not so that I could defend myself, but rather, so I could turn the barrel on myself. I can hear the baby moving behind the cinderblock walls with the rats. I wish that I could go with her to search for somewhere darker than the bottom of a coal mine; a place where I could sleep forever. Wherever that place is and if she’s there, I hope that she’s happy.

2 January

All Hades throbbed at the cinderblock walls today. The dead must have heard me pacing around, babbling a senseless cadence on my rosary to ward off the ruthless ennui. First the strong storm door began creaking, as if seventy five people were piled on top of it. Then the dead pushed aside the cadaver; pushed him right through the basement window. He came toppling head first; his skull exploding open on the thankless concrete. There were endless dead behind him and they began to spill through the small window. Almost at the same time the storm door collapsed under the great weight of so many of them and at least a dozen walking corpses began to mull around on the floor and pull themselves together. This left only one remaining chance for escape: the old meat locker door at the top of the stairs. If there were as many dead at this exit also I was surely devoured. When I opened that door I was greeted by a gruesome looking corpse in a gray work suit. There must have been forty of his kind right behind him and I knew that today was my doomsday. I had no chance of defeating all of them or advancing even a foot. But just for the hell of it, I stuck the carving knife through the abomination in the gray suit’s brain. Then I threw myself on top of the crowd; like a saint being lowered down off of a black, burned out stake.

But then something strange happened: so many of them were trying to bite me at once that none could. Then my weight shifted onto the raised arms of a grandmotherly corpse who did not have the strength to hold me up. My body somehow built up momentum as the pile quivered and then toppled; throwing me onto the living room floor without so much as a hickey. I got up quickly and tried to bolt but there were still way too many of them. I was tackled like a running back behind the line of scrimmage as I prepared to go down for the final time in my life; or at least the last time that my body would move with my working brain as its conscious.

That’s when I heard the sound: like an earthquake and a tornado hitting from different angles at the same time and the wall of the house was knocked flat by the tank. It tracked over and shattered the colonial style windows and I felt several lethal hornets buzz past my ear and a dozen zombies were down in the half blink of an eye. The bullets must have been nine or ten inches long and there were explosions too, as several wailing corpses came apart in a puff of fire and toxic smoke like burning dolls or hurled crash test dummies. I was suddenly scared stiff: too shocked to move and too horrified to stand still. Now I could hear them on the bullhorn: “ATTENTION! DO NOT GO OUTSIDE! STAY IN YOUR HOUSES AND YOU WILL BE ASSISTED!” But this was all bullshit. The army now thought that they were the only ones equipped to survive and they made little discrepancy between the living dead and the living. Following the tank through the wall of the house were several soldiers riding atop a camouflage hued Humvie. The speeding vehicle pushed aside an over turned couch with the force of the bump throwing an aloof soldier onto the snow ruined carpet of a living room which was now exposed to the elements. Before he could raise his weapon the dead were on him; they pulled him apart in seconds as if he were a gingerbread men. I knew that it was nothing short of a miracle that I hadn’t suffered the same fate. I watched the Humvie continue to travel at a rapid pace down the icy street as the dead around me began to recover from the tanks initial attack and saunter back to their feet. As I watched the vehicles get a little smaller my eyes were drawn to a soldier who was standing straight up; his head and torso sticking out of a hatch in the roof of the tank. I thought that it was strange in such a situation that he should have a long loaf of French bread perched upon his shoulder and that he should be pointing it at me. Then I blinked again and I saw that it was not a piece of French bread, but rather, it was a bazooka.

Last Entry- Date Unknown

When I awoke I was back in the basement, with my cheek pressed against the cold concrete floor. The dead were lying all around me covered by a slight coat of snow, like guests passed out, hungover from a wild party the night before. Some of them had been blown apart by tank’s artillery and none of them seemed to be moving. Save for one string of flesh which was no more than a brain connected to an arm. It was leaving a trail of sludge on the floor like a snail as it dragged itself to nowhere. I wasn’t much worried about it biting me since its mouth, along with all other discernible features, had long been annihilated.

I wiped the spittle from my cheek and rose up into an Indian style sitting position. A flash of motion caught my eye in the darkened corner of the basement and I squinted into the limited light where different shades of blackness seemed to struggle in the gloaming. For a moment I thought that it was only one of the dead and for the hundrenth time I counted myself as finished.

But the gloom expanded into the well proportioned figure of a man who assembled beyond the tired trickery of my eyes to saunter out from the dim background. The soldier approached me; his dark hair framing a lean and handsome face. His unattended whiskers as sharp as porcupine bristles and shining with the sweat of battle.

I got to my feet and stood before him; I thought that I must look a haggard fright in the rogue clothes I had worn for days: a tight ‘Old Navy’ T-shirt and low cut Levi’s. He had a very serious weapon hanging from a strap around his neck: not really being a gun aficionado I can’t tell you what type that it was; but it was obvious that this tool had been issued for some extreme offense. We just stood there staring at each other as if neither one of us could believe that the other was real. His eyes were as black as limousine paint and as intense as a hypnotist. After a few seconds, he raised the gun and softly placed the end of the barrel in between my D-Cup breasts. He did not smile or make a sound but only tilted his jaw as if indicating that I should remove my T-shirt. Somehow, I was not threatened by this and even felt a twinge of excitement. Relief flooded through me as I noted the possibilities: perhaps I could keep a real live man; an armed soldier to protect me. Without hesitation I raised my shirt over my head. Refraining from lowering his weapon, he took out a huge hunting knife and sliced off my brassiere. Now my ample breasts showed themselves to the morning light which was craning in through the battle ruined basement. He lowered the gun until it was held up by the strap and sheathed the knife. In the same motion he cupped one of my breasts in his calloused hand and kissed me lightly on the mouth. His tongue felt soft and salty and his passion fed me like the nourishing food that I had did without. As our we rubbed each other’s bodies, we writhed together in an oscillating embrace. Sucking at each other’s lips as hungry as the roaming dead. Desire surged through my chest like a geyser of lava and I momentarily forgot how bad I must have smelled and that it had been over a week since I’d showered and a few days since I’d even had a cat bath. He didn’t seem to mind though and I was prepared to let him do whatever it was he will with me.

But even as we kissed deeply, I was somehow compelled to open my eyes and I saw on my far right peripheral a flash of gray. As fast and violent as a pinball the baby leapt out from a hanging over head vent, which had been twisted and exposed by the shell from the bazooka. She locked onto my soldier’s head with what seemed like the suction of a squid. I took a step back in shock as he tried to pull Victoria off of his forehead. But the crazy dead baby’s eyes were purple and wild and she clawed at his skull and bit at his scalp. I heard a noise then like a string of firecrackers going off and a force like a heavy blow on my naked chest knocked me to the ground; my arms and legs tingling with nothingness. I tried to force myself to rise but all feeling was gone and I realized that the soldier’s gun had discharged; the huge bullet ripping through my chest and probably severing my spine. The warrior pulled out his knife and began stabbing at the tiny, deadly, lump of flesh which had attached itself to him. He had to resort to using the gun again and Two more shots nearly tore one of Victoria’s arms off and the man slumped to his knees as she finally released him, his head a ruined, bloody mass of clawed bites and twisted tissue. The baby scurried back into the rafters, swinging like a one handed monkey, I suppose to rejoin the rats that she had became so friendly with. I was now positive that I would never see her again. The soldier dropped to the seat of his pants and pressed his palm against his gushing throat, but the vivid liquid rushed out much too quickly to be ebbed. He must have accidentily stabbed himself in the throat in a futile effort to get the lethal critter off of him.

Several hours have now passed and even though I cannot turn over, I can feel the large pool of blood which is gathering underneath me. I can only hope that I die before the soldier lives again. For I know that when he stirs he will want my flesh inside of him just as I once wanted him inside of me. So is the perverse appetites of the living dead. If I could move my arms to clutch the gun; I would surly deposit a cartridge into my own beleaguered brain, but there is no quarter forthcoming. That is: not until my soldier stands again; his form looming over my shattered body like a shadow across a grave and then, in the next progression, his relentless mouth chewing my flesh like a wild animal. I suppose that in this harsh city; where souls fly up like the millions of flakes of snow in the death bruised sky; in this mad dream where even your worst nightmare can’t match the insane horror of any waking moment; that that is what will pass for mercy.

END.

—–

Tom Hamilton is an Irish Traveler. His work has appeared in over one hundred publications around the world. Including the Rockford Review, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Journal and Sinister City among many others. He has two poetry chapbooks published. ‘The Rain Draw Bridge’ from ‘Alpha Beat Press’ and ‘The Last Days of My Teeth’ from ‘Budget Press’ His short story ‘The Spider’ is available as an E-book from ‘Curious Volumes Publishing’ Along with his wife Mary Theresa and their three small daughters, Tiffany, Hope and Catalina, he lives in Loves Park IL USA.

“There aren’t too many women left.” He said. “That’s for sure. Butthere are even less men. Forget about Anneliese man- she’s gone. When things settle down a little bit around here… well you’ll have your pick.”

“You gotta be crazy.” I told him. I would never or could never forget about Anneliese; Her blonde strands scattering across my memory like strips of sunny light streaming through the joined arms of the dead red trees which grew on the despondent landscape of my nightmares. I bluntly asked him to tell me where she was. He pleaded and spoke my name, lowering his arms in a gesture which
represented calm.

“Those women over there are not just as good as dead,” He implored. “I think they are dead.”

“Don’t say…” I began to shout at him before stopping myself in mid-sentence. He sighed and looked at the floor. “I’m sorry Johnny.” I said much lower. “You’re a good friend to me and it’s good of you to tell me. But you know I’m going to have to go over there.”

He shook his head. “It’s been four years a this shit. Weren’t you better off when you thought that she was just dead or gone?” He paused but when I didn’t answer he said, “I’m only against you seeing something that could make it even more terrible.”

I shook my head. “Nothing could be more terrible than this.”

He scoffed and looked out the window. “I doubt that.” He said as I followed his gaze out to the mailbox. One of the balloons- a very small version- floated up to the mailbox. There it birthed a perfectly rectangular slab of tan meat onto the concrete. The patty was smoothly ejected somehow from its silvery surface. Only to land softly on the sidewalk where it sat like a piece of dung on what looked like a plain sheet of tin foil.

“Well,” Johnny said. “Time for lunch. Better get it before the ants do.”

I contemplated this. “Do you think there are any ants left alive.”
I said. “Besides, how do you know what they’re feedin’ ya won’t
kill ya.”

Johnny shrugged. “It’s either that or eat the leaves off the
trees.” He made a move for the front door. “You should try it.” He
said. “With a little water it’s pretty swell.”

“Johnny?” I grabbed his arm. “Where is she?”

I could see these printed lines on his face, as if there were
black ink leaking from his brain and flooding into his blue eyes
until the thought of where she was turned them a dark purple. For
a moment I thought that he was going to tell me that I wasn’t the
only one who’s life had been ruined by all this: That no one had
been left untouched by the balloons: That he couldn’t think of one
person who hadn’t lost everything. I thought that he was going to
tell me that I was acting like a spoiled child. But instead he
only shrugged and said,

“The Municipal Pool.”

#

As I walked along the barren streets towards downtown, I did not
see any girls or women as Johnny had described. I didn’t see any
men either or persons at all for that matter.

Although all of the shops were closed, they had not been boarded
up nor had their outsides been desecrated. I guess the merchants
hadn’t had enough time to gate the doors and windows properly.
Consequently, the stores looked as if all someone had to do was
spin around the OPEN/CLOSED sign and they would be ready for
business once again. Perfectly edible canned goods still lined the
shelves inside, but these were known to be off limits.

It was probably about a two mile walk down to Hill Street. Then
twenty five blocks over to Kecksburg Lane and perhaps another half
mile to where the Municipal Pool sat on the corner of Flatwoods
and Walton.

The balloons were everywhere and they patrolled the streets
endlessly. Since they were in complete control of the city and had
selected whomever they pleased to do God knows what with, those of
us who were left were allowed to roam the thoroughfares freely, so
long as we were on foot. Anyone bold enough to leap behind the
wheel of a car or truck may as well have had the grim reaper
riding in the passenger seat with them.

No one knew where the Balloons came from or who’s bidding it was
that they had manifested onto the town. Some people said they were
from Russia, Cuba or outer space but, to my knowledge, these tired
cold war theories were never proven or even put to the test. I did
not know of one person who had ever communicated with one of the
orbs in any fashion. They came in a plethora of shapes and sizes
and all the same drab iron gray color. You could not go thirty
feet in any direction without seeing one. It was also not known as
to why they were feeding what was left of the population. ( Most
of the time what they were feeding the population was also a
mystery. )

Not really being able to identify them, everyone just started
referring to them as the balloons. Which I think was mainly
because of the way that they floated around or suspended; A slow
oscillating drift which was similar to the flight of helium
balloon’s. ( Although our balloons could go up, down, sideways
and so on and so forth. ) But I think that what they really were
was some sort of pods. They reminded me of a documentary I had
seen on TV several years earlier. It was a dramatization about a
farmer who had spied several “pods” as he called them, taking
soil samples from his bean field somewhere in Iowa. I myself had
once watched a small balloon absorb a rose into its metallic
skin. Whether or not it was using this as a sample or for any
sort of tests were unclear.

They did not resemble any drawings or illustrations that I had
ever seen of UFOs or flying saucers. Although, as objects, they
would certainly have to be classified as unidentified. And, if
they had not been identified by now, I didn’t see how they ever
would be. There were no little green men, grays, or humanoid
figures of any type anywhere. At least not that I had ever seen or
heard of. Actually, it was only an assumption that they had any
connection with or to outer space at all. You could not hear any
engines running when they moved nor did they give off any light in
the extreme darkness of the neon deprived night. Again, the best
way I can think of to describe them is just to say that they
looked exactly like balloons.
Two blocks from Hill Street I came along to the powder blue body of
a dead man propped up against a fire hydrant. It was said that
somehow the balloons could manipulate the life force of a human
being, and since I never really understood or figured out what that
meant, that’s about as simple as I can put it.

I can tell you this much; It was cleaner and quicker than a heart
attack. People simply dropped dead at the will of the balloons.
And for this reason, the gun metal grey anomalies  occupied the
metropolitan area without a shot ever being fired.

All law enforcement officials had been crossed out by the
balloons. Although it would have been difficult to confirm whether
or not they had been targeted specifically. Since you could use
any occupation as an example; A doctor or a lawyer say, and you
would be hard pressed to find any of these people alive. In other
words, so many human beings were dead that it could have just been
random. Although the lack of police presence was not a problem per
se. Since anyone noticed causing even the slightest disturbance
was summarily executed by the balloons. And, since you could not
go outside ( Or in some instances even inside, ) without seeing
one of the orbs, crime rates dropped to an all time low right
along side the population.

As I turned onto Hill Street, on of the bigger balloons was
floating down the avenue about three stories up. Another smaller
one was following close behind. It was like a nightmarish farce of
the Macy’s day parade. On some of the larger balloons, long
spindly sticks jutted out from their sides like the thin legs of
arachnids. These legs appeared to push the balloons away from the
buildings, thereby preventing them from scraping against the
bricks or hard corners. Whether or not there were any beings
inside the big balloons, or whether they were some type of
creatures themselves, was also unclear.

A horrid gray rain began to cascade down from the metallic clouds,
loaning a sheen to the excessive number of balloons Which filled
the shallow sky. The streets were slick, but there was no longer
any rush hour or worry of automobile accidents to contend with.
Wet garbage clogged the curbs and drains. A traffic light which
was stuck on red, or rather, stuck on stop, blinked like a winking
crimson eye squinting from the drizzle.

As I came to Kecksburg Lane I picked up on a flash of motion and
color on the other side of the intersection. In a never ending
wall of blackish glass, which had once been the window of the
Oldsmobile showroom, I saw the reflection of a disheveled and
bedraggled girl. Before her actual figure came into view from
behind the decaying frame of a furniture truck. She was wearing a
long, furry brown coat over a stained and dingy party dress. She
looked like she’d been living outside for weeks.

When she saw me, she immediately began walking towards me, and
that’s when I noticed that there were three little balloons
following behind here like puppy dogs on an invisible  leash.

“Hey Sir!?” She said, hair in tatters, wild as an unkept field.
“Hey Sir?! Do you have any food?” When she stopped, her balloons
stopped. I shook my head no.

She lowered the coat down off of her shoulders and began
unbuttoning the dress. I raised my hand to object but this did not
stop her. Soon she was showing me her red chest, which was  housed
in a slash of black bra. “Now do you have any food?” She said,
swaying seductively. I looked at her coldly and then glanced down
at the ominous balloons. “OH don’t mind them.” She said. “They
like to watch.”

I told her that, if I had any food, I would readily give it to her
and ask nothing in return. “Besides.” I wondered aloud. I couldn’t
understand why she needed food since the balloons were supplying
it to everyone. ( Although their motive for this was murky at
best).

“Maybe I don’t like the cuisine.” She quipped, pulling the coat
back up onto her shoulders and sticking her nose in the air. With
that she walked away, the balloons bobbing behind her like a
banner being pulled by a plane.

As I negotiated the final blocks I felt like my stomach was full
of salt water and the muscles in my legs began to harden and
spasm. I hadn’t been getting very much exercise lately; lying in
bed under waves of blankets, watching the incessant shadows of
circles on the wall. The scent of Anneliese’s skin cream on the
deserted sheets. The stolen specter of feminine powders and
perfumes saturating the pillow cases. Sinking under the waterline
into a paranoid sleep. Balloons in the room, bouncing off the
ceiling, trying to escape as if they really were trapped or full
of helium. But they would never just drift away in the sky…
drift away in the sky.

My knees were heated like half coconut shells baking on a tropical
island and my buttocks felt equally as greasy as I came to my
destination. The Municipal Pool came into view looking as ordinary
as any YWCA. As I got closer the frame of a young man who was
standing at the front door came into focus. He was clean cut,
shaven, well nourished, privileged. He was holding what looked
like a long stick in his hand and, as I got closer, I could see
that it was a shotgun. He barley acknowledged me.

“I’m looking for a woman.” I queried. “I think you may have her
inside there?”

He looked me up and down, the shotgun pointed at the sky. “Yeah,”
He began. “We got lots a women in there. Ya got any money?”

I looked down at the concrete and shook my head. “Let me ask you a
question.” I said pointedly. “What good does money do you or
anybody else now?” Even as I said this, I realized that I still
had a whole wallet full of twenties that I just could not bring
myself to throw away.

He whistled a sigh, his patience seemed to be evaporating. “Do you
have any money or not?!”

“YEAH.!” I growled. “I got money.”

“Go through there,” He began a little nicer, like he just wanted
to get rid of me and an argument would only prolong my standing
there. “Talk to the guy behind the desk.”

I walked through the clear glass doors, then through a brief
breezeway, before quickly locating the ‘desk’ which was really
just a white card table. The fellow who was sitting behind it must
have thought that he was some sort of art type, for he was wearing
an impeccably shaved goatee and a tam. There was a metal strong
box sitting in front of him. A row of plastic slats rose from
inside it to support a bevy of assorted bills.

“Hi.” He said with surprising friendliness.

I nodded.

“Have you been here before?” He asked through the beard.

I shook my head no.

“For five dollars admission; You can select any girl from the pool
area for one on one time in a private enclave, one dollar per
minute with a minimum of twenty minutes. Got it?”

I indicated that I did before pulling the rumpled notes out of my
disintegrating billfold. Past my permanently expired driver’s
license, credit cards, social security. I had hundreds of dollars
in there. I hadn’t spent a penny in over a year. I handed over a
twenty and a rumpled Lincoln which, I guess, were not so worthless
after all. He put it in the strong box. “Have a good time.” He
said.

I had been swimming here on one occasion many years ago. But the
pool area was now drastically different then it had been at that
time. No one had bothered to mop in a while and, what looked like,
black drag marks intersected on various points of the tile floor.
All the deck chairs and lawn furniture had been removed save for
one crooked umbrella shading a plain grey folding chair. Where a
second man, also wielding a shotgun, sat grimly. The setting sun,
its light the hue of a black rose, tried to strain past some
sinking clouds to peer through the high rectangular windows.

I could not imagine why these men figured that they needed
shotguns? Weapons certainly were not required to control the
remaining population. The balloons had already established that
dominance without so much as a shot ever being fired. Or, if these
men were against the balloons, which it was obvious from their
actions that they were not, their guns would have been totally
useless against such a powerful and enigmatic force as the orbs
anyway.

One of the biggest balloons I had ever seen was either attached to
or scraping against the high ceiling. It was rotating slowly, like
the hand which measures seconds on a clock. Dozens of spindly legs
sprouted out from it at various angles and degrees like the limbs
of some mystery arachnid. These apparatuses curved and dropped
down from the body like long steam hoses. There, they were somehow
fashioned to the backs of scores of women. The females milled
through the waist deep septic water. The pool had been partially
drained and what was left of the aqua was browned and rancid. Most
of them were stripped naked with their pale breasts sagging. Their
eyes were the eyes of taxidermy animals, as if their gaze had been
laminated, covered over by a coat of plastic. They shuffled around
slowly in an uninspired circle, goaded along by the tentacles of
the pod, mechanical as carousel ponies.

Mirroring their bitter sleepwalk I shuffled to the edge of the
pool and stared in at them in disbelief. Of all the many
unfortunate ladies sifting through this cesspool broth, I did not
see Anneliese anywhere among them.

“See anything ya like?”

The man with the shotgun had gotten up from the plain grey folding
chair to stand with me by the side of the pool. He was very
muscular and his head looked like a concrete block with black
sideburns. The rifle was down at his side like he was about to run
through a ‘taps’ routine. I resisted an overpowering impulse to
try and drive my fist through his nose. Because I knew that if I
did that, I would either be killed, which I didn’t really have any
aversion to, or that I would never see Anneliese again, which I
could not bear the thought of.

“Um,” I tried to play ball. “I have a favorite you see, a blonde
girl about five foot five, five foot six she…”

“Look friend,” He interrupted me. “They all look the same to me.”

Hurt and confused, I babbled on. “Yeah well, is this everyone? I
mean, are there more? Are they all here?”

His brow zigzagged. He was starting to get annoyed with my
questions. “A few of the girls are tied up right now,” He gestured
with his hand towards nowhere. “But you can’t stay in here. Why
don’t you just pick another one out for today?”

My eyebrows arched. I could feel the sadness collapsing in my mind
like a flash flood sweeping towards a rickety dam. Near tears, I
shook my head. “No,” I pleaded. “I really can’t see anyone else
but her.”

Noticing the hint of spray in my eyes must have alerted him to my
true mission. For he raised the rifle to his chest like a karate
pole and pushed it towards me. “Move out asshole!” He said meanly.

I put up my hands. Not really resisting, yet not really
retreating. “I said MOVE OUT!” He looked like he was about to
swing the butt at my jaw until a new man stopped him by putting
his hand on the barrel.

“It’s o.k. Eric,” The new man said. “Go have a smoke, I’ll sort
this out.” Eric smiled at the second man. Gave me a final dire
stare then walked out of the pool area.

The second man was very young and unusually handsome. He was tall
with blonde streaks through his long rocker’s hairdo and tan like
a surfer dude. Though I doubt that he or anyone else had been
riding the waves lately.

“What do you want?” He said harshly, but his eyes were kinder.

“I want a girl,” I said. “What else?”

“Cut the crap.” He barked back. “I should have let Eric waste you.
Why don’t you get the hell out of here?”

“I paid my money.” I claimed. “Just like everybody else.”

“Look man,” His voice dropped down and lost its curtness. “I’m
just trying to tell you for your own good. If you’ve got an old
lady or a daughter or somethin’ in here… just let it go man.
This place is a bad scene.”

“Thanks for the advice.” I quipped rudely. “But if it’s such a bad
scene what are all you assholes doin’ in here? I mean how the hell
can you be sucking the ass a these monsters just for clean clothes
and a haircut?”

He bit his lip and shook his head. “O.K. asshole,” He began. ‘You
think you know about everything there is to know huh? Why don’t
you come with me?” He walked across the browned tiles and I
followed. He ushered me into a side room lounge where a drab and
faded plaid couch was flanked by two loud orange chairs. “Sit
right here.” He said. “The rest of the girls will be rinsing off
any time now.” With that he ducked out of the lounge. As I sat
down on the couch, a musty moth born stink  bubbled out from the
dusty cushions. As if the furniture had been sitting in an
abandoned lot or a junk covered field. When I was sure he was
gone, I put my face in my hands and began to weep.

After about a minute of miserable heaving I un-tucked my T-shirt
and dried my eyes with it. After that I just stared blankly at the
block wall until the blonde fellow came back in. His kinder side
had won out. “Look,” He began. “Why don’t you just go on home man?
Even if you have someone here… I can promise you that they’re no
longer anyone you want to see.”

I looked at him frankly, my lips trembling. But before I could
even say anything yet another unseen voice from behind the door
said, “What are you a fuckin’ guidance councilor? If the asshole
wants to see some bitch let him see here.” It was the horridly
scratchy voice of a wretchedly thin and wrinkled woman. Her nose
hooked through the doorway, curious and vicious like some predator
bird. She stood in the open threshold with her hands on her hips
and tapped her foot at the young man like an impatient girlfriend
trying to extract a boozing fiancee from a bar. The blonde boy
looked at me almost sadly and said, “All the girls are back now,
if you’d like to go have a look? If you don’t see your favorite in
there now, I don’t know what to tell you.” Acting like he’d washed
his hands of the situation the aryan haired boy walked out. I
followed him and the evil woman out into the pool area. Somewhere
outside, the sound of a train snaked through the comatose city and
I couldn’t imagine who might be driving it or why?

But this time, and almost as soon as I walked through the door, I
could see Anneliese’s luminous and original blonde hair sticking
out among the crowd like a golden coin in a pile of grimy pennies.

“That one,” I said, finally as cold as them. “The blonde.”

Neither of my hosts answered, but almost as soon as the words left
my mouth, the spindly silver appendage pulled Anneliese’s naked
body from the putrid water. Her hairy legs, which had not been
shaved in weeks, shined and dripped the brownish liquid. Her head
lolled groggily and rolled on her shoulders to one side. Just from
that fleeting glance it looked as if she’d gained a little weight.
Then she was out of view, pulled by the pod’s tentacle over a
block wall and into a separate room. Evidently, the top rows of
the blocks had been removed to accommodate the awe inspiring pod.

“Go through there.” The horrid woman said. I quickly obliged,
almost slipping on the slimy tiles. As I hurried past the pool a
second girl was troweled out. Her dark skin looking almost purple
in the dusky light which continued, duller now, to streak through
the high windows. Thick varicose veins were noticeable on her legs
as she also went over the wall.

The door to this new room had been removed and upon entering I
spied a sentry; An aging man with graying sideburns sitting on a
bar stool around a high table. Blurry tattoos of a long defeated
and disbanded navy were sketched onto his forearms. The shotgun
was lying across that stand next to a half empty pint of Jim Beam.
Thick cigar smoke was slowly escaping from the doorway. He looked
at me without much interest, exhaled a smoky mouthful of his
pungent cuban, nodded and said,

“Fourth stall.”

I looked to my right down a long hallway. Where freckles of light
sprinkled onto the partially busted tiles. Evidently this was
where the shower or changing room had once been located. As I got
to the first stall, I could now see that a spotted and stained
mattress had been dumped over the shower’s drain. A naked girl was
laying on top of it, her eyes looked empty, as if she had a bullet
lodged in her brain. A second girl, who was fully clothed in a
long over coat, lay on the mattress with her, hugging her, tears
streaming from both their eyes. She looked enough like the naked
girl to be her sister. I paused momentarily, lifting my hand as if
to help them or say something. But before I could, I felt the butt
of the rifle in the small of my back. It was the grizzled guard
ushering me along. “Fourth stall.” He said, his casual tone and
countenance replaced by a meaner demeanor.

The second stall was empty, with only a blackened mattress laying
sideways under a torn shower curtain.

The third stall had no shower curtain and I could see the wide
back of a rotund man. Thick doodles of dark hair were scribbled
all over his shoulder blades. He was bent over the woman from the
pool, the one with the varicose veins. He looked up as I past, a
beard which had similar circular whiskers as the ones growing from
his back covered his puffy face. Spit flew from his mouth as he
addressed me.

“She used to be a stuck up bitch.” He rationalized. “I used to see
her every day at First National… She wouldn’t even say hi to
me.” I said nothing as I walked past. A dried condom was splotched
onto the wall.

Anneliese was in the fourth stall, laying half in and half out of
the shower. They must have ran out of mattresses, since her legs
were curled under her limp body and her blonde hair lolled wet
against the raised step at the entrance to the stall. I slowly got
around behind her and cradled her head in my lap. The strands of
her locks felt waxy or coated over, like sludge or seaweed. Her
mindless eyes had thick purple crescents  underneath them and her
lips were slit with miniscule cuts and small pin head sized cold
sores. She was still soaked and the septic water from the pool
seeped onto my pants and shirt. These girls and woman had been
conditioned somehow and she could not talk. A sizzle of slobber
ran from the slack corner of her mouth.

I closed my eyes and tried to take in her scent. But I could not
overcome the fecal reek of the Municipal Pool. A white fire like
loud static spread across my brain like windy flames across dry
grass. My mind nearly exploded from the sadness and I prayed that
I would go mad so I could abandon all rational thought. In my
grief my eyes ran down over Anneliese’s violated body. That’s when
I noticed just a hint of mint green branching out from underneath
her arm pits. Her nipples were… crooked almost, one higher than
the other, like a shirt which had been put on inside out. Her
fingers were thicker, not as dainty as I remembered. The toes on
her feet were more rectangular, her biceps more muscular. Her legs
were obviously shorter then I recalled and that’s when I realized;
It was Anneliese’s head and face but it was not her body.

“Ohhh Ohhh,” I said and stared high up at the block walls, salty
tears stunning my lips. I reached into the side pocket of my pants
and pulled out the knife. The Confederate Generals stared at me
from its commemorative handle. Without thinking another thought I
plunged the blade into the chest of whoever’s body that it was.
Anneliese’s face groaned weakly and, for a diced instant, I
thought that I could see a gleam. A glimpse of some recognition
either of or by her: The real Anneliese. Then the eyes waxed over
again and half closed while all the air escaped through the hole I
had made in her transplanted chest. Like all of the air scuttling
out from the inside of a balloon.

END.

Tom Hamilton is an Irish Traveler. He currently lives with the clan
known as the Mississippi Travelers. His work has appeared in over one
hundred publications around the world. Including the Rockford Review,
Red Wheelbarrow Literary Journal and Sinister City among many others.
He has two poetry chapbooks published. ‘The Rain Draw Bridge’ from
‘Alpha Beat Press’ and ‘The Last Days of My Teeth’ from ‘Budget Press’
His short story ‘The Spider’ is available as an E-book from ‘Curious
Volumes Publishing’ Along with his wife Mary Theresa and their three
small daughters, Tiffany, Hope and Catalina, he lives in Rockford IL
USA.

Once I had the dough kneaded out into a circle, Isaac strolled over and draped a cheese stick onto the bottom half. This created a mouth for our head. There I promptly applied two pepperonis for the eyes and even gave it some brows by carefully placing two banana peppers over those slices. We looked at our Frankenstein and then at each other before bursting out laughing. Big Barry came back from the register. For the last several minutes he’d been kissing the ass of some old woman who had complained about something alien to fine food being embedded in her ham and cheese. He had had to cough up a refund and, if this didn’t put him in a sour enough mood as it were, now he heard us snickering.

“Knock it off assholes!” He growled through his grimace. “It’s almost time for the buffet crowd.” Isaac turned back towards the ovens and, when he was sure that they shielded him from Big Barry, gave the fat man a mock drill sergeant’s salute. I disassembled the face and quickly went about the business of properly placing the raw ingredients, which we were going to meld into a sausage pizza, onto the cool dough. Isaac went back to prepping the ovens. What else could we do? The fat prick was still our boss and I needed the money for university – unless I wanted to languish in the kitchens of Pizza Gut for the rest of my career, that is.

With us checked back into line Big Barry hurried out towards the register, his corpulent belly hidden underneath a black apron. Isaac made his hands into a cross bar and, using my index finger, I kicked a field goal with the last round sausage left on the chopping board. With the back of his throat, Isaac breathed out the roar of an imaginary crowd.

After that however, we knocked off most of the bullshit and prepared to shuffle out the pies for the lunch crowd. Yet, surprisingly few customers rotated through those usually hectic doors. Plus, all the drivers had went out but none seemed to be coming came back in. After a couple of hours of this Big Barry came back to the back and said, “Where and the hell have all these slackers drove off to?”

2.

I guess that I’ve always been in love with Theresa. Hell, every boy at our school was enchanted with her. You’d have to be a faggot not to be. I even knew a couple of girls who thought that they were in love with her and they weren’t even lesbians. She caught me looking at her while she was taking some simpleton’s order, the slashed splashes of her blonde hair framing her docile Cancun blue eyes. But she only smiled innocently; a carefree smile full of idealistic teenaged happiness and hope. My heart tilted like the old, sometimes broken, pinball machine that sat half lit in one cluttered corner of the restaurant.

But I knew that there was a lot of competition in those 12th grade hallways and that most of these predators were only sniffing around for the keys to Theresa’s chastity belt: meat-headed ivory-smiled jocks or droop-jeaned wigger rappers all spitting their repulsive, street lingo-filled spiels at her. And the prettiest ones always seemed to believe them. I’d known a few womanizers in my day and I had always been struck by their sheer heartlessness: at the quickness with which they’d disposed of their conquests. Like a two of clubs being placed onto the discard pile or a sudsy prophylactic wrapped in Cottonelle being socked into a trash pail.

I didn’t want to see this happen to Theresa, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I didn’t have any claim to her and some of these pricks looked like movie stars for God’s sakes. Sure she knew that I was alive. She also knew that the night crawlers at the bait shop across the street were alive, but that didn’t mean that she was going to french kiss one.

3.

So most of the time Isaac and I just goofed off by the big black ovens. At least as much as Big Barry would allow us to. During lax moments I would try and spy Theresa refilling customer’s drinks or setting out the silverware. But the dining room was dark and we were not yet a smoke free establishment. So trying to catch a glimpse of her was like searching for a bright star through early morning fog or passing clouds.

Isaac was from Westin, which was the proverbial and literal other side of the tracks. All I’d ever heard about the black kids from over there was how much that they hated us lily-white preppies that were being primed for university. But Isaac wasn’t about anything like that.

He was a tall, muscular kid with a face that still had not lost its baby fat somehow. A very soft face. One day I told him that he looked like ‘Fat Albert’ and it was no joke, there was a fierce likeness. But he only laughed and barked, “Hey, Hey, Hey!” with a perfect ‘Cosby’ growl. Evidently, he’d heard that comparison a hundred times.

Joking around with Isaac made the monotonous work day pass by a lot faster and, looking back on the whole thing now, I’d have to say that I loved Isaac too. Not like no faggots or nothing, but like one friend loves another. It’s just like John Cougar Mellencamp lamented from the tabletop jukeboxes which still worked in most of the booths: “Can’t tell your best buddy that you love him.”

4.

Sure it was pretty fuckin’ slow, but it was Monday. Yet when no one, and I mean no one, showed up for the six p.m. supper rush, it became obvious that something was amiss. Finally at 7:15, Isaac said, “I don’t believe it, here comes a live one.” As in all the Pizza Guts in our area- a sort of thin red contact paper had been baked onto all of the entrance doors. So all we could see was the outline of a stumbling form approach the threshold. The form bounced off of the door and then staggered over to the first window. We didn’t really get a clear look at its face, it just looked like someone with a five gallon bucket of red paint poured over their head. But when the arm came up and, with a motion like a windshield wiper, started smearing blood all over the tinted glass, Theresa screamed and staggered backwards. Whoever or whatever it was then wondered away.

Big Barry had seen enough. He hastily spun the bolt lock and said, “Call 9-1-1.” I obliged, but some strange message played back out the receiver: something about all emergency frequencies currently being disabled or some such bullshit. I repeated the recording to my portly boss but he still seemed hopeful. “No,” He said. “When you dial 9-1-1 they… the cops they have to call you back.” He paused, one grimy paw wiping white powder onto his apron, his eyes darting.

I had my doubts but I only shrugged. I didn’t feel like arguing with him, besides, I didn’t want to alarm Theresa any further. She was already sitting ghost eyed in one of the booths, her blank order pad resting on her delicate, blue jean covered knees.

Voices of violence rose from the incoming night outside. Hearing those gruesome calls prompted us to turn off the lights, save for the store room bulb back behind the ovens. We drew all the curtains closed as Isaac took the long pilot lighter and went around to each table firing up those trademark ‘Pizza Gut’ candles so we wouldn’t be in total darkness; you know those ones which look like the bottom of a pirate’s wine bottle covered in maroon fishnet. We tried the phone lines incessantly but were rebuffed by the same monotone, taped recital. We heard a boom that sounded like a car backfiring somewhere out on the road. And then later some scuffling noises, maybe the stampede of running feet. We were afraid to put our faces in the windows to find out, but it seemed as if some sort of war was going on outside.

We had no access to any media outlets. We weren’t allowed to have a radio on the job. Big Barry had made sure of that; he said the music took our minds off of the work at hand and also that it discouraged the customers from plugging quarters into the juke boxes. The television had been broken ever since I had started working there; it sat high in one shrouded corner like a detached retina.

Of course we continued to try and call the police until I thought that the rotary was going to break off of the phone. After this proved futile we all took turns trying to call home: Isaac buzzed his mom but received no reply. Theresa was extremely worried about her little sister and she listened, her picturesque face fraught with worry, as it rang incessantly. Big Barry called God knows who in vain and I may as well have been dialing the number of an old phone booth outside an abandoned, desert gas station.

We sat for several hours in the cozy glow of the candles, all of us speculating in our minds about what in the Hell could be going on outside, but no one voiced his or her opinion. I chivalrously offered to give Theresa a ride home, but she only shook her head no with a near catatonic stare and despite my bravado I was silently relieved.

“I don’t care about my mom,” She said out of nowhere. “but my little sister’s out there.”

“You shouldn’t say that.” I said, not really knowing why I was daring to correct her. “I’m sure your mom is not that bad, and that her and your little sister are both going to be o.k.”

“Hmm, she doesn’t even keep food in the house.” She countered.

At our regular closing time things seemed to have quieted down a bit outside and Big Barry announced that he was going to try and make it home. I thought this was a bad idea but I did not convey my concern: if the overbearing fat bastard wanted to get himself killed that was his business. He told us that we could have the rest of the night off, (Which was damn sporting of him, since it was already past time to clock out and there was some sort of apocalypse going on outside.) and that he was sure that the authorities would have order restored soon, certainly by tomorrow. Henceforth we would all be expected to be there at 9 a.m. the next morning as usual. Hiding my disdain I told him that I would be. Theresa said nothing. Isaac wisecracked that he’d probably still be here if and when Big Barry returned for the regularly scheduled opening. The fat man uncharacteristically ignored the clever comment, for he was not his usual rude self. He looked shaken and disheveled.

“9 O clock… sharp.” He repeated before exiting through the rear kitchen door. Which was not far from where he always parked his 1979, designer Lincoln Continental; it was the Bill Blass. He looked both ways fearfully before he went, like a man about to cross a busy intersection, and I almost felt sorry for him. I swiveled the bolt locked behind him before dropping the long wooden reinforcement bar into the steel support arms. We never saw him again.

5.

At 5 a.m. the streets were empty. After Big Barry had departed the pace of the melee outside quickened. Shambling subjects skulked across the parking lot as Isaac and I peeked out the tinted windows sideways. After a large chunk of something hit the side of the building with a loud bang, Isaac was startled into action. He almost tripped over one of the tables.

“Help me with this mother fucker man.” He barked out in frustration. I quickly got to my feet and we reinforced the entrances by turning the tables over and covering the doors. Miraculously, Isaac found a nail gun in the store room and we shot them into place with those long bolts. After we were satisfied with our wares we plopped down in one of the remaining booths, panting like street dogs in the summer.

Outside the carnage continued. A huge scrum of individuals, all their arms and legs entangled within, danced across the asphalt in a flailing circle, feral dogs snapping at their calves and unwanted cats digging angry claws into the backs of their tattered clothes. The mad people punched and kicked into their own moving pile senselessly until they were out of view. We had jumped up to peek around the edges of the curtains to watch them. Now we simultaneously sat back down. “What the Hell man?” Isaac said.

6.

As the days passed by, I felt smelly and the air inside the restaurant seemed to grow stale from the inactivity. We sure as hell didn’t have to worry about food: we had enough pizza ingredients to feed a battalion. Plus salads, sandwiches, lasagna and so forth. Though I must admit that my appetite was lacking. There were no showers of course, but the restrooms were sufficient for cat baths. A lack of deodorant, toothpaste and a laundered change of clothes however, prevented us from ever feeling really clean.

We were worried that perhaps some flipped out shadow would kill the electricity, but the lights just continued to glow. What few bulbs, that is, we allowed ourselves to switch on. During the day we made a conscience effort not to use any lights at all, save for perhaps the store room bulb which, we were confident, could not be seen from the outside. At night we’d just light the candles and sat them on the floor or underneath the booths. We wanted to give off the appearance, to anyone or anything who may be searching from the street, that the restaurant was closed or ideally that the franchise was even bankrupt, with all employees let go and the equipment long removed.

We didn’t really feel all that secure of course, but the number one criteria which we had to bank on, our one baseless hope, was that no phantom, fiend nor freak had attempted to breach or break in to the establishment.

Being in this close a proximity to Theresa for that prolonged of a period, you would have thought that some of her luster would have worn off by now or at least that she would have been relegated to the status of a mere human being. But the opposite happened: I was helplessly smitten and overwhelmingly star struck by her, and, even though she ate little, slept less and wept almost every waking moment, her electrifying beauty had not lost any of the sharpness off its pristine edge.

Watching her walk by was like a thrilling punch to the chest. Even the mere twist of her artful feminine body inside of her modest clothes gave off the effect of a shot of adrenaline to the onlooker. That attire never seemed to wrinkle or stain even after being worn for days. One night she washed her feet, lavender nail polish still glowing on her alluring toenails, in a lasagna pan. I had to pour a pitcher of ice water over my balls in the black-rimmed sink, then hated myself for lusting after her in such a callous and impure fashion. Suddenly I felt no better than the womanizers, except that they could get girls like Theresa and I couldn’t.

Still I vigilantly tried to keep her calm, often standing guard over the makeshift bed which I had made for her underneath the center booth at the front of the restaurant. When I encouraged her to eat she asked, “Why are you being so nice to me?” (Aren’t all the boys nice to you?) But no, I bit that one back. “We’re co-workers.” I said instead.

“Well thank you.” She frowned kindly.

“You’re welcome.” I said, smiling and lifting my eyebrows, like me falling all over her wasn’t any big deal.

A little while later I came back with my special: an Alfredo and Mostaccoli mix. It was great but it wasn’t like I had cooked it from scratch. I mean the Pizza Gut dog food is fantastic anyway. Even though I had no choice but to scarf it down hour after hour, I still hadn’t gotten sick of it.

“This is my special recipe,” I quipped. “all the way from the boot of Italy.” This made me wonder what in the world a real Italian chef would say in the wake of this processed, tomato sauce-laced pulp.

She smiled a little, but it was a pain wracked grin and she could only nibble a couple of bites down.

“Do you think Barry made it?” She asked naively.

(Christ I sure as fuckin’ well hope not! anyway, no fuckin’ way.) “Yeah.” Was what I really said, “I’m sure he told the cops that we’re in here. They’re probably pretty busy with what’s goin’ on and all. But I’m sure they’ll get to us pretty soon.” This false view would have to be classified as optimistic in the extreme.

“What do you think’s going on out there?” She asked, her bright face tight with worry.

“I don’t know,” I shook my head. “But you know with the army and everything, they’ll get to us.”

She looked at the floor and seemed to grow sad. “You know,” She began, “what I said about my mother the other day, I didn’t mean it… I mean… I hope she’s okay.”

I shrugged. “We’re all very tired.” I said simply.

Suddenly she seemed to crumple up, like a flower in a fast-forwarded video frame curdling in the cold. She wept into my chest. And although her closeness felt exciting to me, I could feel her sadness soaking into me as the tears saturated my clothes. The cadence of her heartbeat throbbed like my will to live. And it suddenly occurred to me that this disaster, or whatever it was, was almost like a lucky break for me. All my competition was now dead or at the very least running for their lives. I would have stayed in that lifeless restaurant with her forever. It’s like I had always known: if only she would get to know me I could make her fall in love with me, and, as it turned out, that’s exactly what happened.

7.

After that, the whole romance just sort of came off like a miracle. Everything that I said somehow came out just right. Or at least that’s the way it seemed to strike her. My tongue, which had always been thick and clumsy in the presence of the worldwide sorority of the softer sex, had suddenly turned as silver as a rare nickel. I was as competent and astute as the womanizers, only the words which came from me were genuine, while their false phrases were practiced and counterfeit. I felt like she knew this and was refreshed by it even. Perhaps I hadn’t given here enough credit when it came to protecting herself from such monsters.

I realized, of course that she had no choice but to talk to me, but I could see something different in her gaze: a recognition of a goodness within me that she would never have known about otherwise: a longing glare usually reserved for the most popular and athletic heartthrobs at our school. Sure, a trillion fuckers had always hit on her but she had no official boyfriend. So, in lieu of the absence of our classmates, I confidently stepped into those comfortable shoes. We were thrown together in a haphazard yet somehow spectacular fashion. Like two Indians in an arranged arrowhead marriage or two Celtic gypsies jumping over a matrimonial broom.

I admit, in the normal nuances of our high school homerooms this might have felt strained or strange. But here, in the greenhouse atmosphere of our incarceration, our love grew like some bizarre and brilliant new species of flower. And then, as a speeding August rain slammed against the red roof of the restaurant, her irises shifting down, cascading within their own pools, smitten with permission, we kissed serenely, the struggling dance of the candles painting their pale beige ballet underneath our chins. And a joy poured out of us as honest as a shooting star: a comet that we were too afraid to search the night sky for.

8.

“What’s that?” Isaac said, and I saw that he was straining to look a great distance out beyond the parking lot. I followed that gaze past the bait shop and several scarred foundries, over into the bleak prairies beyond the edge of town. We shaded our eyes from the rippling effects of the sun.

Of course we didn’t have any binoculars or anything like that, we had gotten lucky with the nail gun, but you could forget about any firearms or anything else that might be of some practical use – unless of course you wanted to consider a butter knife or a pizza cutter a deadly weapon.

“What?” I asked, “Where?”

“There!” He exclaimed, and pointed between two deceased factories to a far off field. On the very last rim of the horizon, right before the land disappeared on the cusp of the firmament, I could barely see what looked like an endless herd of cattle or buffalo. A great mass on the tip of the plains. I shook my head.

“I don’t know.” I pulled my ‘Pizza Gut’ cap down tight over my eyes and refocused. No, these forms were taller than cattle, like bears in a mosh pit, but that just couldn’t be, you’d need two hundred thousand creatures to create a mass that large. It was like the awesome rows of an endless army and yet… some smaller dots moved above the crowd, like animalistic bodies being passed or giant wolverines walking on each other’s shoulders. Nah – it just couldn’t be, and it was still more than five football fields away. Making it impossible to tell what we may be looking at from this distance. Then I thought I heard a scream and it was like a thousand arms had come from the crowd and reached for the sun – like eighty thousand Muslims rising from their rugs in a prayer. I stole a sideways glance at Isaac, and ascertained that he too had heard the scream. “I don’t know?” I said again.

9.

I had gotten into the habit of waking up about 5 a.m. Although I hadn’t really been sleeping in any kind of traditional sense; it was more like a fear-fueled, nightmare-riddled trance. Full of colorless, steeped towers which were only trumped by the bleak reality of the actual situation whenever I moaned awake.

Wiping the blackness off of my face, I stumbled towards the restroom. One of the fishnet candles sat on the sink and it had died down to a barely visible waver. I knew where the urinal was however and I’d long been broke of the ritual of snapping on the light. As the piss hit the depreciating mint, my thoughts traveled back to the mass on the horizon that Isaac had noticed earlier that day. After the sun had dipped, we were no longer able to follow its progress, if indeed it had made any progression or regression at all, and we had gotten nowhere as far as trying to figure out what it might be.

I zipped up and sleepily scratched the back of my head. That’s when I realized that I had gone to sleep with my cap still on. The sun would be up in forty-five minutes or so and at that point I would be able to see if the mass was still there. I kneed my way into the booth and pulled back the curtain.

I thought that I had known moments of fear before in my life: when my Indian motorcycle went airborn and I knew that I was going to come down hard: when I had shared my mother’s darkened house with a burglar, my sweaty palm clutching a pocket knife as I knelt in a clothes packed closet: when three gang bangers surrounded me and threatened to beat out the brains that I needed for university. But the sight I beheld now gave me a far more morbid start: There was a white face washed with streaks of gray not five centimeters from the glass. The eyes glowing dirtily like two grimy pennies recovered from a mud puddle. They did not appear to focus on me, but rather they were muddled, like the stare of a sleepwalker spying a dread tainted dream instead of what was actually in front of him. As if this looker had seen something so scarring that he could never use those seared irises ever again. As if his vision just couldn’t reconnect to the hard surfaces of the real world. And this reaper, this phantom was not alone: for there were thousands, maybe even millions, of his kind right behind him. They were packed shoulder to shoulder throughout the parking lot and beyond- as far as my yellowed eyes could see. As tight as cattle in a stockade or those poor people the nazis had shuffled into those boxcars. They did not attempt to break in. For they really didn’t appear to be conscious at all as they swayed softly back and forth in the early morning drizzle like worshippers of some pseudo-Kentucky hillbilly, snake religion, the slime from their grimy bodies and the acid rain mingled to drip off of their brindled chins.

I retreated in a stumble back from the window. I thought that my chest would cave in or that my chin would crack right off from the terror, as it ripped through my arms and legs with the force and effect of a heart attack. I heard a sound like a cannonball as I defecated into my drawers and fell into a heap with my back to the iron colored salad bar. Then, another thought ravaged my brain and I scurried to the opposite side of the restaurant, almost stumbling over Isaac’s sleeping form. I slid into a new booth and slowly reached for the curtain. As if I could change what was behind it depending on which angle I approached it from.

I saw the back of a woman or maybe a girl’s head, her black mane smashed against the window like a squashed spider’s web. I couldn’t really see behind her, but I could just sense from her body’s odd angle that there was a thousand of her kind pressing against her, and now I could see them, all tangled in each other’s limbs like some septic vision of the pits of Hades. Satisfied that there was no chance of escape, I was just about to drop the curtain, when the girl’s head whirled around suddenly, like a sleeper coming up from a nightmare. She bared her brittle, orange teeth and barked at me as wild as a wolf. I stumbled backwards as the curtain fell across her ghastly face and rode one of the tables to the floor. I bit back a scream like someone trying to hold in a wave of vomit. But the noise from my tumble woke Isaac anyway. He danced around throwing punches at his own imaginary enemies like Mohammed Ali.

“What… what the hell is it man?” He stammered still half asleep.

“Nothin’,” I explained. “I just had a nightmare man, everything’s fine. Go on back to sleep.”

“Shit man,” He ran his fingers through his short hair. “You really had me scared. I thought that somethin’ was goin’ on out in the street.” He made a move towards the window.

“NO NO.” I implored while making my palm into a stop sign. “I just looked out man, everything’s cool, it’s alright. I got this. I got it.”

Even though I surmised that none of us would last the forty-five minutes until dawn, I was still desperate to save my friend and my beautiful sweetheart from the misery of knowing what was in store for them behind the red curtains until the absolute last instant. Why inject any more trepidation into their lungs than they’d already been living with? Why cause them to suffer as I was suffering?

“I got it man, I’m on guard duty. Go on back to bed.” Like there was anything the ‘guard’ could have done about it when three hundred thousand walking ghouls tried to gain access to the restaurant.

“Alright man.” Isaac said. “That’s cool. I’ll relieve you in a couple of hours.” With that he pulled a table cloth over himself and laid his head on some piled up ‘Pizza Guts pizza to go’ T-shirts.

“Fair enough,” I said as he quickly retreated into a world of dreams; a world we were all far better off visiting nowadays. I dumped myself down by the salad bar, a shiver overtaking my entire skeleton as if I were sitting outside, naked, in subzero temperatures.

Thank God the hubbub had not awoken Theresa: she lay as peaceful as a princess in a fairy tale, her closed eyelids flushed with purple, even though her make-up had long faded. Some girls needed cosmetics, even the very pretty ones. It was as if their striped down faces were deflated somehow, discolored or shrunken without this protection. But Theresa did not fall into that category: even here, in the vicious raw of a savage morning, perhaps our last ever, she glowed like a pageant queen.

I was afraid to look out the window anymore. So I just sat there with my back to the salad bar, shaking and looking around the restaurant. Expecting to hear glass break at any second. I thought about the panels which made up the pizza joint. They would fold back like cardboard when a mob that size pressed their weight against it. Especially since they were probably not worried about the ones in front getting trampled and so forth.

So this was it: the end of my life. Jesus, I hadn’t even gotten to have sex with Theresa. There was so much that I wanted to do: I had been looking so forward to university. I wanted to learn, but I also wanted to party in the frat-houses: I wanted to get hammered at the football games: I wanted to pinch the cheerleader’s asses. This was the United States for Christ’s sake. I had dreams; I wanted to write the great American novel.

Sometime after six, the climbing sunlight began to slant through the curtains. I could hear nothing outside and the only noise in the dining room was Isaac’s heaving and Theresa’s delicate breath. When nothing else happened for another twenty minutes I dragged myself towards the curtain. After another five minutes of cowering in the booth I somehow mustered the courage to brave a peek. What I saw next was a miracle in its own right: there was no one outside: only an empty parking lot with stained papers and crap colored wrappers flushing through an emptier wind. The streets and thoroughfares adjacent to the restaurant were also deserted. Not one Godless form in sight.

Had it all been some horrid, twisted nightmare, No. I’d had some bad dreams before but…

10.

After that we wad some sort of peace for awhile. I kept expecting the ghastly figures to reposition themselves outside. I must have looked out the window every forty five seconds, but they didn’t return, at least not so far.

Theresa talked about her little sister a lot and about what we would do once we got out. She said that she had seen a TV special about the country of Iceland. According to that program it wasn’t cold there at all. Turns out the first Viking explorers had only christened it Iceland to discourage various other squatters from coming ashore. Imploring other plunderers to bypass it for neighboring Greenland; which actually was as frigid as hell.

She thought that maybe we could rescue her little sister and then head there. I agreed with this wholeheartedly, even though I knew that it wasn’t in the least bit feasible. We’d be lucky to get outside and get a car started, let alone drive halfway across the country to a dock. And once there how would we get a boat or a plane? How would we know how to drive either one? How did we know that Iceland wasn’t affected by the crises? I didn’t even know where Iceland was on the globe for Christ’s sakes. But I let her have her dream, why spoil it? If she wanted to go to Iceland, Iceland it was.

Isaac meanwhile was boxing his own demons. As Theresa and I slow danced to the scratchy ballads on the old jukes, ( After not seeing a soul out the window for a couple of weeks, we’d gotten confident enough to let the slower songs play on a very low volume ) Isaac glanced up from his mop. He was still performing his daily tasks, either out of unbreakable force of habit or a desperate attempt at normalcy. His face looked troubled and drawn which, given this instance, was not really a revelation, and yet, I sensed that something else was bothering him. When Theresa went to do her girly thing in the restroom I walked across the freshly mopped tiles.

“What’s wrong man?” I asked him.

“Oh,” He smiled weakly. “I’m fine, I’m real glad for you and Theresa, I know that’s what you wanted.”

I nodded and grabbed a couple of tinted red plastic glasses from the drink bar. I shot us a couple of Pepsi’s and said. “C’mon, let’s take a break bro’.”

He nodded and we slid into a booth.

“Talk to me man.” I implored.

He slunk out from what had been a dumpy posture and sat up straight. “Did I ever tell you I have a girlfriend man? Or maybe I should say… had.” I was shocked. “No.” I answered, taken aback.

He nodded. “Yeah, she pretty cool.” He reached for his wallet and took out a tattered photograph; a likeness of a light skinned black girl who was standing with some children and a rotund clown.

“Jesus,” I said staring into her coffee colored irises. She’s a fuckin’… She’s beautiful man.”

“Yeah…” He nodded, looking sadder yet. “She pregnant man.” I took a deep breath, tried to put on a fake brave face, decided I couldn’t, and whistled a sigh.

“Jesus.” I said.

“Yeah.” He countered.

“When’s she due?” I inquired, trying to find a silver lining. If she were do at a later date, maybe I could make him feel better by convincing him that we would all be free by then. Free of the Pizza Gut.

“Today.” He looked as if he might cry when he said it.

“Oh,” I handed him back the puppy-eared picture. I was out of answers. Not that I’d had very many in the first place.

“You know I never even knew my old man.” He said. I nodded my head yes. That much I had known.

“Well…” I tried again. “I mean this circumstance… it sure as Hell isn’t your fault.

“Shut up man!” He snapped suddenly, the fear, depression and repression had drove him to a breaking point. “What do you know about it man? You ever been poor man? I bet you never even been to Westin? Shit… assholes like you be walkin’ around in a polo shirt out to the university.”

“Isaac,” I said calmly, for I realized that it was his hopeless plight that was fueling his angry words. “there is no more university.”

He seemed to slump, as if defeated by the slow and constant pressure we were all under. “I’m sorry bro,” He said teary eyed. “You know I ain’t bout nothin’ like that.”

“I know that bro,” I said earnestly. “Don’t worry bout it.” Then after a few seconds I added. “Look, maybe it’s time we tried to get the hell out of here?”

He nodded in concurrence, still looking dejected and ill. Theresa returned from her winky-tinky and searched our faces.

“What are you guys talking about?” She asked.

“Iceland.” I answered.

11.

And we actually thought that we were, going to get out of there that is. The next morning we even began mapping out routes in our minds. What might be the fastest way to pick up Theresa’s little sister? Then the shortest shortcut over to Isaac’s girlfriend’s apartment, (What none of us mentioned of course, was that there was little incentive to believe that any of these people were alive.) all the way up to the time that we crossed the city limits. We even took one of the tablecloths and spread it out on the hard carpet near the register and began throwing supplies on there. Theresa dug out her backpack which she sometimes took to school and then to work. Isaac seemed to cheer up, there was some extra pep in his step. We were all very encouraged at the prospect of escape. And then we heard the most startling noise: louder than lightening striking a tin roof: like the sound of a hammer pounding on a ringside bell. We all jumped and followed the noise to its source; looking in the direction of the ringing telephone.

12.

We had forgotten that it was even there; conceded that it was as dead as the rest of the city. It rang three times, as clumsy as a clunking engine before any of us even moved. Finally, Theresa said,

“Maybe it’s the police? 9-1-1 always calls back right? Just like Barry said.”

But her eyes were wide with doubt. And she was shuffling her feet like someone trying to keep warm in a bitterly cold wind. I nodded, although I knew that her theory was bogus. Isaac’s eyes darted, like someone looking at a crime being committed, yet helpless to stop it. The phone continued to ring like a jackhammer down a morning street. I walked over and picked it up.

“Hello?” I asked tentatively,

“Hello yourself.” A smarmy voice returned my greeting.

“Who’s this?”

“Look,” The voice said, “I’m not going to waste your time answering questions which will ultimately be rendered meaningless. I’m simply going to say that I need for you to send the girl out.”

“What girl?” The moment I asked this I regretted using the word girl. For a new fear filled Theresa’s eyes and they got even wider, which I had not thought possible.

“Why Theresa, of course.”

I paused perplexed. Then I said,

“I can’t do that.”

But the voice didn’t grow angry or flustered, it only continued in a tone so cold that it was almost bureaucratic.

“Have you been paying attention to what’s going on outside?”

“Some of it.” I said, trying to hide the horror in my voice.

“Well, I am in control of that rabble. And I will unleash that fury upon you if you make me. But it would be easier on all parties involved, if you’d just send the girl out.”

Now it was time for me to shuffle my feet. “Look,” I said through a frown. “I don’t know who you think you are. But you couldn’t possibly control them.”

“Control who man?” Isaac broke in suddenly. “Who the hell is it?” I put up my hand, indicating that I could not talk.

“Oh, you don’t think so?” The voice spoke over Isaac.

“If you had that kind of power, why would you ask me? Why wouldn’t you just have them level this whole building?”

“Isaac held up his hands and asked no one, “Who’s them?” I covered the speaker and said, “PLEASE MAN!” I didn’t mean to snap at him but it was far too important that I hear the speaker.

“Given the power of my position,” The executive voice began, “That would be grandstanding. Besides, I don’t care about you or the southern Baptist. But the girl’s been selected – she has to come out. Or else I will impose a will which is not mine but yours, since you have the power of choice.”

As helpless as I was, I resented the insinuation that I had a choice about anything. “I don’t believe you.” I snapped.

“All right,” The voice said. “If you wouldn’t mind going to the front of the restaurant: the north side, I shall provide for you an example.”

I thought this over for a second. “Alright.” I said, “I’m going to put the phone down for a second.”

“By all means.”

I put the receiver down and zigzagged through the remaining tables towards the front window.

“What is man?… Where ya goin’?” Isaac pleaded, but I waved him off again. I pulled back a tiny fraction of the curtain, half expecting to see the army of menacing white faces once again. But the front parking lot was abandoned and there wasn’t a car on the road. For a second, I really wanted to believe that the voice was bluffing, or better yet, the cruelest of crank callers. But that’s when I noticed a large shadow, like a passing cloud only… utterly still, its huge body of shade holding in place on the ground.

This prompted me to look to the sky. And when I did I saw the most amazing and terrifying sight perhaps ever beheld by a human’s being’s retinas:

At first I thought that I was looking at a bird, albeit a much larger avian anomaly than was native to the modern skies. Then I thought that it was a cross, although the design itself was not as consequential as the sum of its parts; for up there in that magnesium hued sky, some two hundred and fifty feet or eight three yards from where I stared dumbfounded was those people, those dead people. Their bodies: scaly broken arms and decaying crooked legs all locked together in a solid yet writing mass. The limbs wrapped tight around each other like acrobats on a trapeze, only with no visible means to support their weight. Defying the laws of gravity and flight they were making the form of the cross; taking on the shape of the thunderbird. They even cooperated to work the mammoth wings. Yet as they exerted themselves to perform this, each member of the macabre team seemed to be looking directly into my eyes. Their eyes like the gaze inside a bull’s head as its neck is locked in the stocks of the abattoir stall.

I slowly backed away from the window, stifling a scream for the benefit of the others, though they would have had to see me blanch down to the color of the raw dough in the freezer.

“What is it?!” Isaac said with a fear so sharp that it was filled with pain. Theresa ran up to me and searched my eyes. She felt my brow like one does a child for fever. “It’s O.K.” I managed, nearly stumbling. Isaac clambered into the booth, but the monster must have been gone by now ( Or maybe I was the only one who could see it ) because he said,

“I don’t see anything?”

“It’s O.K.” I repeated, putting my hand over Theresa’s, before suddenly releasing it and walking back to the phone.

“Do you see?” The voice said. As if it knew I’d be convinced.

“Yes.” I said, but I didn’t know where I was. Like a revived boxer discovering that he’s just been knocked out.

“Then I expect you’ll be sending the girl out?” The voice tested its most confident tone yet; almost presidential.

From somewhere deep inside me, the last sliver of my courage rose up. “Never.” I whispered.

“I’m very sorry to hear that. Is that your final position?” The voice asked.

“I’m afraid so.” I answered. Not wanting to anger the voice, yet realizing that anything short of the answer it desired would anger it.

“Don’t be a fool man.” The voice’s composure seemed to crack for the first time. “Send the twat out and you and the nigger can eat pizza until you burst.”

I hung up.

“Who was that?” My fellow prisoners asked in unison.

But I could only shake my head no.

13.

We went through an odd three-day stretch where the sun did not rise, never mind blaze, but by now we were beyond being surprised by anything. This made me remember a prophecy that my grandmother had laid on me years before. She said that when God is finally disenchanted with his earth: with its breakdowns of the family unit: immorality, adultery, perversion of youth, faggots, lesbos, sodomites, transsexuals, blow job queens and kings, racy fashions, lack of charity, heartlessness, indifference, contentions, godlessness, lawlessness, pride in human knowledge, that he would exact a final judgment against his fools.

At this point a cross shall appear in the sky ( And I was pretty sure that I’d already seen the cross.) as a warning to all to repent. Then demons and evil spirits would be released from their bondage in Hades and permitted to roam the earth to do as they wish. Gruesome apparitions will dance across the sky. People will fold up and wither from sheer fright. Meteors will rain down onto the fields; cities will be swallowed up and digested by the center of the planet. Poisonous gasses will take the place of oxygen. And the shrieked lamentations of the sinners will be heard before their bodies burn out in the open like withered grass. And of course, the corpses would be ejected from their cracked and mud-caked caskets, to visit each door like some lethal census bureau.

There were several precautions one could take against this retribution of course: I think that they involved not looking or going outside: lighting blessed candles: sprinkling holy water around the windows and entrances; not answering to any visitors no matter how dear they were to your heart, etc, etc.

Of course we had no holy water, though I doubt that I would have had the initiative left to douse it around the thresholds in any case. We had all the candles that we needed. Though I doubt that they were blessed, however, by any authority higher than the Pizza Gut corporate office. We had looked out the windows until I thought that our eyes would pop out and had yet to be reduced to cinders by the light of God. Though at times, that ending would have probably sounded alright to us. As to not receiving any visitors we soon got a chance to test this axiom, the results so fearful that they made my gut burn cold.

Isaac was the first one to hear it. So distant and imperceptible at first, that it was scarcely noticeable.

“Is that a knock?” He asked, as he lifted his chin off of the palm of his hand. Now I could hear it too; it sounded like it was coming from the entrance door. I quickly peeked out the window, but could see nothing. Around this time Theresa jumped up and went into near hysterics.

“It’s Kelly!” She babbled, “It’s Kelly!” She ran over to the door and tried to pry at the long bolts with her bare and precious fingers with predictable non-results.

“Wait,” I tried to tell her, “Wait Theresa.” I looked out again and now I could see the scant figure of a little girl. She was wearing a hooded coat. And looked to me exactly like, I swear to God, little red riding hood. The string on the parka was drawn tight and her face could not be seen. Theresa continued to work at the bolts but made no progress.

“It’s Kelly,” She said thrilled. “let her in. Isaac help me.” Isaac got up but I motioned for him to sat back down.

“Theresa,” I said. “We can’t let anyone in here.”

She looked at me shocked. “What do you mean,” she said. “Of course we can, that’s Kelly.”

“No.” I said firmly, “We can’t.” She went kind of crazy then and began struggling against me. I grabbed her wrists as she tried to claw my face, quiet, tears of frustration sizzling down her smooth cheeks.

“Look Theresa,” I said. “Look.” I dragged her to the booth and made her look out the window.

It’s hard to describe what we saw next. The figure of the little girl just sort of folded up; or down into kind of an arachnid stance. An impossible angle for a human body to posture. As we watched frozen, the little girl walked up the side of the restaurant wall, like an insect does or a sticky legged lizard. Then she was mercifully out of sight. Theresa’s mouth gaped into a capitol O, I fidgeted her into a calming hug.

“Kelly?” She whispered in a weeping squelch. “Kelly,” Then she passed out.

“ssssshhhh…” I whispered in a low calming voice.

Isaac threw his hands up confused, “Who Kelly?” He asked. I looked around back past her stiff hair-do and told him.

“Her little sister.”

14.

I was so tired that my eyes burned. You wouldn’t think that someone could ever sleep again after seeing what I saw; knowing what I now knew. But exhaustion takes its toll and even the fear itself turns to some type of sleeping tonic. But your nerves are so on edge it’s like trying to snooze on the top of a telephone pole.

And that’s how it got: I didn’t know when I was asleep or when I was awake. I would be outside the restaurant; even though that was the one place where I was the most terrified to venture. I was being passed above the mob, silver hands, yellow nails. Then I was below the streets, in the ankle deep bile, the run off of the sewers. Where sketchy creatures, part human, part vermin, part death rubbed against me with sharp, bristly hairs before scuttling off with a splash through the stinking waters. Then I was in an abandoned lot. For some reason, I turned over an old piece of siding that was lying on the ground; where the balding grass had bleached down yellow from lack of sun, snakes with the faces of people slithered out. They screamed like startled women and side-winded off through the orange grass. Then I was inside a burned out building. There was a body lying on the ruined rug that had been cooked until it no longer had any relation to humanity. Yet somehow it was still writhing among the charcoaled sticks and stalks of the collapsed furniture. Its black hand reaching for my ankle, driven by a perverse and mysterious notion to get me. Then I was climbing the highest tree in the forest, I could almost feel the wetness of the moist leaves, hear the moans of the crowd on the ground, after me like a trapped raccoon. Then I was up again, back inside the restaurant. Theresa asking me when we were leaving, gesturing to the trivial objects we had placed on the tablecloth to take with us. But when I opened my mouth to answer, tears came out instead of words. And I cried like a child in front of my true love. And then she cried, slapping me in the face, over and over, seeing my true helplessness; seeing my weakness. Then my head hurt, like I had smashed it against concrete, and I was in the air, I was part of the bird. My face hot and tortured held to the sun. My mind kidnapped by the totalitarianism: inside the pacing packs of the animated grave dwellers. And I answered to the angel; his face sharp and beautiful. And he told me the world was evil and that it was ending. And that only a few hundred thousand had been selected. And I thanked him for saving me. But he only shook his head no. And his voice was so cold, like a bill collector on the telephone and he said, “No my son, you do not understand, YOU… HAVE… NOT… BEEN… SELECTED…”

And now I really was awake. Isaac was crying roughly like a man does when he can’t hold back the tears. “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck,” He kept saying over and over. Theresa was surprisingly calm. She sat in the last table standing and mouthed silent prayers while keeping time on a purple, little girl’s rosary.

Before I even pulled the curtain back I knew what it was going to look like outside. An orgy of writing bodies, squirming like worms in a carton of dirt. Just as I looked out, they all stopped gyrating and got up off of the ground. Now they stood silently, looking at my position with eyes as bright as marbles. Some of them were nude, others were literally decomposing, naked of flesh. There was no mistaking what this grim army’s mission was to be.

A ways behind this throng, there was a boom truck: you know one of those trucks with the bucket like for working on power lines. There was a man standing inside the basket. He had no shirt on, revealing a marvelous physique. His hair was blonde and his face was exceedingly handsome. He also seemed to be looking right at me. From somewhere, he produced a cell phone. Just then he pointed at me, our phone began its horrific, jangling at once. No one even thought about moving to answer it. I felt my face shrivel up from the terror. Like a Coke can in a campfire. There was something on the man’s back; something crawling above his shoulders like a little white animal. But no… it was not separate from his being and now I realized that it was furry wings rising above his head; huge wings, though I could not judge the scale or the span since they were still partially folded. And I began to laugh. Isaac and Theresa could not even hear me from their own terror trances. But still I laughed. “Jesus Christ.” I spat out loud. “An angel with a fuckin’ cell phone?!”

Epilogue

The ham and cheese tasted pretty good. I really like to dip mine into ranch; chase it all with a taste of Pepsi. There was still some pop left in the machine believe it or not; Barry, that fat fuck, must have filled the whole God damned thing up right before he left. There was plenty of pizza left too for that matter. But Isaac had always been the main pizza chef around here, so with him gone, I really didn’t feel like putting in the effort. Besides, I couldn’t eat a whole pizza by myself and it just seemed like such a waste. Hell, nowadays I couldn’t even eat half a sandwich by myself.

Isaac had assisted me in what had to be done. After that he said that he just couldn’t stay around here and that we should never talk about it again. He also said that, “Since it had all gone down so bad.” he now needed to see his girlfriend and her assumed new baby all the more. I didn’t say very much back. I mumbled something about not blaming him and all that. He did not ask me to come along, but even before then I knew that there was now a permanent rift between us: he resented my cowardice and, what was even worse, he resented the cowardice that he had shown to a lesser degree in going along with me.

Anyway, we wrapped him up some food inside Theresa’s backpack. I knew that he was not going to find what he was looking for; that in all likelihood his girlfriend and her offspring were as dead as vampires, that is: dead but still trucking around. I didn’t bother to say this however. It wouldn’t exactly be like wishing someone good luck to tell them something like that. So we just shook hands at the door, even though we both knew that our friendship was destroyed forever. And he strode without turning back across the abandoned parking lot, heading in the general direction of Westin.

When I was alone there were no reasons left to hold back the tears; and they came like rain from a green cloud too dark to do anything else except release the storm. I didn’t think or say to myself, “What have I done?” or anything that dramatic. I had known what had to be done and, left with no choice, I had done it.

Oh sure I could still see Theresa’s face. Who could ever forget a face that beautiful: big and innocent like a baby fawn in a cartoon. She looked so happy when I kissed her awake. And peaceful, for the first time in I don’t know how long.

“Are we getting out of here?” She said, smile beaming through her fading sleepiness.

“Sort of?” I said with a sick grin pasted onto my red faced exhaustion.

“What do you mean?” She asked, her face as trusting as an infant’s.

“Well,” I answered. “You are.” She almost bit the duct tape as I lifted it up to her mouth. As if I had playfully offered her a snack. She must not have realized what was truly going down until the adhesive sealed her lips shut. And Isaac simultaneously roped her feet together with some box cord we had found in the store room. Once he tied her hands behind her back I think that the reality of what was happening to her finally started to sink in. Although I’m not sure that she ever understood the reasoning behind it. I’m not sure I do.

She began to buck and kick as we lifted her up and her eyes filled with a purple panic and the wetness of sadness. We carried her to the door where we had removed the long bolts and sat aside the table.

“It’s all right Theresa,” I pleaded. “The angel, he gave me his word, you’ve been selected.” This didn’t seem to calm her. I don’t think it would have been much consolation to me either, had I been in her situation. As we got her through the door, where the crowd of cadavers had dispersed after my second and final phone conversation with the angel, we saw that the parking lot was clear once again. We sat her next to a pot hole which a gypsy had repaired for Big Barry the previous spring. But whatever the gypsy had repaired it with was long gone and the hole gaped once again. After we sat her down we quickly retreated towards the door. She tried to roll towards us and black soot from the pavement stained her jeans and purple shirt, a closed mouth scream rose as loud as her vocal chords could pitch it from behind the duct tape. I closed the door and twisted the bolt. Isaac punched the pinball machine and it made its digital/free game sound and almost toppled before banging back down into its worn spot. “This is bad man,” He lamented. “This is so fuckin’ bad.” I had to concur.

“I KNOW MAN!” I shouted loudly before plopping down in the booth and rubbing the stubble on my face. My explosion seemed to satisfy Isaac into a temporary silence.

I tried to rationalize our actions in my butchered thoughts: if we hadn’t given up Theresa we all would have died or became part of the heinous catholic prophecy which we were being forced to act out. At least now, the memory of our love would live on in my surviving mind. Otherwise it would have just floated off into the sky like a lost balloon. I hated myself of course, but even the hate itself was still something: you had to be alive in order to hate. And let’s be honest, I wanted to live. I was only eighteen years old and Isaac, despite all his dirty looks and tearful posturing, wanted to live too. Otherwise he would have never played his callous role in the tragedy. And tragedy is what it was. We didn’t invent this Armageddon, we only had to live by its rules. We were innocent bystanders forced to react to each instance or die. Or worse yet: perish only to perform again as possessed puppets strutting across the spare stage of the empty streets in the hot beige dawn.

After a few hours Isaac self-righteously came up to me and put his palms flat on the table, his back arched like a cat on a thin branch.

“She’s still out there man!” He said through clenched teeth. But I refused to look; even when the rain pounded the roof as it had at our happiest moment: when we had first kissed, as softly as a red rose touching a bed of grass, I refused to look.

Because she was gone now. Vanished, like the comfortable benefits of our society. Vanished like my bravery and pride.

You may think me spineless or yellow. And I might even agree with that assessment. But I will say that I know of no one, no one who would not have been worn down by the passing weeks of relentless horror and constant worry: no one who could have honestly checked themselves in the wash room ( Though it was now hard to wash, since the hand soap had ran out. ) mirror and say, in all certainly, without one cold beer ( For we did not serve beer at this location. ) coursing through their brain, that they could have done any better, or even any different than I: no one who would have had the mental fortitude to follow the right path. A path which led to an unimaginable horror which it was not necessary to have to imagine.

Epilogue 2

And after I nodded off, my eyelids as heavy as my guilt, still sitting up with my chin on my chest, they were all inside the restaurant. They weren’t shoulder to shoulder as they’d been on the asphalt. And they no longer seemed mindless or in some fog. They were simply sitting at the tables like ordinary patrons or partygoers; garrulously chatting. Their faces as white as the blasted rocks inside the salt shakers. I was as helpless as a paraplegic, anyone of them could have taken me out at any time. Then the door opened for the final time and the angel walked in. His wings were as big as the trunk of a car before he neatly folded them onto his back. He wore a smart grey suit with a white tie and his face was even more beautiful than Theresa’s. Theresa, ( OH, OOOHHHH ) He spied me sitting in the corner booth and coldly nodded. It was like seeing a hated acquaintance on the street, yet, you nod anyway. That was how he seemed to me: like his hands were full of packages preventing him from waving. Only the angel didn’t have any parcels.

I was part of an evil culture: that’s what he had told me on the phone, and therefore unsalvageable. But looking at him now, I did not sense a great deal of goodness within him, or certainly not the divine elegance mandatory to cast a stone. And I knew right then that it had all been for nothing: that they had simply killed, raped or eaton Theresa: that only Jesus himself was qualified to judge and this fraud before me, this charlatan, was as evil as he claimed I was, and I was damned.

He zigzagged through the milling dead and sat down across from me. The wings folding in neatly behind him. They were as much a part of his body as his arms and legs. Now that I could see his evil exposed, some of his beauty had spoiled and his cheeks looked sunken, his eyes even more sullen. I was not sad or afraid and I realized at that instant that I felt good for no reason at all, like someone invigorated somehow even though they hadn’t slept in fifty-four hours.

He took a sheet of paper out of his breast pocket and placed it on the table. It wasn’t really a contract in the Beelzebub tradition: it was more like a waiver, as if he couldn’t be responsible for what the dead were about to do to me. He offered me a very nice pen, like it came from the desk of a corporate office somewhere. He made a little wiggly motion with his wrist, indicating that he expected me to sign. Once again, I felt that I was left with no choice: I snapped the pen in half and offered him a cheese stick.

END.

They was the first thing that he had seen when he arrived home: You really could not classify it as a worse fear. Because it was so far beyond any terror or horror which the mind could manufacture through imagination that it was simply unfathomable to ever be previously considered; His wife was squatting in the corner of the living room, like a big game hunter inspecting a fresh kill. Only in this instance the kill was his ten year old son. She was eating her little boy’s severed arm like a short rib, the purple blood smeared all over her lips like barbecue sauce in the bruised half light. The top half of his baby girl, that being her head, the two arms and an upper torso were sticking out of the top of a blender which was sitting on the gore stained carpet. And the bottom half… well the bottom half was just gone; Liquified into red gobs inside the glass filter. He had stood there in his suit and tie, his keys and briefcase rendered worthless in his hands. The air before his nonplussed eyes whipping like waves on a gloomy and sinister ocean.

Now she was on her feet again, jolting him out from his funk and back to the pure, base survival, cruise control which had been driving his shocked body since that indescribable point. She angled around the table quickly, snaking her rubbery arms towards him. But he swung the pantry door open and smacked it hard off of her forehead. After she came around that obstacle he bashed a vacuum handle across her face. Still, she persevered without so much as a red mark on her pale features. He tripped over one of the chairs he’d meant for her and onto the seat of his pleated dress pants. Thankfully, she momentarily got tangled up in that same furniture herself and slid down to her knees. He didn’t feel like he had time to get to his feet so he hastily clambered backwards across the dusty, hardwood floor. She scrambled after him with an awkward crawl, like a Komodo Dragon side winding across humid subtropical sands, the knife handle still protruding from her breasts. She then leapt to her feet and prepared to launch into to some gruesome new assault. Rising to his knees he took the next spilled chair and broke it over her long mane. The signature of her fifty dollar hair style still grooved into the strands. Finally, this did at least appear to have some affect on her and she swayed for a sliced instant. Once she turned sideways- he tackled her and pushed her head first out the dining room window, his body involuntarily following her and falling out onto the ground also.

After they both crashed through the pane, riding the short three foot drop to the ground, she did not move. But only laid motionlessly sprawled on the drizzle coated mulch, her husband lying on top of her like a linebacker at the bottom of the pile. He got up slowly and began picking small shards of glass out of his palms and and one big chunk out of his forehead. His blood mixing with the light rain created a pink blur which slanted across his vexed vision. Every now and then, the shock would engulf his overloaded switch board and his eyes strained as if they were looking through thick wax.

He was shaken out of his trance again by some sort of hubbub out in the street. A man was lying in the back of a garbage truck, spitting sanguinary spasms out as he attempted to scream. His body had been chopped in half by the trash compactor and the iron claws raked his legs inside the metal bin like a trapped door spider dragging a living snack into its lair. Several killers, who had been holding the man down, were standing around waiting for their share of the prey’s entrails, and now they looked at the man in the suit and tie with phony, silver dollar hued eyes.

In the next stroke of blood pressure they were all running towards him. He hastily retreated through the jagged teeth of the open window, completely ignorant of the new cuts this carved into his his already shredded hands. Conjuring all his fading strength he pushed the china cabinet across the opening. In that same instant however, the biggest former man he had ever seen banged a shoulder and forearm through the front door like a battering ram. The big, bad, bald, dead man got up from the splintered remains of the ruined door. He was all of six feet ten and perhaps three hundred pounds. He wore only a greasy tank top as his shaved head and bulging muscular arms shone alabaster in the terrified light.

The man in the suit and tie bolted for the stairs before the big, bad, bald, dead man could pick him out of the freckled darkness and separate him from the inanimate appliances. He won the race and was on the second floor in three desperately panicked giant steps. He slammed the hallway door shut and aspired to the third floor. As he reached that goal he heard the second tier hallway door disintegrate and he knew that the big, bad, bald, dead man was still coming for him.

He pulled a string down from the roof revealing a trap door that led to the attic above him. A two part folding ladder lolled down and he scurried up it like a startled squirrel. He could see the shadow of the big, bad, bald, dead man glooming in the hallway as he gathered the door back shut. He stomped across his wife’s carefully packed boxes with minor regard for their breakable or unbreakable contents. A large fan of light spread across the cob webbed rafters as the door in the floor was re-opened by an unseen hand. There were two dormer windows in the attic and he grabbed the detached leg of a wooden chair ready to break the first one. Until he spied the unlatched catch and simply pulled it open instead.

He crawled out onto a flat tar paper section which had been dug out as a ditch to support the window and supply an accompanying view. The section was only about three feet long before it turned into an extremely steep composition shingle roof on all sides. He kicked off his dress shoes before climbing off the black deck and around onto the top of the severe pitch until he was perched above the window. He waited there, gasping for breath as the cold air and drizzle infected his chest like some killer pneumonia.

After several slow motion seconds the white top of the big, bad, bald, dead man’s head appeared in the U-shaped trench. Once he saw that those mammoth shoulders were out of the attic, and that the cannibal’s feet were centered on the tar paper, the man in the suit and tie loaded up for a kick. With both hands he balanced himself on the top of the frame and kicked the big, bad, bald, dead man squarely in the back. The monster fell forward propelled by both the force of the blow and his own onrushing direction. He slid down the roof flat on his belly like a base stealer sliding into second, rolling right on over the drain pipe and into nothingness. He plummeted three stories onto the pavement below, his round head exploding with the impact like a glass globe.

The man in the suit and tie scampered up to the ridge roll. For he realized that the big, bad, bald, dead man would not be the last walking corpse to emerge from the attic. He looked back as he reached the peak and sure enough there were several others on the roof. The first three charged out much too quickly, became entangled in each other’s steps and were carried by their own momentum over the side. They landed hard on a concrete patio thirty five feet below, either on or in between some black iron lawn furniture. Two of them did not move again, but the third stirred, seemed to recover somewhat and limped away aimlessly.

The man in the suit and tie shifted his weight and desperately scanned the situation. There were no roofs near enough to his to attempt a crossover. Jumping three stories to the street would almost guarantee him a broken leg and a devoured body.

The next thing to crawl out of the hole was dead also, but much more dead, or rather much more decomposed than the rest. It did not lose its balance however and, upon spying the man in the suit and tie, it began scaling the shingles in earnest. Patches of aqua blue skin hung from its mostly skeletal frame but the sagging mask of its manure green face was still intact. The flesh around its midsection was totally erased and for a second the man in the suit and tie thought that its internal organs were alive or moving around somehow. But as it got closer, he realized that it was a small brown rat living inside the cage of the thing’s ribs that was making the commotion.

Its expired siblings followed in a slow murmuring throng and sauntered onto the steep grade. One took a misstep and skidded on its knees off the roof into space, but most were negotiating the dangerous angle with surprising skill. They oscillated towards the man in the suit and tie as best they could on their rigormortis touched limbs.

In just his black, dress socks the man in the suit and tie tiptoed across the ridge roll. One of the creatures actually dived for his foot, narrowly missing his ankle, before it slid back down a few feet onto the grainy shingles and laid there moaning.

He hurried to the east side of the house where a great, three sided TV antenna rose over the old three story. He and his wife, …The wife… …The wife… had nearly torn it down last year. Ultimately deciding that the considerable cost and the potential damage to their new aluminum siding would not be worth the excursion. It was mountable, about a foot wide on all three sides, with steel triangular tubes large enough to place his shoe, or rather his footed sock in. The freezing pipes were a shock to his fingers and the lacerations on his palms stung as he began climbing hand over hand towards the top, his shoeless feet aching like a head cold. He kept a sure grip on the sopping spokes until he reached the pinnacle. Which was a good forty feet above the already tall three story. At the utmost tip, a fashioned wire arrow pointed northwest helplessly. There was no place left to run or climb. This was it: The end of the line.

The hordes had followed him, shambling or scooting across the ridge roll. But they were having a little trouble climbing the antenna with their ruined muscles and tendons. The lead skeleton tried to pull itself up onto the frame, but its diminishing bones could not support its weight and the tubes sawed three fingers off of its right hand when it attempted to begin the ascent. Another cannibal stupidly stepped right off the ridge and summersaulted onto a marble patio. its frail body came apart in a maize of potted plants as its head bounced farther out among the garden stakes.

From his towering vantage point the man in the suit and tie could see for a circumference of miles, and he noticed that a considerable crowd had gathered on the street below. As far as he searched, to the distant docks and throughout the dying city blocks, dark forms were filtering through the streets. All meshing in his direction- until a line of cannibals rotated through his front door like a trail of black ants. A howl evaporated off of the earth like the bark of a thousand hunting dogs, until he felt like a raccoon eyed and cornered quarry chased up his artificial tree.

The cannibals had given up on climbing the antenna for now and they only stared up at him like septic blue fish with sick silver eyes. Evidently, his wife had recovered from their earlier spat to rejoin the hunt. For she was now standing about halfway down the roof with her arms in the air, swaying back and forth like a religious zealot at some pseudo-cult ceremony. Her wedding ring gleaming even against the charcoal sky.

He sighed and ran his arm through the three thick beams so that he would be sure not to lose his grip. The light breeze, which had been but a whimsical wisp on the ground, had turned to a godless gale at this height and the antenna swayed like a whipped high wire. There was no telling how long a person could hang on under these conditions before their strength gave out, even with a noted and considerable incentive to do just that.

His clothes were already heavy with moisture as he stared out at the aluminum horizon. For a moment he thought about just falling, about just rolling his head back and letting go like a bungee jumper with no cord: Surely his head would come apart on the blacktop and that would put an end to the horror. But no, he wasn’t going to make it easy for the rotten bastards. Maybe he would just hold on for a little while.

He closed his eyes tight, rain drops squeezing out with his tears which were as hot and stinging as lighter fluid. He refused to pray, for there was no God left… no God left to pray to. Only the unholy cries of the dead masses, permeating up from the hard constructed corners of the town. Like low fog rolling off of a chilly purple marsh.

END.

…and started awake on the floor
of my Chrysler New Yorker. Disturbed by my day-mare, I ran a hand over
my ear. Predictably, I found no wounds on my scalp, nor did I have any
bites or scratches on my leg. My bra was soaked with sweat, but it was
still relatively in place underneath my blouse. Somehow I had fallen
asleep out of total exhaustion after my car had ran out of gas a mere
block from my destination.

When I talked to Brian on his cell phone he said that some
people were still alive and that they were holed up inside the old
‘Coronado Theatre’ just west of downtown. He said: “Don’t give up. Just
go there, directly there! And I’ll find you somehow. We’ll find a way
inside.” But when I called back someone with a middle eastern accent
answered. When I asked for Brian, they began complaining and cursing in
some foreign language. Subsequent calls were not answered and I feared
that Brian may be dead.

I had to take the long way around in order to avoid the flaming
barricades and this taxed the contents of my fuel tank. Once the engine
began to buck and cut out, I made no effort to pull over to the curb.
After all, there was no traffic left for me to jam.

The car coasted to a rest not far from the front box office.
Right away I realized that the survivers were gone, if indeed they’d
ever been there at all, for the dead shuffled in and out of the
swinging doors like moviegoers at a summer blockbuster. I had heard
that the action cadavers actually liked films, or at least that they
would sit there: Staring from their plush red seats in the dark, even
long after the projector had eaten the film.

I locked the already locked doors and clambered over the seat,
quickly ducking down onto the back floorboard. I pressed my nose right
down into the vinyl mats and prayed that I had not been spotted. I
pulled an old piece of astroturf over myself and tried to remain still
and calm until I could figure out my next move. I stayed in this
cramped position for sometime.
Occasionally, I would hear something, which could only be one
of our decomposing brethren, shuffle up to the car and press against
the glass. Sometimes they would even try the door handle. But it was
still only a minor attempt to breech the cab. Evidently, they could not
see me cowering underneath the rug. But I knew that this feeble
camouflage would only protect me for so long. It was a temporary
solution to a permanent problem. Besides, I had no source for food or
drink. No outlet to use the facilities, I could hardly move. Sooner or
later I would have to make a bolt for it. But to where? Where was it.
Where could I go?
But I didn’t want to think about that now. I just needed a few
minutes to rest. A few minutes to dream about Brian, his blonde hair
tumbling down over his forehead, the colors of the sand beds, the hills
like brown breakers in the freedom of the distant desert.

END.

Tom Hamilton is an Irish Traveler. He currently lives with the
clan known as the Mississippi Travelers, which is tantamount to a race
of gypsies He says: “Not all ‘Travellers’ are the con men and scam
artists that they have been portrayed as in the American media.” His
work has appeared in over one hundred publications around the world
including ‘Bathtub Gin’ ‘The Rockford Review’ and the ‘Old Crow Review’
among many others. He has had two chapbooks published: ‘The Rain Draw
Bridge’ from ‘Alpha Beat Press’ and ‘The Last Days of my Teeth’ from
‘Budget Press’. Along with his wife Mary Theresa and their two small
daughters, Tiffany and Hope Ann, he lives in Memphis TN. U.S.A.

Me and my crass buddies had always gotten a kick out of those ridiculous, well, at least they seemed ridiculous at the time, grade B zombie movies. We used to scoff at the stupidity of the remaining humans. Why didn’t they do this? or why didn’t they do that? I would blow those bags of puss away. I would find the most brilliant hideout, with the most scrumptious snacks and rations, reinforced like an army fortress. With the most beautiful damsel whom I had rescued. And, since there would only be a few men left in the world, she would have little choice but to…

But when a similar epidemic actually manifested itself onto society, the practical reality was very different. Sure, you could speed around town in some souped up hotrod all day. I even had the hotrod: An oak green, 1971 Camaro. But you had to stop for gas sometime, and, I had yet to run across a fuel pump which was not heavily chained. This is assuming that, even if the handle weren’t bound, you would have ten seconds to both reset the pump and distribute the gas before the hordes overwhelmed you.

I had no gun.

The gun shops were quickly converged upon by panicked citizens once it became obvious that the disease was there to stay. Some store owners had to blow away paying customers once they realized that the supply could not possibly withstand the demand. Then the gun shops disappeared altogether like everything else, not a cartridge left on their barren shelves. Furthermore, I had never fired a gun in my entire life.

Suddenly, I could no longer think of one ‘Safe as a bug in a rug’ hideout. Me and my asshole buddies had listed so many. The skating rink, ( The skating rink? ) the snack shop at the drive-in, ( Ted added, that shooting zombies from that little window which housed the projector would be ideal.) the mall, ( I wonder where we came up with that idea? ) But these areas, although perfect from a fictional standpoint, presented some real challenges in real life.

First of all; you needed manpower, both to clear and secure the area, since walking through any dark, zombie infested, building solo without a gun did not seem like a viable option, and, I had not seen any of my brave, brash talking friends in weeks. Well, I did see Joe over on Avenue A Main, he was sitting on the seat of his pants on the curb, with his face inches from an open and streaming fire hydrant, his features inseparable from the raging water, which blasted out from a freezing sewer world as cold as his dead skin.

Second; you needed guns, which I’ve already discussed.

Third; you needed a healthy food and water supply. Which was totally moot if you hadn’t taken care of the first two problems, yet that final hurtle was even more difficult to solve.

And our zombies were cunning. They were not the mindless masses of flesh which slobbered across the big screen. No one knew where they came from or how the pandemonium had begun. They did not look too much different than the living, save for the blood shot, blue in the whites of their eyes and the varicose veins which covered their entire body, so it was not a challenge for them to get within striking distance of people, especially at the outset. Though they did not bite or eat anyone, their method of transferring the virus was almost as unsettling; The syringe was their contaminant of choice.

At the start they would even pose as doctors and nurses. Sneaking into hospital rooms, giving surprised patients a lethal dose of their violet blood. Even if someone pushed them away or punched them after the shot, the damage was already done. Though most times people just looked stunned as the disguised zombies in their white coats and blank skirts filed out of the room mutely, their ghastly mission accomplished. Others dressed up in business suits, acting like they knew someone on the street, but, after offering their hand to shake, they would prick the victim’s hand, arm or wrist with the syringe. In the early going some were even arrested for this, and hauled off to jail or to hospitals. ( Where it was discovered that their blood pressure was 00 over 00. ) But no one knew what to make of the madness, and before they had time to figure it out, their captors were converted by the free zombies, who promptly took out their jangling keys and unlocked the cells. Releasing those who were never to be sentenced by a deceased judge anyway, since the courts no longer existed.

They could drive a little bit, and even perform other rudimentary tasks like working with tools or the most frightening of all; solving locks. They could talk. Although they would only broach one subject: To try and persuade you to take the Satanic serum. ( That is, if you had the drop on one and they couldn’t force you to take it. ) They would come up with weak sci-fi stock phrases like: “You’ll feel so much better after you take your medicine.” Or, “Once you’ve taken it, you’ll wonder why you resisted.” Attempts to question them or to talk about anything other than taking their fatal formula proved futile. Although you were much better off breaking into a run then you were standing around and chatting with one. The whole thing came off like a bad sales pitch or an obvious scam. There were disturbing assaults where the dead raped the living, passing on the infection with their violet semen. Although, thank Christ, no pregnancies were reported.

It took several weeks for these dead to rot on their feet, and by that time three quarters of the population were already infected. They did not turn violent or aggressive until they had the numbers in their favor. Then wholesale waves of them would overwhelm small pockets of the living. I saw one man absorb so many shots from at least twenty syringes that the violet blue gook ran from his eyes and his ears.

The electricity was one thing, but once the water went off, I had to abandon my modest, three room apartment. I thought it best to wait for the soul of the neon deprived night, figuring that it would be better if I arrived at the house on Avenue F around midnight, since evening seemed to satiate our sanguinary zombies. It was during the day when their shot lust aspired to a crucial Defcon.

When I thought the calm was right, I just bolted out the front door, as simple as that, like a quarterback being chased out of the pocket. The surprise tactic worked, and I was at the door of my Camaro before most of the cadavers even had a chance to turn their heads. A maggot faced boy in a ‘Dr. Pepper’ T-shirt quickly strode towards my front hood as I fumbled to get the key to fit into the ignition.

“Hey man.” It said in a gone voice. “Wouldn’t you like to be a pepper too?” And with this it fired a ‘Dr. Pepper’ can which was full of the blue substance onto the windshield. The can exploded and covered the glass, the color of wiper fluid. I stomped into reverse, running over and severing the arms of a tiny zombie boy, who looked to be about seven or eight years old when he was given the shot. Still, I couldn’t feel too guilty about it since the little dick weed was holding a pocket knife. Its evil plan to puncture my tires thwarted. Like I said, these deceased were smart, even if they were wearing worms like that was the latest fashion craze from Paris.

You would have thought that it would have been exhilarating: flying down the riot ripped streets. Running over whomever you pleased, not observing any speed limits or traffic ordnance. But this lawlessness had a catch. One wrong move, one flat tire, one stalled engine, if your car became disabled in any manner. you were dead. Or at least undead. So, in a sense this could not be called lawlessness at all, since the zombies were the law.

Christ, they were everywhere. I hadn’t been able to pick out one live person yet. The last time I was out, which was right before the last radio station passed away, there were still a few straggling survivors. Running from alley to alley like soldiers looking for cover. Now I saw only those infected by a plague blacker even then the black plague itself.

Coming up on my right I saw the corpse of a National Guardsmen aiming a long rifle. And, for one fear filled second I thought that he would shoot out my front tires. But as I got closer, I could see that he was using the eyeballs of his fallen brothers in arms as ammunition. Forcing the sloppy rounds of the detached orbs into the barrel, then firing at a brick wall. Although the fodder went in white, what came out the chute and stained the wall looked like a dirty maroon buckshot. Then I was mercifully past his post.

As I approached Avenue C South, I spied a religious zealot who frequented that corner. He was usually standing, preaching the word, a pointed finger tracing the will of an angry God. But now he only sat, quiescently on the curb, his long black, Apache feathered, hair splashed onto his shoulders. He was still alive, and though there were several zombies around who were not particularly busy, none attempted to molest him or even seemed to notice him. His hand written sign was propped against a nearby ‘STOP’ sign. Only, the lettering had been altered slightly. Instead of the familiar ‘THE END IS NEAR’ the final word had been crossed out, and replaced by the new slogan: ‘THE END IS HERE!”

There were a variety of roadblocks throughout the torn city, ravaged tractor trailers, piles of bodies, burning furniture. I tried to take the long way around to Avenue F, through the triangles of residential blocks, their kelly green lawns now strewn with trash and butchered by tire tracks. I looked down at the gas needle. A quarter of a tank between me and the syringe. I had better find a way around to Regina’s block pretty soon. Perhaps she would have a couple of gas cans in her garage.

I thought of her cobalt eyes, hiding, waiting. So luminous, like the beauty of the omniscient Ocean, condensed down into two shining, powder blue irises. Her curves as carved as porcelain. Her cheeks as white and fresh as the last deep snow of the Winter, shocking the oak yards outside your window, glowing in the sharp panoramic surprise of an early Spring morning.

I realized that this rescue would not come off like a Hollywood script. Still, I could not suppress the notion that if I could pluck her up somehow. Maybe we could escape to the East, or to the South, or to the North. I know she’d always spurned my advances before, I know. But this time it would be different, there was definitely a process of elimination working in my favor.

A process which was interrupted by a zombie in a canoe. That’s right, a canoe, even though there was not any body of water around for miles. He even wore that little hardhat helmet preferred by those types of rafters. He was forcing the paddles to skate the boat across the asphalt. Without pausing, he aimed for the side of my car. The road was too narrow to avoid him and I did not even try to find the breaks. I felt a tough bump as he went underneath the wheels. The front axles spun his craft around, then the rear tires cut the boat in half while severing both of his legs. It seemed to me that the flesh of the infected was weak, and that their limbs would amputate when met with minimal resistance. The ridiculous cap came off and bounced down the street like a ping pong ball. I dragged him for maybe fifty feet, then the Camaro blazed on as he came to a rest, still sitting in the shattered canoe without his feet or calves. Another zombie walked up to him and they began chatting casually, like two people having dinner in a restaurant. I could only pray that the splinters of wood from the canoe had not punctured one of my tires. After all, it was not like I could stop at your friendly neighborhood service station.

By the time I wound through the blue flaming streets, past faded houses, their windows as black as the blood flooded fingernails of the dead, I really didn’t have very much gas left at all. Avenue F was the next street over. If only I could find an uncluttered passage or spared thoroughfare. I squealed down a side road which looked that part, but I must have missed the ‘NO OUTLET’ sign. ( Although in this instance, I feel that the archaic ‘DEAD END’ would have been more accurate. ) for I soon found myself in the big eighty feet head of an asphalt cul-de-sac.

A man in a red silk robe stood on his lawn near a pile of yellowing news papers. So many of the blue veins throbbed on his head that you could scarcely even see his face anymore. He was waving like a father would at a departing school bus, holding a front page which shouted the headline: “A.C.V.” (Abbreviation for ‘Animated Corpse Virus’ ) His soulless mind lodged in some funky neutral.

There was a tipped over mail truck, which looked like it had been the in the center of yet another fire, tipped over in the middle of the circle. Its location made the turnaround hard for the Camaro to negotiate, and I made the snap decision to mow over a mailbox. It turned out to be a dreadful choice when the wooden pole snapped in half, the top part with the box cracking back and busting out my driver’s side window. The car momentarily stopped, as I sat there stunned with a lap full of glass. Almost simultaneously, a dead mail man leapt out from nowhere, his pinstriped shorts doing little to cover the blue veins, which grew like vines from the turquoise scabs on his legs, those ulcers were as velvet and round the center of a flower. He was at my window before my numbed mind had an instant to react. “…Here…” He snorted in a voice which was both hollow and friendly at the same time. “…Let… …me… …buy… …you… …a… …shot…” He took the ever present syringe and attempted to inject me with its foul contents. For a flash second, I could see something swimming around inside the plastic dispenser. Something that looked like a worm with a man’s face and a bushy patch of hair on the head. I found the gas and stepped on it, before the living ghost could drop the plunger, and the Camaro smoked forward. The hypodermic needle left a long scratch down a bluish trail on my forearm, as the car’s spinning tires locked onto the blacktop and rushed the vehicle ahead, pulling me away from my attacker, abandoning the reflection of his blue and gray face in the tiny rearview. “…Absolutely… ….positively… ….guaranteed… … …to.. …get… …you… …there… …overnight…” He shouted, as the distance turned him into a blurry shadow.

I was nearly on two wheels, but the Camaro held the corner as I rose out from the cul-de-sac near the ‘NO OUTLET’ sign. I looked down at my scraped arm, and prayed that none of the putrid substance had infiltrated the plasma stream. I took an old ‘Dog & Suds’ napkin which I found under the seat and tried to wipe at it. Blue sludge and crimson blood blotting onto the white paper.

I’d been to the house on Avenue F dozens of times. But suddenly I couldn’t seem to concentrate. The letters on the street signs appeared to jumble, and I felt like I was looking at an eye chart, or as if I were dyslexic. My head felt slow and hot. Like an August engine low on motor oil. I began to wonder if Regina had any syringes at her house. I would probably have to give her a shot of something just to calm her down, once I got inside the residence.

Suddenly, the headlights from a second car shocked the night. They were headed towards me in the opposite lane, until I could see the raccoon eyes of a live woman behind the wheel of an aging, brown station wagon. But just before I put my hand up to wave, A zombie dropped seemingly from the sky. I realized that It had been hanging upside down, like a trapeze artist, from a phone wire, which crossed over the top of the road. It still wore the uniform of a phone company worker and a yellow hardhat which must have been strapped onto its chin. I’m assuming that its plan was to drop itself through the woman’s windshield. Therefore putting itself in position to administer a lethal dose. But it miscalculated gravely and spilled itself onto the station wagon’s grill instead. In an instant it was under the wheels. Its perverted head exploding like a pumpkin sucked under a steamroller. I doubt that the woman even noticed, as she obliviously passed me and drove on into the aimless night.

The spectacle of the zombie’s twisted body lying in the street was so grizzly, that I almost passed Regina’s house, which had jumped up out of nowhere on my left. I screeched to a halt as the car slid sideways, coming to a rest almost on the parched blades Regina’s formally kelly lawn. There were several destroyed bodies lying in the yard, and I recognized one right away: It was Danny, Regina’s ponytailed, sometimes boyfriend. He was doubled over in the flower bed. A discarded cummerbund was laying near his decomposing body. Seeing Danny cold and stiff was the highlight of my horrifying day, and I pointed at the ground in Thanks. Much like the sports heros ( Of whom 98 percent were probably dead now. ) I used to watch on TV, had pointed to the Heavens after scoring a touchdown or striking out an opposing batter.

I got out of the Camaro and walked over to a pile of bodies. Arms, legs, faces doused in the terror of their final, brain burning, visions. Thousands of syringes lay on the ground, and suddenly an idea came to me: Using a used syringe, I slowly drew some of the blue substance out of the arm of one the bodies. Something was telling me that this was a love potion. All I would have to do was inject Regina with the aphrodisiac and she would love me forever, and ever and ever.

The were several zombies in the area, canvassing the street. Yet suddenly, none seemed to notice me. Until one loquacious corpse with an azure stained bluish work suit walked up to me. The veins had created the design of a star on his yellow face. He was telling me about the blonde girl and her mother who were locked inside the abode. He said that they had been trying to find a way in for days with no success.

“She’s mine!!.” I barked suddenly and marched over to my car with a purpose. I jumped behind the wheel and twisted three quarters of a sheriff’s turn, until the front of the vehicle was lined up directly with Regina’s living room window. I hit the gas so hard that, for a moment, the Camaro only sat still, the balding tires spinning in place. Then the rubber caught asphalt and we took off with a jerk. I rutted a route through the grass and flew over the hedges with out even slowing down, crashing into the house with a brick breaking impact. It was the loudest sound I had ever heard in my death. Before I even knew my head was through the windshield, it was resting on the hood, my entire body sprawled prostate near the hot grill. I spit out a mouthful of violet teeth, but when I went to push myself up, I realized that my left arm was had been amputated by the impact.

Regina’s mother lay with me on the hood. Though it looked as if she’d been dead for several days. Her gray skin a challenge even for the most expensive face cream. Her departed eyes staring at a Moon that they could no longer see. Yet this was also good; since I’d always hated the old bitch’s attitude anyway.

Regina ran out from the crumbling kitchen. I don’t think that any woman or girl in history ever looked as beauteous as she did at that instant. She was wearing a pearl hued wedding dress, fine lace covering her cleavage all the way up to her throat, which sported a pearl choker joined by a ruby red costume jewel. Her blonde hair riveted down like curly cue macaroni. Pink and purple mascara was brushed across her eyelids like God painting the Aurora Borealis. Her earth blue eyes, brightened by the shock, were the color of a peaceful tropical lake, far from all this carnage.

The syringe was still clutched in my remaining hand as I dragged myself up to a sitting position. “Regina.” I said, scooting across the hood as good as I could in my ruined condition. She took and step back and said my name as if she were shocked to see me. “Good. ” I said, “Good, you’re still alive.” But she only stared at me, or rather, the syringe in my hand. “No, No,” I pleaded. “You don’t understand. This isn’t what you think. It’s a love potion.” She continued staring. “If you just let me inject you, you’ll wonder why you resisted in the first place. You don’t understand… you don’t…”

She cut me off in mid sentence. Explaining calmly that she hadn’t even been interested in me when I was alive.

When…I….was…alive… (Our Father ) “No.” I shook my head. “You don’t know. Once I inject you we’ll go out to the desert, and we’ll… “( Who art in Heaven ) Without saying another word, she lifted the barrel of a long rifle which had been hidden behind the hoop skirt. ( Hallowed be thy name ) It was an antique, as if it had been dug out of the attic. The weapon looked much too heavy in her pretty fingers, which were as slender as the stems of flowers. ( Thy Kingdom come ) I lifted my hand in protest and started to say something else when she pressured the trigger. ( Thy will be done ) The long, large bullet blew off two of my fingers before grazing the side of my head. ( On Earth, as it is in Hell ) I felt the side of my scalp with the three remaining digits, only to discover a JFK assassination sized flap of skin which the projectile had mined. ( Give us this stay ) “Wow!!” I quipped. “Now that’s what I call rejection.” ( Our daily bread ) The shine of her wedding dress, blinded my mind, and I suddenly remembered and wondered about the tuxedo pants which the deceased Danny had been wearing. ( And forgive us our trespasses ) “Dang!” I said, as the blue ran down my neck, soaking my shirt. ( As we forgive those ) Regina calmly stuck two shells into the ancient shaft. I looked around dimly as ( Who trespass against us ) she raised the barrel again, but I was paralyzed by my confusion. ( Lead us not into Temptation ) My pretty Regina made the fire boom again. ( But deliver us from evil ) Blasting the Sunbeams out of my head permanently, as if someone had just switched off a television set. ( Amen. )

END.�