Candlelight etched Jean’s forty-something face stark with fear. Her head looked like a boulder perched precariously on a mountaintop. She was six-foot-one and giving birth to three children put her weight at a solid two-twenty. “How long?” she asked.

Masson was Stan Laurel to Jean’s Oliver Hardy. He moved like he expected the world to bite him and flipped open the peephole of a steel-core door. Outside, rats covered his basement floor. The rodents moved with stiff lurches so unlike the usual quick and furtive movements of their species. Instead of black, their eyes were milky white.

Masson’s angle didn’t allow him to see the rats’ progress as they gnawed at the base of the shelter’s front wall. Cinder blocks had three two-inch sections to breach before the rats got to the shelter’s soft gooey centers — he and Jean. How much concrete could a horde of rats chew through in two days? Standard rates would no longer apply, Masson knew. Zombie rats wouldn’t be distracted by whatever diverted living rats: building nests, making baby rats, swimming in sewage, etc. All the undead cared about was eating the living.

Masson wrung a guess from his brain. “They’ll be in by morning.”

Jean wrung sweat from her hands. “How can they get in by morning? This is a fallout shelter, isn’t it? It’s supposed to survive bombs, right?”

“Sort of,” was all Masson could reply. His anxiety disorder made normal social interaction challenging, and this situation went far beyond normal. The sound of enamel rasping against cement grew louder in Masson’s skull. It seemed to transmit itself through his bones, causing fingernails-on-chalkboard vibrations that made him feel like he was going to shatter like glass. The noise might have been unbearable if not for a more unsettling prospect:

What would it sound like when the rats started chewing on him?

Cursing, Jean paced the shelter. On each side of her stood boxes holding another week’s worth of food and water. Masson built the shelter in the basement of his childhood home after his father died. It wasn’t that Masson greatly feared a nuclear apocalypse (he feared all such things equally). He simply wanted a place to feel safe. And what could a person build to make them feel as safe as a bomb shelter? Masson supposed the best answer was good relationships, but talking to people (including psychologists) made him feel like trying to digest metal while showering in public. Medication offered no solution either. Masson tried several but couldn’t handle their side effects, which included migraines and nausea. Hence, Masson coped with his anxiety disorder by building a shelter and using a trick his father taught him.

Walk to the end of the street. Hang a left…

“The chewing!” Jean stopped pacing and covered her ears. “I can’t stand it!” She went to a radio and flipped through the same stack of CDs she had flipped through numerous times before. “Are you sure you don’t have anything other than this Christmas crap?”

“You could try the radio stations again,” Masson suggested.

“There hasn’t been anything for five days,” Jean snapped. “To hell with it. I’ll put on the one with no singing. Then I’ll try to sleep. I need to sleep. I can’t think of a way out if I don’t sleep!” With that, Jean disappeared behind the curtain separating a cot from the rest of the shelter. Strains of an orchestral Joy To The World followed her exit.

Masson owned the CD as a sentimental reminder of the Christmas Eve church service he participated in when he was five-years-old. Masson had balked at leaving the house to go stand before packed pews with the rest of the Sunday School kids. The balking led to tears, which led to Masson’s father teaching him the trick.

Why are you crying? Masson’s father asked.

I don’t want to go to the front of the church, Masson said.

Going to the front of the church makes you cry?

Yes.

Then why are you crying now? You’re not at the front of the church. Masson’s father grabbed his son by the shoulders. If you’re going to cry at the front of the church, cry at the front of the church. For now, put one foot in front of the other. And because Masson was an obedient child, he allowed his father to lead him out the door despite his thrumming nerves and churning guts. First, Masson’s father said, walk to the end of the street. They walked to the end of the street. Hang a left. They hung a left. Take things one step at a time, Masson’s father continued. Do that and I bet you don’t cry at the front of the church. And when the time came, Masson stuttered and sweated through his line before everyone: for unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a savior, who is Christ the Lord.

But he didn’t cry.

Like a dog returning to its vomit, Masson returned to the peephole. The undead rats seemed to sense him, noses up and jaws forming natural smiles. They were the sort of smiles Masson believed people always had behind his back — look-at-the-loser smiles.

Masson calculated what he and Jean’s odds might be if they threw open the door, bull-rushed their way upstairs and out of the house. They might make it…

“But making it isn’t good enough,” Masson reasoned. “We have to make it without getting bit. If we get bit, we’ll end up zombies ourselves.”

Masson shot a paranoid glance over his shoulder when he realized he said that out loud. He didn’t want Jean to see him talking to himself. She would use it against him. The curtain between him and Jean remained drawn, however. Masson considered the rest of the shelter. He constructed it incorporating the sidewalls and back wall of his basement, bricking up the latter’s two windows. That way he only had to build the shelter’s front wall.

Masson remembered lugging the shipment of cinder blocks from the garage to the basement. Jean walked in unannounced while he worked, wanting to borrow a garden hose (Jean always walked in unannounced, and she always wanted to borrow something).

What are you building, she joked/mocked, a bomb shelter?

And because Masson lacked the nerve to lie, sort of, is what he said.

Of course, Jean treated it as one more proof of Masson’s eccentricity. The entire neighborhood had stories of the man who still lived in his childhood home, who sometimes turned and went back inside if he saw someone approaching on the sidewalk, who only left the house to go to church, buy groceries and clean the library. Fortunately, this latest oddity wouldn’t get added to the community mythos. Jean had a neighborhood reputation, as well, that kept others from talking to her. First, she had the house with the peeling paint; second, her kids were always up to no good; and third, when neighborhood boys turned eighteen, she had a habit of inviting them over — sometimes right in front of their parents.

When the zombie apocalypse went into full swing, Masson entered his sort-of shelter. When he heard a knock, he didn’t need to look out the peephole to know who it was…

Let me in, Jean said.

You’re better off trying for a safe zone, Masson urged. There’s only enough in here for me, not for you and your kids. We won’t last.

I’m not bringing my kids, Jean said.

Masson recoiled from this matter-of-fact statement while Jean knocked and cajoled. When she started shouting, Masson retreated to his cot, curled into a fetal position and wept until she went away. He rejoiced (as much as was possible for him) in the silence.

Ten minutes later, Jean was outside the shelter again.

Let me in.

Masson dragged himself to the peephole. I told you—

Jean held a sledgehammer. Let me in or I’ll break in…

Now, in the flickering candlelight, with the sound of rats’ teeth scraping away more and more of the cement between them and their meal, Masson berated himself for relenting; he berated himself for his weakness; he berated himself for being an outcast due to his weakness; and he berated himself for being unable to think of a means of escape. That familiar sensation of constriction gripped him. What felt like acid pumped through his veins. His essential self sank into a morass where even drawing breath seemed impossible.

Eyes clenched, Masson recited Matthew 6:27 until the worst of the panic attack subsided. “Don’t break,” he seethed through gritted teeth. “Break the problem down.”

Walk to the end of the street. Hang a left…

Maybe fire could drive the rats away. But all Masson had was candles. Their flames were pitiful in the face of the number of rodents outside. Masson had once considered installing a generator in the shelter, which would have meant a cache of flammable gasoline. In that case, fire might have been an option. Unfortunately, a generator was at the bottom of his list of things to accomplish. Masson had always been more interested in a sanctuary than a practical shelter. For this reason, the habitation also lacked a toilet. Masson and Jean had to collect their waste in used water bottles. The smell in the shelter grew unbearable despite their care. Masson supposed that was what drew the zombie rats — that ripe, pungent, alive stench wafting down the grated floor drain and into the sewers.

Frustrated, Masson flopped into an easy chair. What the shelter lacked in disaster functionality, it made up for in comfort with a recliner, carpeting and paneled walls. A pile of library books sat close at hand, as well. Before the dead rose, Masson spent a year of afternoons in the shelter, safely tucked away from the world and sometimes escaping it altogether through the stories he read. In books, heroes weren’t reduced to quivering bundles of nerves when faced with problems. They put their shoulders back and overcame.

Masson wished he could read his way into a better place now, but such activity was impossible. Like Jean, Masson’s body cried out for rest. Plus, the relentless chewing forbade concentration. It was like being trapped inside a giant bowl of crackling cereal.

The closest Masson could come to sleep was remembering a nightmare he had the last time he drifted off. Masson followed his father as the man staggered to the end of the street, hung a left, staggered to the end of the street and hung another left. The gait of Masson’s father was that of a zombie, but the realization held no horror. Masson knew his father’s soul was in heaven. The husk the man left behind was merely a marionette guided by whatever caused the undead phenomenon. No, the horror of the dream came from understanding what happened when one mindlessly used the trick over and over — one went in a circle.

After he awoke, Masson grew dizzy realizing he began every activity by walking to the end of the street and hanging a left — literally in his excursions into the outside world, and mentally with everything else. Masson rued his inability to build a life apart from a rigid pattern repeated day after day, but stepping outside the box was to be torn apart by irrational worries (and now it was too late to change anyway). Nevertheless, Masson couldn’t help but dwell on the things he missed out on. For example, being stuck in the shelter with someone as odious as Jean was the closest thing to a relationship with a woman he had ever experienced.

Tears of self-loathing came to Masson’s eyes. As he cleared their blur from his vision, he became aware of a human-shaped shadow on the wall. Embarrassed, Masson stood and turned. To have Jean see him crying was rotten icing on a rotten cake.

Masson tried to get himself under control. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

Jean held her sledgehammer. A reason why was lost on Masson as it, combined with the image of her shadow on the wall, gave him the momentary spark of an idea.

“No,” Jean replied.

Whatever idea Masson might have had flitted away at her tone, and an explanation for why she held the sledgehammer began to dawn on him.

“I thought of a way out,” Jean smiled, and her expression had all the humanity of the rat grins Masson saw earlier. “If we give them something to eat, they’ll go away.”

“What do you mean?” Masson asked, even though he already knew the answer. But if he asked, they were talking, and if Jean was talking, she wasn’t doing. On the radio, Silent Night began to play, accompanied by the ever-present sound of gnawing rats.

Jean brandished the sledgehammer. “Go to the door.”

“You’re crazy,” Masson said.

Jean shrugged with bemusement. “People say the same thing about you. The difference is…I don’t worry about what others think.”

Masson nodded. What Jean said was the truth, even if it was a cold truth. Well, he had a cold truth of his own. “Maybe you should,” he said.

Teeth barred, Jean swung the sledgehammer. Masson ducked as the weapon whisked over his head. He shouldered past Jean and took up position behind her while she gathered herself for another attack. Masson waited for some part of himself to erupt in some expected way, perhaps with desperation, rage — something, anything. Instead, disbelief dominated. So much of life was things not equaling the sum of their parts, but this case was an exception. Sort-of bomb shelter + zombie rats + being stuck with an unpleasant uninvited guest who wouldn’t leave turned murderer = something too nightmarish to comprehend.

Jean charged, swinging the sledgehammer again. Masson hit the floor and grabbed a box of candy bars. He brought the box up as a shield, and Jean buried the head of the sledgehammer in the bulk package. Candy bars rained over Masson’s face as Jean shook her weapon free. Masson looked into her eyes, the windows of her soul, and saw nothing but himself reflected, mouth agape as Jean raised the sledgehammer once more.

Walk to the end of the street. Hang a left…

Even dying could be broken down into a process. Masson took some solace in that fact. God help me, here I come. To his surprise, Masson found he looked forward to the trip. He wouldn’t be his own mind’s chew toy any longer.

Before the killing blow smashed home, Jean’s eyes slid from Masson’s to something beyond them both. The sledgehammer fell from her hands and clunked on the carpet. A breath caught in Jean’s throat, hitched into a gasp and grew into a scream.

Masson followed Jean’s gaze and watched, mesmerized. Several blisters formed in the cinder blocks along the base of the front wall. Flecks of concrete crumbled off their surfaces and sprinkled the shelter’s carpet. Next, rat snouts burst through the weakened spots, teeth flashing, grating against the edges of the holes they just made, widening them further.

“No!” Jean shrieked. “Go away!”

Masson once read that rats could squeeze through holes the size of a quarter. In that case, they wouldn’t need much more time to widen their breaches into entrances. Whatever window of opportunity existed for escape had just slammed—

Masson went rigid. The idea he almost had earlier hit him like a snapped towel.

Jean’s shadow on the wall…the sledgehammer…window of opportunity…

“Windows!” Masson cried.

His shout had such a note of triumph that Jean could not help but turn away from the rats and look at him with an uncomprehending expression.

“We can get out through the windows!” Masson explained. His excitement caused him to forget that Jean had just tried to kill him with a sledgehammer. “They’re only bricked up, no reinforcement rods! All we have to do is tear away the paneling and knock them out!” Masson reached for the sledgehammer, but Jean snatched it away.

“Where?” she snarled.

Masson rushed to the back wall and pointed out a three-foot section of paneling. He nearly lost a finger as Jean hammered at the spot.

“I’ll do it!” she yelled between swings. “You keep them off me!”

Masson faced the front wall once more. In the heat of the moment, he found his anxiety manageable. He supposed this was because everyday life made him feel ninety percent filled with dread. Experiencing one hundred percent didn’t require that much of an adjustment. Plus, he was used to things being worried, whether it was his own brain by real or imagined problems or his shelter’s cinder block wall by zombie rats.

Walk to the end of the street. Hang a left…

On the CD player, Silent Night gave way to We Three Kings. Bearing no gifts from afar, an undead rat squeezed through a hole like toothpaste from a tube. The rodent fixed Masson with milky eyes and, meal-ward leading still proceeding, scurried forward. Masson cried out in revulsion and stomped, mashing the rodent into the carpet.

As if in aid to their fallen comrade, three more rats poured themselves from holes. Two came apart under Masson’s heel, their bones crackling like frying bacon. The third managed a feeble leap and clung to Masson’s pants leg. Masson danced in a circle on one foot, kicking. The rat lost its grip and was smashed into jam under Masson’s shoe.

Breathing heavy with adrenaline, Masson threw a stricken glance over his shoulder. Jean had succeeded in breaking through the paneling. Now she hooked her fingers underneath its edges and tore a chunk away, revealing the bricked-up window.

By the time Masson’s attention returned to the front wall, the rats had established a beachhead. One moment there had been three. The next moment there were thirteen. Sounds that were part-squeaks, part-grunts emanated from their throats.

The hair on the back of Masson’s neck rose. Stomping feet weren’t going to cut it much longer. Masson lunged for the cot along the back wall, narrowly avoiding Jean’s backswing on the way. The cot was the folding variety with a wooden frame. Masson kicked one of its center joints, snapping it. Next, he grabbed the head strut and broke it at a corner. This left him with a three-foot club about the thickness of a broom handle.

Thus armed, Masson waded into the rats (which charged with sluggish yet relentless speed) swinging his newly-acquired club like an insane golfer. Rats flew this way and that, but more continued to join the fray. Custer’s Last Stand rose unbidden in Masson’s mind. Victory was out of the question. The goal was to survive as long as possible. Frantic, Masson grabbed a box of food and climbed on top of it, seeking higher ground.

“Get up on something!” Masson screamed at Jean.

Jean spun, making too much progress at the window to want to stop. What she saw changed her mind, however. What looked like a brown carpet unrolled itself from the shelter’s front wall. Masson stood atop a box of food as a wave of zombie rats came at him like a slow motion, inexorable tide. He beat at them with his club, but their numbers negated being held back for long. Mewling, Jean grabbed the easy chair, and with the strength of panic, threw it into position. She hopped up on its seat, almost falling as it rocked, and started pounding at the window once more. She had a hole through the bricks now.

“How long?” Masson shouted.

“Two minutes!”

“We don’t have two minutes!”

Undead rats crawled on top of each other to get a bite of Masson. At first they only attacked from the front. Then the mass, which now completely covered the carpet, spilled around the box, coming at Masson from all quarters. His club swung in a continuous pendulum, bashing furry bodies. Teeth tugged at Masson’s shoelaces, and claws pulled at his pants cuffs. He kicked by reflex, sending zombie rodents bouncing off the ceiling.

Still more rats invaded the shelter. Knowing he could buy no more time, Masson leapt from the box in retreat. He saw Jean had succeeded in partially opening the window, letting in twilight. Rats nipped at Masson’s heels and, with no other recourse, he jumped into the chair with Jean. It rocked drunkenly, like they stood on a raft at sea.

“Not yet!” Jean shouted. “The hole isn’t big enough!”

“There’s no more time!” Masson yelled back.

“Make time!”

Jean shoved Masson, bracing herself against the wall for leverage. This resulted in the chair swiveling beneath them with a life of its own. Crying out, Masson snagged the window breach before he fell to the rats. Reaping what she sowed, Jean overbalanced, her spine arching over the chair’s backrest like she was a limbo contestant. Her free arm flailed, and Masson made a desperate grab for it, snagging two of Jean’s fingers.

“Bastard,” Jean growled, dangling over the churning mass of zombie rats that surrounded the recliner. “You’re nothing but—” Then her fingers, sweaty with exertion, slipped from Masson’s grip. Jean fell like a diver flipping off the side of a boat, and the rats closed over her like water. She shrieked until the rodents invaded her mouth and muffled her screams. Her figure humped, twisted and thrashed beneath the swarm of rats.

“Jean!” Masson cried.

As if in response, Jean erupted from the squirming rodents. They clung to her limbs and torso, a living fur coat eating her alive. He face was hidden by rats that dangled like bunches of grapes. “Yur umin’ wife meee!” Jean howled and reached for Masson.

Instinctively, Masson planted a shoe in Jean’s chest and kicked. She went down once more, and Masson didn’t wait around to see if she’d come back up. He lunged for the window. Jean was right; the hole wasn’t big enough — for her — but it might be big enough for him. Masson forced his head and shoulders through the opening, cutting himself on broken glass still in the window frame and not caring. The edges of bricks dug into Masson’s chest as he clutched handfuls of the outside lawn and pulled, inching his way up and out. The house held the weight of an entire life spent no more than a few mile from its walls, and it seemed to bite down on Masson like an alligator on its prey. His hips caught in the hole, and he strained. Sharp edges scraped away skin. With a final embryonic burst, he was free.

Masson laid there, wanting to fall into a stupor and perhaps never move again, but the rats continued to pursue him with single-minded hunger. Maybe some didn’t get their fair share of Jean, or maybe there were so many that Jean was already consumed, like a cow in a piranha-filled river. Either way, Masson heard their claws scrambling up the basement wall. Mewling, he pushed himself to his feet and stumbled out of his backyard.

Cars stood in the street with broken windows and blood on their doors. Stripped skeletons rested in untidy heaps here and there on the sidewalks. Plumes of smoke rose in the distance, making it look like the inner city was besieged by an army of tornadoes. The neighborhood was a giant graveyard, and all of the homes were giant tombstones on the verge of falling down. Overhead, the sky was an expanse of gray. Thunder rumbled in its depths like a massive hungry stomach.

Masson froze as his senses were assaulted by the sights, and his brain was assaulted by their ramifications, but he did not freeze for long. The undead rat horde spilled around the corner, still ravenous. Masson ran, biting down on his inner cheek to keep from crying.

Once Masson reached the end of the street, he stopped. It was the place he stood many times before — Christmas Eve with his father, his first day of school, his first day of work, the way to church, the grocery store and everywhere else. It was the place Masson stood at in his mind whenever he faced a challenge. It was the place from which he tried to step into life and usually fell, but what did life have to do with the world anymore?

Squeak-grunts closed in on Masson’s back.

“Christ,” he whimpered. “What do I do?”

Masson’s shoulders squared in the slightest way once he knew.

Then he hung a right…

He laughed at that thought. It was a running joke around the lab. It had started when a rookie assistant in the University Pathology Laboratory had absent-mindedly wondered where they got all of the dead brains that they studied.

Brian had been that assistant, two years previously. His supervisor, Mr. Leans, had responded with the now-famous joke.

“Son, nearly every brain in this place has died of something. What did you have?”

Something he saw brought him back to the present. Under the bright, white light, Brian noticed a small, dark line on the back of his right hand examination glove.

“Oh, shit!” He yelled.

As he dashed over to an emergency wash station, Mr. Leans approached, attracted by the exclamation.

“What happened, Brian? You alright?”

Pulling the gloves off, one tucked inside the palm of the other, he said, “No, there’s a freaking tear in my glove.”

“You’re on the necrotizing virus, right?”

Elbowing the hot water lever, Brian replied, “Yes, sir. Could you get that light for me?”

Mr. Leans placed a hand on Brian’s back and reached past him.

The emergency wash basin was shiny stainless steel. At eye level, there was a placard describing graphically how to properly wash hands and eyes. Just to the right of the sign was a small metal toggle switch. It had a small line drawing of a light bulb above it, little lines radiating out from the bulb.

When Mr. Leans flipped the switch up, the short circuit in the switch sent a burst of voltage through his body and into Brian. Brian’s hands were under the flow of hot water.

Sparks flew from the switch and from Brian’s hands. Mr. Leans jumped back, stung a little in the fingertips on both hands. Brian jerked and fell, striking his forehead on the rolled edge of the stainless steel sink.

—

The necrotizing virus had not been completely eradicated from the brain by the cleansing and preserving process. When the preservation fluids flowed through the tear in his glove, many individual viruses were carried onto his skin,

The viruses were able to penetrate his skin, entering several capillaries on the back of his hand. This happened long before he reached the emergency wash basin. They went to work on the first cells they encountered, his blood cells.

These blood cells had already delivered their payload of oxygen to the tissues in his hand, and were on their way back to his heart and lungs to gather more. The few of them that were attacked produced more of the viruses, but they were not quite identical to their forebears. The preservation process performed on the brain had damaged the DNA of the original viruses.

The new generation did not destroy the blood cells by lysis, or the rupturing of the cell’s membranes. They released by budding, being released by the victim cell. Thus, the blood cells would continue with their duties, but with the additional ability of providing a host for more of the necrotizing viruses.

Several blood cells were birthing new viruses when the electric shock coursed through Brian’s body. One of these new viruses had budded out of a blood cell carrying methemoglobin, which binds with iron, not oxygen. This iron present in the virus conducted the electricity, mutating the virus’ DNA.

This third generation virus had several unique characteristics.

First, it carried a small electric charge, which was imparted to the cells it conquered. Any virus budding out from one of these cells also carried the charge.

Second, when the virus infected a cell, apoptosis, or the process of natural cell death, was eliminated. In order for an infected cell to die, it now had to lose its electric charge or be physically damaged.

Third, the telomeres on the end of the cell’s DNA molecule were eliminated. Similar to the ends on shoestrings, these cap off the DNA, and determine how many times a particular DNA molecule can replicate itself. Every time the molecule makes a copy of itself, this cap gets shorter. When the virus removed the telomere, it prevented the cells from multiplying.

Fourth, every affected cell no longer used oxygen to power its processes. They all used mineralized iron.

Soon, the newest generation of the virus would outnumber the original. They would assimilate the brain, easily penetrating the blood/brain barrier. The heart would take a while longer, but when it succumbed, it would stop.

—

It took twelve minutes for Brian to be transported to the University Hospital’s Emergency Room, due to the storm which was blowing. The first storm of the year had blown in the day before, on the the third day of the new year. His fever had escalated to an unbelievable 109 degrees by the time the Ambulance arrived.

By the time they had him in an examining room, his heart had stopped. He did not respond to defibrillation, nor to manual Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation.

A nurse closed Brian’s green eyes with her fingers. They covered Brian with a sheet and called for an attendant to take his body to the morgue.

—

The heart, once it had been completely assimilated, was unable to beat. The electric charge present in each of it’s cells prevented it from doing anything but contracting in a final clench. Thus, on it’s last beat, it squeezed most of the blood from it’s chambers, making it nothing more than a congealed lump of dead muscle. It was now only a junction for blood to pass through.

The brain now craved mineralized iron instead of oxygen. Starved of this supply, it started sending out pulses of electrical current. These pulses flexed muscles.

This flexing of muscles created a hydraulic pressure in the circulatory system. This pressure caused blood to flow throughout the body, including into the brain.

The attendant, Henry, nearly screamed when the corpse thrashed its arms and legs, throwing itself off the gurney. Henry crossed himself and moved to aid the man, thinking there had been a horrible mistake.

“Oh, my God, sir! Are you alright? Here, let me help you. Sit up on the gurney.”

The man stood. His body jerked and spasmed, as if being shocked by electricity.

His skin was grey, as if covered in ash. There was a small cut above his left eye. The cut was open and black as night. His sweat matted hair was brown.

The man’s face was slack, slimy grey saliva dripping from between his teeth, which blackened visibly as Henry watched.

What caught Henry’s attention, though, were his eyes. The orbs were the same ash grey as the skin, but the pupils were a brilliant green. There was no intelligence behind them.

Henry reached up to the man’s shoulders in order to assist him in sitting on the gurney.

The man grabbed Henry’s right arm with both of his hands and tore out a mouthful of flesh and muscle with his teeth. Some of the tendons and muscle fibers remained attached to Henry’s arm and pulled out from the man’s teeth, like gory floss.

Henry screamed. He jerked his arm free of the man’s grasp and punched the grey form in the face. The nose flattened, and a thick black tendril ran down.

The strike caused the man stumble back and fall down. Taking this opportunity, Henry bolted up the hallway, yelling for help.

—

Brian was no longer Brian. He was a simple machine.

The brain occupying his skull now subsisted on mineralized iron. This was provided by the flow of blood now black with the mineral.

The brain may have lost the higher functions which made up the man who had been Brian, but the lower functions were still present. The creature knew how to stand up from the ground. It knew how to walk.

It knew hunger. It did not know what it craved, just that it craved.

Even though the lungs had collapsed, no longer able to process gases, air still entered the nostrils. The movements of the body compressed and expanded the chest and neck enough for this.

The creature detected the smell of something. Something desirable. It turned in the direction of the smell and started walking.

A few moments later, it came to a closed door. An echo of a memory sounded through the pathways of the brain, and it put up a hand and pushed.

The door to the morgue opened.

—

One doctor and two University police officers ran down the hall toward the morgue. They found the gurney, but there was no sign of the man who had been dead. Henry was being tended in the Emergency Room.

In this last portion of the hall, there were no doors except those which opened into the cold storage facility. They pushed open the swinging doors and gasped.

The dead man had located a woman’s body which had not yet been placed in the locked refrigerated storage room. Henry had been called away to retrieve the man which now stood over the woman, whose corpse still lay on a gurney.

The dead man had been feasting on the only exposed flesh. The left side of the dead woman’s face had been ravaged, exposing bone and teeth.

The dead man looked up at the sounds of horror behind him. He turned and started toward the men, growling.

Blood and tissue dripped off his chin as he walked. He reached both hands out for the doctor, who was closest. His hands opened and closed, grasping air, searching for something to drag to the mouth.

The officers both reacted. One stepped to the side and drew his sidearm. The other stepped forward to intercept the approaching man.

“Hold it right there, bud. We can help you, but you gotta calm down.” This from the officer who did not have his weapon drawn. “Just take it easy and we’ll take good care of you.”

The man shambled two more steps and then lunged at the officer. The policeman had been ready for an attack, and smoothly grabbed the man’s arm and pivoted the man right down to the floor, twisting the arm severely behind the man’s back.

The other officer placed his gun back into its holster and knelt down beside the struggling figure. He went to place his hand on the man’s neck to hold him down. Before he could accomplish this, the man turned his head and snapped his teeth together with a loud clack, neatly removing the officer’s right pinky finger.

Jumping to his feet, the officer yelled, “Son of a bitch!”

He cradled his hand to his chest as the doctor stepped forward, removing his white smock.

“Let me see it, Bob. Let me see.” The doctor said, pulling the injured hand to him.

He wrapped it tightly with his smock.

“There. You’ll be fine, Bob. We’ll get you back upstairs and take care of you.”

The other officer twisted the arm a little more. “Hey, prick! You just lay nice and still, I won’t have to hurt you.”

To his surprise, the man rolled over on his back. The captured arm snapped at the shoulder, twisting the skin taught. The man on the floor grabbed the officer’s foot with his unfettered hand and reached with his open mouth toward the ankle. The pinky finger fell out of the man’s mouth, chewed and bloody.

“The fuck? Get offa me!” The officer yelled as he jumped back. He drew his pistol and aimed it at the man.

“Just stop right there! I will shoot you if you continue to attack!”

“Just shoot, him, Tom!” Bob yelled. He grabbed the radio off his belt and spoke into it.

“Dispatch, we got a crazy guy down here, eating corpses, trying to bite us. Shit, he did bite me! Bit my fucking finger off! Send somebody down here to help us! We’re in the morgue.”

There was a response, but it went unheard in the chaos.

The doctor had stepped up behind the man on the floor, his hands raised in a placating manner.

“No! Don’t! He’s just sick! There’s no need to shoot him!”

The doctor kneeled down behind the man and put his hands on the twisted shoulder.

“Doc, don’t! This guy’s psycho!” Tom said.

“No, he’s just urrkkk…”

The man turned suddenly on the doctor and bit out his throat. He jerked free, mouth full of blood. He was chewing hard and quick.

The doctor’s body convulsed and he raised his hands to his ruined neck. Blood flowed freely down his shirt and gurgled out of his neck.

Inhaled blood was coughed up to the ceiling, where it dripped a red rain back down on the two.

Tom fired his weapon three times, directly into the grey man’s back. The doctor was already dead, he knew, so there was no fear of injuring him.

The body jerked from the impact, but did not fall. The grey man swallowed forcefully and leaned in for another bite on the doctor’s throat.

A final shot from Tom’s gun exploded the grey man’s forehead, and the body fell. Black ichor oozed from the wound, only to solidify quickly.

The man who had been known as Brian was, finally, dead.

—

Henry was starting to feel very hot, like he was running a fever. The Emergency Room doctors were busily sewing up the gaping bite wound in his arm.

Within a few minutes, long before his arm was sutured, he passed out.

And died.

—

An unidentified homeless woman, who had died earlier in the evening, stood.

One side of her face was stripped to the bone and muscle.

—

Bob had retrieved his finger from the floor, but was burning up by the time he walked into the Emergency Room.

The blood on the stump of his bitten finger had turned black, and it did not hurt anymore.

—

Doctor Andrew Taylor had been laid on a table in the Hospital’s morgue, where he had died. A grey skinned woman stood over him, looking at him with her head tilted to one side, like a dog.

Doctor Taylor twitched, then his arms flailed and legs kicked, and he was off the table, laying on the floor. He stood, his head flopping forward. With an effort, he raised it to look at the woman.

She didn’t smell like food.

“Food?” He thought to her.

“Food.” She agreed.

They walked out of the morgue, the woman in the lead.

It ends in thunder.

Between those two points, there is much blood and screaming.

Have you ever heard the saying “In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is King”?

###

The story begins in silence. The silence of the dead.

Some stare up at the sky, others are face down on the asphalt. Bodies everywhere, in the infinite variety of positions the dead assume when they fall. Infinite variety blending into an infinite monotony of the dead. Each with two wounds to the skull. One massive, brains and bone exploding outward. One small and discrete, half an inch across, edges turning inward. They lie in heaps around the boarded-up convenience store, in the streets that approach this place. All are within fifty yards of this place. All show the bite marks of the walking dead.

“Nothing up here, boss.” Williams, on top of the convenience store. Big, strong, utterly loyal. How smart is he? Well, he’s big, strong and utterly loyal. “No shell casings, no bodies or bloodstains. Buncha these things tho.” He tosses a knot of white paper down to me. I pick it up, smell it. The smell of black powder. Crisp paper, tied at one end. The paper from a phone book.

“No fresh meat, just moaners.” Ashley, going over the bodies with mild curiousity, her fingerless black leather gloves letting her black-nailed fingers caress the corpses. “All these Z’s popped and they didn’t bag a single breeder. What gives?”

Goths are not usually as death oriented and morbid as they are said to be. Ashley, on the other hand, is a walking nightmare of a stereotype. She’d made me promise that when our mission was done, I’d be the one who killed her.

“Hey, I found a broken bell. And some wax paper.” Give Williams that, he’s methodical. Give me a field person who’s methodical and obedient. I’ll pass on the geniuses every time.

Lopez, his dark eyes watching all the approaches, always watchful, sidles over to me. “What happened here, boss?”

“They got on top of that store and they rang a bell.” I examine the bodies as I speak. Almost every wound came from above. “They rang a bell and the zombies came for dinner. Then, they started killing them at their leisure as the zombies milled around down here. Notice: every entrance to the store is barricaded. They probably went up the outside with a ladder. They didn’t even use modern weapons.”

I hold up the paper knot Williams had thrown down. “This is the paper cartridge from a muzzle loading rifle. They fire slowly. But you can make black powder almost anywhere, as much as you want. Never run out of ammunition. Of course, you have to have time to reload. They took their time, as much time as they wanted. When they ran out of zombies to kill, they went back down their ladder with their bell and the muskets and they went home.”

“Some people just don’t get with the program.” Lopez nodded. He was a quick learner. I think he’s gunning for my job. It’s a pretty safe bet he’s going to get it too. “This must be one of those “kill boxes” they been talking about.”

Ashley shakes her head. “Good thing those losers up at Cleveland weren’t doing something like this. We’d never have been able to whistle up enough zombies to take them out if they were doing shit like this.”

She looks over at one zombie who wanders near. It’s eyes are blank from the ultrasonics, the lizard hindbrain dormant, the feeding/aggression mechanism stilled. Thank goodness for ultrasonics.

Ashley walks over to him, strokes his bluish-green cheek. “There, there, baby, you’ll get to feed soon enough.”

###

We work for the Think Tank. The official name doesn’t matter. I can’t tell it to you. Not won’t.

Can’t.

All field teams are conditioned by drugs and hypnotism. They can reveal neither the existence or the location of the Think Tank to anyone not of The Project.

The Think Tank was made to face harsh truth: A world that is heaven for 6 million people is a living hell for 6 Billion. But how do you get it down to six million?

Oh, the Think Tank paid the bills with other projects, other research, all those government grants and private consulting contracts. But the central project always remained. How to dispose of the surplus population while preserving the superior core group?

Plague? Too random. As likely to kill the core group. Plus the human race was simply too adaptable, medical knowledge too distributed. Enough would survive to track down the core group and destroy it.

Nuclear War? A problem worse than the solution. Massive environmental damage, loss of knowledge, of art, of entire species.

Conventional wars? Pointless. In 1945, after 6 years of the human race trying to kill each other off with every weapon they could grab, there were still more human beings alive than there had been in 1939.

Then we found the Venus Plague.

It was on the probe from Venus that crashed. Was it from Venus? Or some microbe that had been mutated by radiation in space? We didn’t know. But it animated the dead. Brought them out of the ground, hungry and vicious, in several counties near Pittsburgh. The incident was hushed up, of course. Samples were sent to CDC for study. The Think Tank got it’s own samples. They made sure that the CDC’s batch was “accidentally” destroyed. Then they went to work.

Study the microbe. Study the walking dead. Find the tools to control them- the subsonic lures to draw them in, the subsonic beacons to pacify them. Find out every way to distribute the microbe quickly and stealthily.

It took decades and cost a fortune. Fortunately, the think tank had both. Plus utter dedication. Finally, we acted.

Newly capitolist China, with its unregulated medical system and transplant harvest was the natural start. Bribes could put you in anywhere. Infected organs could be scattered all over the world, usually with little or no monitoring. Infected immunizations, infected blood and plasma, all going out. All giving the microbe in such minute doses that it could take days, weeks even for the plague to manifest itself. Plenty of time to scramble the records.

Next step was the First World. Use those socialized medical systems and their centralized control to paralyze any response. Plant more incidents of the plague and use the media to spread just enough information to sow panic, not enough to guide effective responses. Our friends in the government were very busy, making reports disappear, making sure the wrong people got the right jobs.

Queens was our ultimate triumph. We started by co-opting the needles for junkies program. Infected needles were given to every junkie in the five boroughs. Raiding the New York City morgues and animating all their inmates, then sending them walking out on the streets. Paralyzing the police radio net for six crucial hours. Flooding the media with false reports. Oh, we were busy. I was busy. And on the higher levels, making sure that the Army response was too late, with the wrong weapons and commanded by a General who was energetic, completely in charge and an idiot.

Then sit back and make sure the results go on national television.

Still, it wasn’t enough. Some people simply refused to panic. Enter us, in three piece suits and government SUV’s and ID. A caravan of four SUV’s into any town where panic hadn’t taken hold. Go to the town hall where some mayor refused to panic, some crusty ex-soldier or police chief or sherriff was organizing a defense, where some man or woman was calmly speaking with a clear, loud voice and a plan.

Flash the ID. Tell them about a refugee camp set up just for them. Food, tents, medicine, army troops guarding it, a secure zone, but they have to get there right now or it’ll be taken away. Mutter some rumors of nuclear strikes or airstrikes on all the abandoned areas. Get them all in their cars, abandoning their homes and supplies, trooping hundreds of miles across panic-choked roads. They finish their journey with empty gas tanks in empty cornfields that our maps told them were refugee camps.

Ahhh, the fun.

Eventually, our field teams began to disappear. Someone had gotten wise. But now we had the locals shooting at the real government officials. That fitted our plan too.

Still, the human race just doesn’t know when to quit. Nearly a year after Queens, there are still hundreds of small communities standing off the zombie hordes. Tens of millions of surplus, useless human beings impeding our plan. Their greedy desire for their own survival distrupting our plan for humanities’ golden future.

So the field teams go out again. Go to the Blue Zones. Pose as survivors. Get inside. Make them fall apart. Like Cleveland. Get a three-way civil war going on in the enclave, while the beacon draws in a full-scale chain swarm attack, forty-thousand zombies storming the broken defenses. That was our latest success.

These guys would be small potatoes. We thought.

I threw down the empty paper cartridge. “Let’s get to work.”

###

We saw signs of the place a mile away. We were in a small city called Canton, Ohio, one of the rust belt cities. This had been one of the poorer neighborhoods, near downtown. Now, more than half the houses were gone, heaps of scorched boards with weeds growing on them. The old factory houses had burned like matchwood. More and more though, the basements were simply trash mounds, the smell of the dead still leeching up from them. Someone had been tearing down the houses, hauling them away, burying corpses in the basement under the trash of discarded ashphalt, plastic, cars and tires. Any large piece of uncovered earth was planted with beans, corn, squash. Indian corn, the seeds probably salvaged from some decoration. Clumps of dandelions, some of them obviously harvested for greens. Trees.

For once, a survivor group hadn’t been tearing down every tree in sight. Apparently, someone bothered to tell them that green wood makes lousy firewood. One tree was bearing fruit, mulberries thick on the branches.

We heard them before we saw them. I turned to Lopez. “I’ll do the infiltration. I need a clump of Z’s as cover. You take beacon two and the team, gather as many Z’s as you can about ten miles north of here and come at this place in three days. I want a nightime assault. In precisely 72 hours, I’ll light off beacon one. Got that?”

Lopez nodded. Beacon Two was our big job, unmistakeably some odd technology. Big unfolding antennas. Powered by a hand crank generator or solar panels, capable of drawing in every zombie for a twenty mile radius with ultrasonics on the right frequency. Mine was smaller, disguised as a boom box, with a ten mile range and less battery capacity.

I checked at myself in a nearby window. Male, mixed-race, thirties, short curly hair, average height, slender build, dressed in nondescript clothes, hiking boots, leather jacket, backpack, canteen, holstered Beretta 92 and a folding stock HK assault rifle over my shoulder. I handed the HK and the ammo bandoliers to Lopez, along with my spare field rations. I’ve passed for black, italian, east indian and hispanic on various jobs. This area, I’d stick with the light-skinned black persona.

Lopez shook his head. “You still look too healthy boss. Nobody gonna believe you ain’t outrunned a bunch of Z’s.”

“Just have them where I need them, Lopez. 72 hours. Move.”

Lopez goes. I light off my beacon, step away from it and hide in cover. I also activate my own ultrasonic.

The beacon draws in a hundred zombies in less than an hour. They come in eager, drawn by urges far beyond what is left of their minds. Any that got close to me went passive as my ultrasonic overrode the beacon.

A hundred was enough. I took out a knife, willed myself to control and stabbed myself in the thigh.

Gritting my teeth, I wondered if sometimes my dedication to the job was not excessive. I kept my blade up and down, between the tendons, not cutting them, near a vein. A nice bloody wound spilling down my slacks. Shame about them, I’d just looted them from a Gap. Can’t beat Tommy Hilfiger.

I walked to the beacon, shut it off and ran away as fast as my leg would help. The Z’s saw me then. There was a second as they made visual ID. Then those outside the range of my ultrasonics set up the moan. I staggered away as fast as possible.

I still had to be far out from this community to keep from being spotted. No chance of fooling people when you’re sitting unmolested in a mob of ghouls. As I hobbled away from the mob, my leg bleeding more, I wondered if I’d been too far out as a hundred zombies moaned and staggered in persuit of me.

I hobbled into the cleared areas a few minutes later. Every building knocked down except a few brick ones, clear fields of fire laid out. Metal light poles with bundles of scrap plastic heaped around them, some hanging from the poles. In the distance, an old school, ringed by barriers. A quarter mile away, dozens of people tearing down one more wooden house, ropes and blocks and tackle. I made a beeline for the school. Several minutes later, the first of the zombies emerged from the buildings and pursued me.

I should have known something was up. An alarm was raised instantly, of course. Any community this size would have one. The first screams began. But the working party kept at their job, after a brief gape in my direction. Only three men were sent after me, one with a wheelbarrow. Ahead, children and adults boiled from the buildings behind an odd fence, began mounting platforms. I saw the outlines of shovels against the sky, spears on top of the walls. Ahead, I realized there were pits and wire laid crisscross on the ground around the walls, ranks of punjii sticks set into the streets.

The guys with the wheelbarrow were breathing hard as they came to me. “Hop in man!” The lead guy was white, heavily muscled, iron grey hair in a widows’ peak, carrying a no-kidding sword at his belt, a heavy piece of metal. He also had a holstered pistol. They all did. He threw me in the wheelbarrow, breathing heavily. “Donner, your turn on the wheelbarrow next, let’s go!”

Donner was skinnier, mixed race like me. He hefted the wheelbarrow and we ran, not too difficult down the empty streets that ran between fields that had once been houses.

The cars were all gone. Where were the cars?

I saw that as we neard the buildings. The cars were on their sides, laid in overlapping order, wired together with power lines. Man-high barriers, flexible, fireproof, too heavy for even the largest zombie surge to move. They formed walls in a perimeter run between the buildings. I took it all in, bouncing in agony in the wheelbarrow as Donner pushed.

Donner grew winded quickly. The white guy shouted “Lucius, you’re up!”

I’d seen the third man, black, younger, pull his pistol out, drop behind. He aimed at the oncoming zombie mob. “In a minute, Conan! Got me some Z’s to service!” He opened fire.

I was relieved. These guys had so far seemed way too competent. But “Lucius” held the pistol sideways like some gangster video, blazing away at the mob. He emptied a 13 round clip. I think I saw one zombie go down. Lucius laughed. “I’m out! I need a reload!”

“Stay out here and get eaten, you idiot!” Fury all over his face, the first man grabbed my wheelbarrow, panting like a steam engine, pushing hard. We made it the last 50 yards to the walls and a gate. Chain link fence backed up by plywood. Lucius ran in ahead of us, pumping his arms like an olympic sprinter. The doors slammed shut behind us.

In seconds, there was someone bandaging the bloody wound on my leg. I ignored that, watched the people.

There was plenty of screaming and shouting, but none of it had the panicked note I was used to. The roof of the school swarmed with kids, teenagers, heaving rocks and bricks. One kid, a skinny dark shape against the sky, was pitching like Roger Clemens, small round stones. The rain of bricks and stones hit the zombies just as they began getting tangled up in the wire and stakes arrangement. It knocked down some with crushed skulls. On raised platforms a dozen more people were firing crossbows, steady aimed shots. In the distance, I heard a dozen rifles, the boom of black powder weapons.

I checked. Almost every adult had a pistol at their belt. I offered my Berretta to the medic. “If you guys are out of ammo-”

The medic grinned, a skinny black girl with big eyes. “We got lots of ammo. Only old Jack, he won’t let us use it. Not for small shit. There he go, doing his ‘Conan the Barbarian shit.’”

A knot of men stepped out of one building, the white haired older guy in the lead. They were strapping on what looked like bad copies of medieval armor, helmets with facemasks, all made from sheet metal. That rang real alarm bells. Sheet metal was not good against human weapons but no zombie ever risen could bite through it.

There were a dozen of them, carrying hatchets, crude maces or swords, short handed pitchforks and shields.

On the wall, I saw dozens of men and women on raised platforms, reaching over the wall with long-handled shovels, the shovel blades rising and falling in a deadly rhythm as they became coated with blood and brains. The mob of zombies rapidly diminished as skulls were crushed, heads chopped off.

A tall man, his skin dark ebony black, walked along the wall. Pistol in one hand, he watched the zombies outside the walls as they threw themselves forward to be destroyed. After things slowed down, he turned to the waiting men in armor, blew on a whistle. It’s piercing note punched through the crowd noise. The kids on the roof stopped throwing rocks. Everyone backed away from the gate as the men in armor formed a line. They threw the gate open.

The dozen or so zombies still moving swarmed in. Each was met by one of the men in armor. Maces swung, swords hacked down. The guys with pitchforks pinned the zombies in place, beheaded their targets with a single sword blow. “Jack” knocked his down with a shield buffet, then rammed his blade into it’s skull. That done, the men in armor marched out the gate, shoulder to shoulder, began finishing off the zombies trapped in the tanglewire, all very businesslike. The kids on the roof were cheering.

Nearby, Lucius was shouting at the tall black man with the whistle, dancing around, animated. “Clive, that white motherfucker left me out there to be eaten! He had his way, I’d be doing the ole’ shamble and moan right-”

His voice choked off. “Clive” had one massive hand around his throat. The man was bald, a thin mustache and goatee on his face. His voice was a low rumble. “Lucius, you hide. You hide right now! Because Jack is fittin’ to put your head on a stick right now and I don’t really feel like stopping him. Get your ignorant black ass out of my sight this second now and we may let you keep your gat!”

That looked promising.

Lucius ran off.

The hubbub gradually died down, crews of people with hooks and ropes dragging the dead off the wall, out of the defenses. They loaded the bodies on truck frames that had been turned into wagons. The tall black man turned to me, put out his hand. “Dude, you were draggin’ more zombies than we seen in a month. You down from Cleveland?”

I nodded, exhausted. The wound, I noticed, had been professionally bandaged. My Tommy Hilfigers were a total loss, however. “Been on the run for a week. Couldn’t seem to lose them. I’m Damon Harris.”

“Clive Haygood. You got any ammo for your pistol?”

“Yeah, but I ain’t giving it up. My gats’ only thing kept me alive. Only got six rounds left for it.”

“S’ight. We’ll top you off once things calm down. But rule number one: guns only come out when I call weapons free. Even when we got Z at the door. You pull that gun on anyone in this compound and we skin you. Literally. Got that?”

“Got it.”

A dog came by, a big mutt on a collar and leash, held by a middle aged woman handler. It sniffed at me, licked my hands. “He’s clean, Clive.”

The knot of men in armor came through the gate. Kids were waiting to dump buckets of water on them from the roof, washing off the blood and gore covering them. The kids laughed as they doused them. The men laughed back, enjoying the cool water in the summer heat. One man wasn’t laughing. You could feel the anger radiating from him like a fire as he stalked towards us. He pulled off his helmet. It was Jack.

“Clive, damnit, I want that idiots’ gun, I want it now. He can’t be trusted with a baseball bat, let alone a firearm.”

“Jack, I make those decisions. We can’t restrict firearms. What if he’s on the work detail and you get Z’s swarming out of some basement?”

“Take him off the working details and put him to work in here then! He’s fucking useless!”

“He says you’re riding him.”

“I am riding him! It’s the only way to keep him from sneaking off when we’re doing demolition! I swear Clive, give me his damn gun or-”

“Or you’ll what?” Clive was obviously fed up at being yelled at. “We held a vote old man! I am in charge! So what you going to do ‘or’?”

Jack glowered at the taller black man, then stomped off, rage and water dripping off him.

Clive shook his head, ran a big hand over his bald head.

Yes, this had potential.

###

Jack left with the demolition crew, talking about how he was really in a mood to smash things. Clive and a couple of other people spent forty minutes quizzing me about where I’d come from and what I’d seen. They took notes, checked the maps. I gave them the cover story I’d been practicing. The quiz ended when two trucks, one pulling trailers, came up to the walls. I smelled fish. I looked out the window. Baskets of carp, catfish, bluegills. Several boxes of rifles and ammo, a few more boxes of canned food. A dozen people with the group, all of them armed with rifles. The people of the community seemed happy to see them, but they seemed subdued.

The short black woman leading the group hopped off, hugged Clive. He was confused. “Mary, what happened? How’s you get the Meyers Lake people to give you all that?”

“They were all dead.” She controlled herself, with an effort. “No Z’s Clive, none at all. It was quiet when we went in. We found them all in the garage. They all locked themselves in the garage, put one of the truck exhausts to the vent and started it running. I think it just happened this morning. All of them Clive, the kids, the dogs, every one. So we stripped the place out, took everything that we could use..The babies, Clive, they killed the babies…”

The crowd grew still then, the mood darkening. Mary was crying. A young light-skinned boy ran up to her, hugged her, then an older red-haired woman as she began to cry harder.

Clive pushed himself away from the group. He pitched his voice to be heard. “The Meyers lake crowd gave up this morning. Nobody killed them but themselves! They had as much as we do, but they quit! If that’s what they want to do, we’re better off without them! Now if any of y’all want to quit, don’t bring that to me! We will never quit! There is no quit in this community! We are the living and we will continue to live! If they don’t want to live, we’ll take what they have and we’ll use it to live! We will continue to see tomorrow until every last Z is back in the earth where they belong and we can walk the streets unafraid!”

That actually picked up the crowd. I could see why they made this guy their leader. He patted “Mary” on the shoulder. “Go get some rest. We’ll unload this and have a fish fry. You rest until you’re ready to come back out.”

The fish fry came two hours later, to the smell of frying fish, woodsmoke and hot oil. Deep-fried cattail roots were the substitute for french fries as boards that had been torn from demolished buildings were used as fuel. Fish too small to fry were tossed into meat grinders and turned into fish cakes. Bowls of dandelion greens and mulberries rounded out the meal and if no one was able to stuff themselves, everyone did get a full meal. They ate in the school gym/cafeteria. Jack and Clive were at the head table with the little light-skinned boy I figured out was Marys’ son. Clive told the crowd that Mary would be down later but that she was fine. He finished the meal by giving out prizes to the teens and children who’d been throwing rocks. The lanky, dark-skinned boy with the good throwing arm turned out to be Clives’ son. He got a candy bar for having killed 3 zombies with his fastball pitches.

I wound up sitting by an older white man, his beard and mustache shaggy and grey. He set down a muzzle loading rifle and a sack of paper cartridges. He gave me a hard look, shrugged and sat down, began eating his serving of fried fish. He huffed through his mustache as Clives’ son took his candy bar. “Typical. Big surprise his kid gets the reward. I killed four zombies today guarding the demolition crew and my reward was jack shit.”

I leaned in and whispered to him. “Guy, you know these fuckin’ niggers is always cuttin’ each other slack.”

He looked at me in surprise. I grinned, leaned in closer. “Vinnie Tortelli. Pleased to meetcha. I’m from South Philly.”

He wasn’t adjusting quickly. “But ain’t you-”

“I ain’t no fucking spook. I play that sometimes cuz’ these nubians are always scratchin’ each others backs but I’m a paisan with a tan from Little Italy and don’t you forget it.”

He extended his hand, grinning. “Hal Thornton. Knew a sicilian from South Philly once, while I was in the army. Good guy.”

We ate for a few minutes, concentrating on the food. I nodded at his musket. “Who are you, the Confederate Army or something?”

Thornton chuckled. “Naw. They call us the Daniel Boone squad. ‘Bout a dozen of us with muzzle loaders. Think we’ve killed more zombies than everyone else here combined. Not that it gets us anything. At least Jack gave us some credits.”

“You ain’t gettin’ no credits either, long as Clive there is in charge.”

Thornton nodded. “I’ll tell you the truth, I’d be worried if I was you. Clive didn’t call you guys back during the attack. What if it had been bigger? Your ass woulda been hanging out in the breeze, with you guys out there on demolition.”

He nodded. “Clive don’t give a damn what happens to us. Never should have let him in. If Jack hadn’t vouched for him, Jack and Mary…”"

“Hey, he’s just one guy, right? One bullet in the middle of a firefight and Jack’d be back in charge, right? Accidents happen.”

Thornton gave me an odd look then. I could see the wheels turning. I’d finished my meal and I still had work to do. “Hell, don’t pay any attention to me, Hal, I’m just blowing smoke. But it might be more than smoke if Clive leaves you guys hanging again. He can’t be happy to know you guys are all still loyal to Jack. One thing these blacks know, it’s who’s in what gang.”

I left, my seeds planted there. I found my next target in an empty classroom, converted to bunks. Lucius was there, eating alone. I sat down with him, fished out a treasured flask of whiskey I carried. “’sup, Lucius? Yo man, thanks for tryin’ to shoot those Z’s today. Least you wasn’t going out like a punk.”

Lucius drank deep from the flask, nodded his head. “Straight up. That Jack, he’s one hateful motherfucker. If we weren’t all fighting these zombies, wouldn’t be surprised to find a white hood in his shit. He been riding me since the day I came in.”

Lucius looked at the fish, little more than a few bones and scales on the plate now. “Y’know that old ass man is probably eatin’ steak right now. I seen the supply rooms, all the canned food we bring in every day, stockpiled! All sorts of good shit. They keep saying they’re saving it for winter, that we got to eat whatever shit we scrounge up for now. But I’ll bet Jacks’ eatin’ the fuck out of it. Just like we can’t use real ammo! We got a ton of real bullets and we never shoot it! Say they gots to save it for a major attack. Like today wan’t a major attack! They won’t even give me a reload for my pistol!”

I reach into a hidden pocket, pull out a hoarded box of 9mm jacketed hollowpoints and hand it to him. “Dog, Jack ain’t bulletproof, is he? Shooting starts, a bullet goes stray..”

Lucius grinned, a hungry look in his eye. Then fear washed over him. “Naw, if that happened, Clive would-”

“Clive would be glad there’s one less old white motherfucker to give him shit. Can’t do it his own self, might piss off the white dudes but there ain’t so many of them anymore. Might even have a li’l sum-sumthin’ for the cat who did it, once things calm down.”

Lucius gave me a look I was familiar with. Perfect.

###

I’d intended to work on more during the next 48 hours, but it didn’t work that way. The Meyers lake community had to be stripped of useable supplies. Since there was almost no fuel left, that meant a daylong trek with people hauling wagons and carts. Every hand, including mine was needed. It also meant guards standing by with rifles to repel wandering zombies. The Daniel Boone squad was a major part of that.

I worked that for what it was worth, pointing out to black people hauling wagons that the Daniel Boone squad was all white. After a few hours of hauling, watching their guards standing while they worked, it was easy for them to forget that those guards had to stand alert to watch for zombies. It helped that the team beacon was drawing in all the local zombies, so that the guards never actually had a threat to shoot at. By the end of the second day, we were calling ourselves the chain gang. Of course, I also slipped in a few reminders to the guards of how ungrateful these people were for them protecting them. The trick was to never let one group see me talking to the other group.

It was four pm on the third day when I lit off my beacon. We finished pushing back the wagons loaded with loot from the Meyers lake community around 3pm. My beacon was missing from my rack. For one tense hour searched like crazy, until I discovered Lucius had stolen it. He turned it over, angry that it wouldn’t play his CD’s, wondering why I carried around a boom box with a dead battery. Then I lit off the signal and put it on the room of the school building. Not as easy as I thought it would be. A legless, wheelchair-bound sentry was up there with binoculars, but I managed.

The tall dark-skinned boy and the little light-skinned boy were looking at me as I came down from the room. Funny how they’d be hanging together, the way their fathers’ fought. For a moment, I thought of them being ripped apart, devoured screaming by zombies. Imagined them staggering around as bloody, hungry child corpses. With an effort, I put that image out of my mind.

“What were you doing up on the roof?” The tall dark child.

“Just getting some air. You two play a lot together?”

They shrugged. I left, knowing that the clock was ticking.

The dogs on the fence were edgy. The beacons had that effect on them. As the work details come in and the fence was secured, half a dozen zombies emerged from random points, staggering towards the fences as fast as their rotting bodies could carry them. Zombies will go dormant for weeks at a time, the chemicals that activate their remaining nerves depleted, only slowly recharging even in their turgid metabolism. But now the beacon brought them out. They were quickly dispatched.

It was a late july sunset, the nightly games of basketball and bridge and spades keeping the residents of this little fortress entertained when the zombies really started coming in. Scattered ones, not clumps, each one raising the moan that drew in others, the start of a chain swarm attack. The alert went up and everyone went to battle stations. Clive spoke to the group. “I need a dozen healthy men to help the Daniel Boone squad haul ammo to kill box four. All these zombies are trooping by it. They’re going to slow down the attack, but that’ll use up a lot of ammo. Who’ll volunteer?”

I volunteered, of course. We all took double loads of ammo for our pistols, pushed carts of paper cartridges and torches through the city streets, past the pits and farm plots that used to be houses. The squad was using modern rifles to get us through, semiautos that had been stored for this occasion. They were still busy, even though we kept to open fire lanes. Kill box four was a mile away, an old gas station, barricaded again. Torches were lit on the approaching streets to light targets. The ground floor was being used to store dry firewood for the winter. I helped them pass the supplies up to the roof, leaving two little presents of my own shoved into the ground floor. I even got to talk to Thornton.

“Sounds like your ass is left hanging in the breeze again.”

He shook his head. “At least this time we got a phone line back to the school. Maybe I’ll make an obscene phone call to Clive.”

Our smaller detail, running back to the school, still used up most of our pistol ammo against the steadily increasing tide. Shambling, swaying armless corpses emerging from shadows, from side streets. Behind us, we heard the Daniel Boone squad open fire with their muzzle loaders. As we ran, we lit off pre-set bonfires of paper and plastic, to provide light for the people shooting from the school.

Night fell with the guttering, smoky bonfires illuminating swarms of the undead coming in. First one, then another, then two or three, swaying and staggering. Black shapes outlined by the fires or with some of their features illuminated, their mutilations and rot and blood. All of them moving with that unstoppable slowness, a wave of rotted bodies, jagged teeth, mindless hunger. Three became ten, then twenty, then fifty, their forms growing together slowly into clumps.

Columns of black, vile smoke rise to the sky.

All the ammunition had been broken out now. Clive gave weapons free to a dozen marksmen with rifles. They began picking off zombies at a hundred yards. Only a few zombies were making it to the wire, through the hail of stones and the obstacles. The people with shovels finished them off. I checked the load in my pistol, slipped away to where I’d stashed my gear. One more step. I went up to the command post, found Lucius hiding outside it. He was scared. Truly scared. Perfect.

In a command post set up on the room, Thorntons voice was coming loud and clear over the phone. “It’s some kind of fire below, in the firewood! Damn things burning through the roof!”

Ahh, the little surprises I’d left. Timed incendiaries are so much fun.

Clive spoke into the phone. “How’d that happen? Was somebody smoking?”

” Smoking what, you dumb bastard? We ain’t seen tobacco in six months! It’s the roof that’s fucking smoking!”

Jack was there too, in full armor. “Clive, ask him if they can break and run.”

Clive glared at him, spoke. Thorntons’ reply was obscene and full of anger and fear. “We got wall to wall corpses around us, damnit! We can’t shoot our way out alone and this fuckin’ building is burning! Get us the hell out of here!”

Jack nodded. “We’re armored up. I’ll get the boys rolling. We’ll need cover fire.”

Clive put a big hand on his shoulder. “Negits, Jack. That’s over a mile. We’re close to wall to wall Z’s here. You go out there and they’ll swarm you. If I let you die that way, Mary will kill my ass.”

Jack glowered, wanting to argue but staying silent. Thornton took it more personally. “Damnit you fuckin’ nigger, don’t leave our ass hangin’ in the breeze! You’re letting us die because we’re all white here and I know it!”

Jack turned on Clive, his big sword in his hand as I slipped towards the room chimney that Lucius was hiding behind, an eager grin on his face as he watched the argument. “Clive, we can’t leave them out there!”

Thorntons’ voice was rising in panic. “Oh hell, oh sweet janey, the roofs starting to collapse, it’s burning and-” I heard screams over the phone, screams that rose above the sound of the rifles, the moaning of the zombies in the distance. .

Jack hefted his sword in reflex.

I whispered to Lucius. “He’s about to cut him Lucius. Shoot old Jack and you’ll save Lucius’ life!”

Lucius stepped forward, aimed- and then I heard the click of a safety. A woman’s voice. Mary, her dark skin blending into the shadow haunted night. “Lucius, put that gun down or I’ll kill you.”

Lucius dropped the gun. I reached for mine, only to face the barrel of Mary’s’ pistol. Clive and Lucius both looked towards me at the sound of the black womans’ voice. Behind her, I saw the two boys, one holding my beacon, it’s back removed. My hands went up.

“Clive, Jack, come over here. Little Clive, show your uncle what you found.”

The light skinned boy handed my beacon to Clive. Jack looked in the back too. In the distance, there was a calls for weapons free, the rising moan of hundreds, thousands of zombies calling each other to feed.

Clive looked at me. “This doesn’t look like any radio I’ve ever seen.”

Lucius spoke. “Batteries are dead in it. I tried to listen to it.”

Jack spoke. “It’s got power. Some kind of lithium batteries, big ones. Honey, where did you find this?”

“Honey” was apparently Mary. “Your son and his cousin found it on the roof after this man left it here this afternoon. They could tell something was up.”

Lucius spoke up again. “This dude was telling me to shoot Jack. Said he was going to kill Clive.”

Jack came closer, held Mary to him protectively. “Kill my own brother in law? Naw. Kick his ass, maybe. Mary would be mad if I killed him.”

“And my sister has you seriously pussy whipped, you old fart.” Clive came closer, studying me as Jack pulled the pistol from my belt. “So what is this radio? And who are you?”

Jack smashed the beacon to splinters. That caused another argument. A family argument. While their two sons, cousins, watched me. While Jacks’ wife, Lucius’ sister, held the pistol on me and told them to stop arguing. I knew I was screwed. I didn’t need a gun. My personal ultrasonic would protect me beyond the wall. I turned and ran.

Marys’ first shot shattered my kneecap. I went down on the school room, rough gravel and asphalt scraping my face, my hands.

In the distance, I heard the moans of zombies and Clive shouting “weapons free!”

It is an hour later and I am now the one eyed man. Literally. They have survived and survival has made them harsh. They want answers. I cannot give them answers. They keep asking. I know the answers. I babble, I beg, I utter nonsense phrases. I cannot break my conditioning, not even as I scream from the pain of their interrogation.

Outside the steady thunder of the guns is slowing as even their hoarded ammunition begins to run low. The zombies no longer need the beacon. They come forward in a massive chain swarm attack, drawn by the thunder of the guns. A tide of snatching hands, biting teeth, dead staring white eyes. My final mission may still succeed, but I will not live to see that. Not knowing my mission, not knowing what is truly happening, they have still caught me.

And in this valley of the blind, the one eyed man shall not become king.

###

“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.

“Aw, shoot,” he said as darkness enveloped him. He waited expectantly for the backup generator to come online, and relaxed when he heard it powering up, exactly as it was supposed to do. The generator at the transmitter shack a mile or so away would be doing the same, he knew. Sure enough, within 15 seconds of the outage, the lights came back on. The security lights outside in the parking lot stayed dark, but this was no surprise. They were off the main circuit and wouldn’t come back until full power returned. Gil glanced around while the fluorescents flickered back into life, waiting for further problems, but nothing else happened. It was unlikely that any listener would notice the brief signal drop-out.

He snarfed the last bit of his sandwich, and drained his can of diet soda. Chucking his trash into the bin he fumbled absent-mindedly in his pocket for his cigarettes. He’d have to log the outage but it was a non-event, really.

“God’s will be done,” Gil muttered, grinning. He moseyed through the station’s little front office to main door, headed outside for a smoke. It was one of the station’s on-air catchphrases. As a lifelong Christian, he approved of the sentiment but deplored its use with the syrupy background music used for some of the public service announcements. He had produced a few PSAs himself, using more cheerful music, and ran them exclusively when he was on duty.

Gil Pevney prided himself on not being a follower. He couldn’t be bothered with the Fox Family Channel, gave the Left Behind books a pass, and disliked being exhorted by radio evangelists. Still, his pastor’s reference had gotten him this job at a time when he needed one, and he was grateful enough to say a daily prayer of thanks.

Heat and humidity smacked into him when he opened the station’s front door. The rain poured down as it had for the past few days. The mere sight of it brought the plight of the Delaware Valley residents to his awareness. Many had already been driven from their homes. Bulletins from the National Weather Service said the skies would clear by morning, but that would be less than comforting to the hundreds of distraught property owners in the region who were receiving their most recent punishment from Mother Nature. He was thankful he didn’t live by the river.

Gil dragged on his cigarette, looking into the dripping darkness for any sign of nearby lights. Nothing. The power failure, almost certainly caused by a downed line somewhere, would probably last a while.

The WGWR building was a single-story structure no bigger than a three-car garage, into which was wedged with devilish ingenuity two studios, a tape and disc library, a work area for the engineers, a teletype room, a small front office, and a lavatory not appreciably larger than a closet. There were just chairs enough to seat the entire staff at one time during the weekly progress meetings. Gil had been present for only two or three such get-togethers during his six months as a staffer; they occurred during his daytime sleep hours. As the night guy he was barely in the loop, but he didn’t mind. Memos stuffed into his mail cubby kept him up to date.

Aside from the power blip, the night was looking to be routine; that is to say, completely and totally boring. Gil hadn’t realized how much he would miss human contact when he took this job. It was very different from his recently ended college days, when he was chief engineer for the school’s FM radio station. Then he’d been in the thick, setting up PA equipment for live events at the coffee house, engineering local bands playing at the station, and covering live sports broadcasts around the U.S. Of course there was also the scutwork: closing down and/or opening the station, turning the transmitter off and on when working morning or late night shifts, and so forth.

None of that carried over to the Christian station, which was AM to begin with, with smaller facilities located out here in the boonies. His training, background, and familiarity with computers and sound equipment had gotten him hired to cover the third shift as engineer, weather announcer, carpenter, vending machine repairman: in short, anything that needed doing when no one else was around. The job itself was turning out to be a real dead end. Easy enough, and appropriate for a night-owl type like himself, but with no future. Pretty soon he’d have to decide what to do about that.

The college years had also gotten him pretty deeply into drugs and alcohol, mostly from hanging around with bands. The defining moment had come in his junior year, during a party at which he’d gobbled down what turned out to be a horse tranquilizer, the most powerful downer he’d ever had. At some point he found himself sitting fully clothed in an empty bathtub, hands wrapped around his knees, vomiting all over himself. The next day, with his head still swimming, he sought out the pastor of his church, where he had not set foot in over a year, and begged for help.

Now, at age twenty-three, he’d been walking a path of recovery for nearly half a year, and intended to stay on it. All in all, what he liked best about this rediscovery of his Christian roots was the sense of caring community it gave him. That had been lacking in his life for a long time.

With a sigh, he flipped the butt of his cigarette out into the rain, where it hissed to death when it hit the asphalt in the parking lot. His chores for the remainder of the night until five AM consisted entirely of scheduled meter readings.

With the parking lot lights out, his eyes had gotten used to the rainy darkness, which is why he saw a figure approaching from across the fields to the southeast.

Staggering, stumbling over the uneven ground, whoever it was seemed injured or disoriented. Someone escaping from the flooding Delaware? Or—worse—a zombie?

#

Four months previously, a terrorist bomb hidden in a cargo container exploded at the Port Newark Container Terminal, spreading a lethal airborne cocktail of chemicals and disease-snippets. This caused an outbreak of a mutated form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease that attacked its victims’ brains, causing them to degenerate into wandering predators ravenous for flesh and blood. They were all over the news as “zombies,” even though, from what Gil gathered, being undead they were more properly called “ghouls.” Still, the horror-movie nomenclature took hold and couldn’t be dislodged. Whatever you called them, though, they were dangerous. With their senses rendered painfully acute, they shunned bright lights and loud noises, and fanned out into more rural areas far from the blast point, traveling by night, attacking the unwary. Local and federal law enforcement officials were tracking the zombies down, but some of them always managed to elude capture.

They couldn’t live long once infected, but often they retained enough autonomy to be able to drive cars far from the infection point, only to abandon the vehicles and wander off in search of food once the illness destroyed their ability to drive.

But as the ghostly, staggering figure drew nearer, Gil saw that this was not a ghoul. It was a girl about his own age, ragged and pale but unmarred by the wens and unheeded injuries marking the bomb victims. She had to be a refugee of the flood.

“Hey!” she called out weakly as she stepped onto the wet asphalt of the parking lot. “Can you help me?”

That decided him; zombies didn’t retain the power of articulate speech. “Yeah, sure,” he said, hurrying into the rain. She sagged in his arms when he reached her and he found himself all but carrying her into the shelter of the station. The heavy glass door clicked closed behind him.

She leaned heavily on him, looking around almost uncomprehendingly, squinting in the lights, swaying from exhaustion, dripping wet. He sat her down in a plastic chair in the common room.

She grimaced and shielded her eyes against the fluorescents. She looked terrible in their purple-white glare. “I have such a wretched headache,” she groaned. “Can you turn off some of the overheads?”

“Umm, okay,” he said, and flipped them off. The room, illuminated now by under-cabinet lights and the vending machine, took on a slightly mysterious aspect.

The girl began shivering violently. He moaned in concern. It was air conditioned inside, and she had just made a trek in the steaming darkness of an August night. He pulled open a locker and seized a couple of maintenance uniforms.

“Here,” he said, thrusting them at her. “Dry yourself with one, and put the other on. There’s a bathroom,” he added, pointing to a door.

She stood and nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “I don’t know your name,” she added shyly.

“Oh! I’m Gil,” he said, and stuck out his hand. She took it in hers, which was small and cold. Then she tottered into the lav, leaving Gil to wonder what in the world he had done.

He wasn’t supposed to have visitors: station policy. But she wasn’t a visitor, she was a victim of the flood. Well, the smart thing to do was to call for help. He was no doctor, and the girl looked like she needed one. There was a phone on the common room wall. He lifted the receiver and put it to his ear. Dead.

With a sigh he took the cell phone off his belt and flipped it open. NO SERVICE. “Balls,” he muttered. A falling tree had probably taken down a relay tower somewhere. It might be hours before service was restored on either the station’s land line or his cell. Now what? Well, once she was dried off, she’d be fine. He could feed her from the vending machines, and let her rest. There was a cot in the maintenance shack out back; he would bring that in and set it up for her. She certainly looked as if she needed some sleep.

From the bathroom he heard the sound of running water. Nodding to himself in satisfaction, he went to the snack machine and selected cheese crackers, a candy bar, and a small packet of trail mix. After a moment’s debate he poured a cup of hours-old brew from the coffee maker. It was slightly burned, but hot. He put the cup on the table along with the selection of snacks. Then he dumped the last dregs of the old coffee down the sink and set the pot aside to be cleaned after it cooled. He tore the last paper towel off the roll hanging below the cabinet where coffee makings were stored and wiped the counter.

“Better get more,” he muttered, heading for the utility cabinet in the front office where the paper towels were stored. While he opened the cabinet he glanced out through the glass front door. The office was unlit save for the reduced light from the common room behind him, which was too faint to show anything outside but a rising mist and the rain. He took a couple of rolls of towels out and closed the cabinet.

The dark form of a young boy stood at the door, looking in through the glass. He wore khaki shorts and was using a branch as a staff, leaning on it. Gil gasped; where in Heaven’s name had the kid come from?

As soon as he saw Gil notice him, the boy raised one hand in a tentative wave, then tapped on the glass. “Hey,” he said. “Is my sister okay?”

“Sister?” Gil said, approaching the door. Now he saw that the kid was looking a little banged up, as if he’d spent the past few hours in the woods. He was scratched and dirty. The staff kept his weight off his left leg, which looked swollen. He couldn’t be more than about nine or ten years old.

“Yeah, Toni… Antonia. My sister, you know? I was with her but I twisted my ankle pretty bad across the fields there.” He gestured back across the parking lot. “Then we saw your lights, so she came on ahead.”

The light in the common room grew dimmer behind Gil. At the same time, a voice called “Tommy!”

The voice was so close behind him that Gil jumped. He whirled around. The girl—-Toni–dressed in the too-large maintenance uniform, had managed to clean herself up and looked almost pretty. “Please,” she said to Gil, “it’s my brother, he’s hurt. Let him in?”

“Uh.” Gil glanced back at the door as Tommy tapped on it again. He could see the resemblance between the two; Tommy had his sister’s light hair and narrow face. “Well, okay. The phones are out, though,” he added, unlocking the door. Tommy limped inside and Toni hugged him.

“Everything okay?” she asked him.

“Sure, everything’s fine,” he said. “I’m soaked through, is all.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a brother with you,” said Gil, unable to keep a slight note of accusation out of his tone.

They turned to look at him. Gil thought he saw a flash of dark anger flicker in their eyes, but it was gone almost instantly. Toni said, “I’m sorry, I was in such a state when I got here.”

“We’ve been wandering around out there for a couple of hours,” said Tommy, adding a grin to his words. His nighttime excursion apparently hadn’t quelled his spirit. “Power’s out everywhere around!” He sounded just like an excited ten-year-old having an adventure.

“Want me to take a look at your ankle?” Gil asked, looking closely at Tommy’s leg. Even in the semi-darkness he could see that the exposed flesh was a nasty dark purple color. The kid was wearing hiking boots; a good thing, because they’d give the injury some pressure and support. Otherwise, even with the staff, he would have had a terrible time walking on the uneven ground at night in the rain.

“Huh? Oh, no; no, it’s okay.” He gave a pained look as he moved. “Maybe a place to sit down, and a towel to dry off?”

“Paper towels’re about all I got,” said Gil, leading the way into the common room. “But I can prob’ly find some more overalls if you wanna get out of your wet clothes.”

“Cool.”

Gil gave the roll of towels to Tommy. “So,” he said lightly, watching the kid dry off, “anyone else out there with you?” He grinned at the sibs.

Toni chuckled. “Nope, no, it’s just us.”

“Where are your folks?”

Again he thought he saw their eyes go dark when they exchanged glances. “They’re back at the house,” said Toni. “Mom slipped and broke her arm in the dark so Dad is staying with her. We don’t have any phone, either, so we went out looking for help. I guess we got lost.”

“I guess you did,” Gil said. Anyone living around here would have to know more or less where they were, even in the dark. Of course, without lights, and in the pouring rain, people could get disoriented. “Whereabout’s your house?” he asked casually.

Toni gestured vaguely to the south. “Oh, uh Frenchtown, you know, near the roller-skating rink?”

He nodded. Locals would know about that place, but most outsiders wouldn’t. “Well look,” he said, “there’s a fold-up Army cot in the shed out back, so let me get it. It’s pretty late and you look like you could use a rest.”

Toni cast him a grateful look. “That would be super, thanks,” she said. As he left the room, he saw brother and sister lean closer together, exchanging murmured conversation.

Outside, the rain continued pouring down. “Stopping by dawn, huh?” he muttered to himself as he unlocked the shed. “Yeah.” The cot was going to get a little wet during the dash back to the station, but that couldn’t be helped. He grabbed hold of it, levered it outside and kicked the door shut behind him, then ran for the station.

Inside he set it down and started brushing water off himself. Hearing a footstep behind him he said, “Well, it isn’t much, but let me clean it off a bit, and you—” The swish of air behind him made him look up just as Tommy’s staff connected with his head.

#

“At least you didn’t kill him,” he heard Toni say from a long way off.

“It wouldn’t have mattered much if I did,” Tommy replied. He was a little closer, Gil thought.

“That’s not what they’d say.”

“They won’t say anything.”

Gil managed to open his eyes. Things swam into focus. The common room, lights still off, everything else dark. Not yet dawn. How long had he been out? He tried to move and discovered he was duct-taped to a chair.

He licked his lips.

“Water?” Toni asked, putting a plastic cup to his mouth. He drank.

“What’s going on? What are you doing?” he managed to ask. A bit more awareness returned. The air conditioning was off, and the room was getting stuffy. A faint odor of decay rattled in his nostrils. Tommy sat across the room, examining his leg. His boot was off and he had the station’s first aid kit on his lap. His ankle was as purple as an eggplant and terribly swollen. In fact, it was lacerated, and Gil’s stomach flip-flopped when he saw a spur of white poking through the boy’s flesh. A compound fracture?

“Won’t be going far on this,” Tommy said in disgust, looking at the injury.

“You won’t have to,” said Toni. “Gil here has a car.”

“I’m not driving you anywhere,” Gil said. “You kidding?”

Brother and sister laughed. “That’s right, you’re not,” said Toni. “Don’t worry, Gil, you’re staying right here.”

Gil strained against the tape. The effort made his blood pound in his head, and he worked to stifle a groan. He thought his left hand might be a bit loose.

“You better wrap that up anyway,” Toni said, wrinkling her nose at her brother’s injury.

He shrugged. “I s’pose,” he muttered and busied himself with the first aid kit.

“Listen,” said Gil. His voice broke, so he cleared his throat and began again. “You don’t have to do this.”

Tommy glanced at him, rolled his eyes, and went back to dressing his wound. Toni dragged a plastic chair over next to Gil and sat. “What do you mean?” she asked.

Gil chewed his lower lip. If he was to free himself, he didn’t want her so near. On the other hand, perhaps they could be talked out of doing—whatever it was they intended. “Okay, look,” he said. “We all have choices to make. Sometimes we make bad ones. That’s if we just listen to ourselves. You know? But if you listen to a higher authority, you make better choices.”

“Is that what you’re doing here?” she asked. “Listening to a higher authority?”

“Yeah, like on AM,” said Tommy. “I’d try FM at least. Maybe a Podcast.”

Gil glanced at him. “You’re awfully cynical for a kid your age,” he said.

“You think we have a moral issue,” said Toni. “Right? Like we’re here to rip this place off, or something?”

He shrugged against the tape. “Well, yeah,” he said. “What else?”

Tommy rolled his eyes again. Then he stiffened. “Car!”

“How can you—” Gil broke off as light slid into the front room: headlights.

“Expecting someone?” Toni asked, standing. “Some late-night lady friend?”

Mystified, Gil shook his head. “No… it might be the station manager. Sounds like his SUV. He lives a couple miles away. I suppose he might’ve come by to see if everything’s okay after the power outage.” Gil expected the car’s lights to go off, but they remained on, shining into the darkened front office. Bryon had obviously noticed the inside lights were off, and wanted to be able to see when he went inside.

“Fuck me dead,” said Toni. “Tommy?”

“I’m on it,” said the boy. He used his staff to help himself get to his feet, and limped into the front room while Toni tore off a strip of duct tape and slapped it over Gil’s mouth.

When he tried to protest she pressed a clasp knife to his throat. “Listen, asshole, you and I both want you alive,” she whispered as the car door slammed. “So don’t make a sound, capish?”

Gil did his best to calm himself but his breath whistled raggedly, wetly, in and out of his nose. A creak from the office: Gil’s eyes went wide. He knew that sound. The little cabinet in the front office containing a fire extinguisher and an axe… its hinges needed lubricating but no one ever got around to it. Tommy was going for the axe.

The tip of Toni’s blade pushed a little more firmly against Gil’s neck and he swallowed so hard it hurt. He heard Byron’s keys enter the front door lock and turn. The door opened.

Against the glare from the SUV’s headlights Gil saw shadows move. The entire drama was astonishingly clear. Byron, silhouetted against the light, entered. Tommy stepped in from the side. Axe upraised. Then, amazingly, Byron’s shadow dropped out of view and Gil heard a thud as he hit the floor.

Slipped in a patch of water! Gil thought. And, to Jesus: Oh thank You! Thank You!

Tommy’s axe whistled through the place where Byron’s head had been.

“Judas Priest!” Byron’s profanity, the only phrase he ever used.

Then shadows wrestling, and Tommy snarling. A confused motion, a shriek from Tommy. Shadow of an upraised axe, a flash downward and a sickening noise unlike anything Gil had ever heard: the axe head smashing Tommy’s breastbone.

Toni screamed and stepped away from Gil, the knife in her hand faltering. He worked frantically at the tape restraining him and felt it give way. Sweat coursed down his forehead as he glanced up and watched Byron’s shadow as the station manager, gagging, leaned over and tugged the axe out of his assailant’s chest.

Alerted by the girl’s cry of horror that there was at least one more possible attacker in the station, Byron took a cautious step into the common room as Gil finished ripping himself free. Toni leaped for the station manager just as Gil pulled the tape off of his mouth and shouted wordlessly.

But Byron was ready. He brought the axe handle up, catching Toni a brutal blow under the chin. Her head snapped back and she went down without a sound.

As abruptly as it had started, it was over. Byron automatically groped for the light and flicked it on. There he stood, a beefy man in his forties with a buzz cut and a look of astonishment in his pale eyes.

He took in Gil, still draped with duct tape, and said, “By thunder, Gilbert, what is going on here?”

Gilbert smiled tiredly. He hated being called Gilbert, but Byron was not one for nicknames.

“I’m not really sure I know,” Gil said while Byron helped him free himself from the tape. “The girl showed up in the rain saying she was a flood refugee, and her brother came along a few minutes later.”

“Judas, Gilbert, they’re zombies!” Byron said.

“Well, I never saw any except on TV. And they weren’t falling apart or growling. How was I supposed to know?” Together they hoisted the girl into the chair where Gil had been bound.

Byron snorted. “They’re just not that far along, is all,” he said. Using the rest of the duct tape, they secured her to the chair. “There,” Byron said when they stood back. “That ought to hold her.” Toni’s head hung down so that her hair hid her face.

Gil stared fearfully at the unconscious form. “What are we going to do with them?” Gil asked. “A captive zombie and a dead one?”

“Let me go.”

Startled, they looked at Toni. Her head was up and she regarded them from clear, unblinking eyes. “Let me go,” she said again, straining against the tape.

Byron simply laughed humorlessly. “Soon’s the power comes back on, we’re calling the authorities,” he said to Gil. “They’ve got holding facilities for these things where medics study them for a cure.” He went out to turn off his car’s headlights.

Toni bared her teeth. To Gil, they seemed somehow longer and sharper than normal human dentition. “Concentration camps!” she said. “All they do there is destroy us.”

“But you’re not like most of the others,” Gil said, crouching down next to her. She stared at him. He added, “If you agree to help them, let them examine you…?”

She shook her head and sighed. “Sometimes you just get hooked into things and find yourself trapped. It’s like… well, did you ever do drugs?” She leaned forward and sniffed at him. “Yeah, you have. Not for a while though.”

“How can you possibly…?” He glanced at Byron, who had come back in in time to hear the exchange. The manager’s eyes went wide. “Ah, you’re just guessing,” Gil said hurriedly. “Guy with long hair, tattoos, must be a druggie.”

“No, you smell vaguely of cocaine and marijuana. What happened to us gives us a bigger high than anything that crap ever gave you.” She smiled wanly. “Our senses are way ramped up. We see in the dark, we can detect odors a mile away. Or more. No drug does that.”

“Gilbert, you never said anything about… substance abuse?” Byron said.

Gil looked uneasily at his boss. “It was just between me and my pastor,” he said.

Toni grinned. “Not anymore!”

“Listen, you, you—”

A dull chonk brought Gil back to awareness of his surroundings. Byron toppled over, the fire axe protruding from his back. Behind him stood Tommy, impassive, a ragged unbleeding wound in his chest where he’d torn the axe free after Byron’s attack. Toni had been deliberately distracting them while Tommy recovered.

Gil saw at once that the boy had somehow passed into another stage of the illness. His face had gone lifeless and dull, and his lower jaw hung slightly open.

“Tommy! Help me!” Toni struggled against the tape. Turning his eyes to her, Tommy stepped over Byron’s lifeless form and reached out to assist his sister.

Gil moved without really thinking what he was doing. He seized the axe handle and wrenched it free of Byron’s corpse. Standing and swinging in one move, he aimed a blow at Tommy’s back. At Toni’s warning shriek Tommy started to turn and the descending blade caught him in the upper part of his thin arm. It sliced in and ripped through. The severed arm fell to the floor with an indescribable sound.

Insanity exploded in Gil Pevney. He aimed blow after blow at the mumbling young zombie while the girl screamed in horror and rage. It was, a distant part of his mind told itself, as easy and as hard as chopping wood, though wood didn’t move while it was being cut.

In moments it was over. There was blood, but surprisingly little. Gil wasn’t sure if that was because Tommy was small and didn’t have that much blood in him in the first place, or if the zombie disease somehow diminished the amount in a person.

Poor Byron, lying there, oozed far more blood than Tommy. Clearly there was some sort of difference.

But Gil found it all but impossible to think through Toni’s wailing and shrieking. Understanding that it would be useless to try to talk to her, he set the axe down on the table and checked the tape holding her, decided it was still secure, and set about the most distasteful and revolting task of his life: clearing Tommy’s body parts from the room.

His first burden was the youth’s trunk. One arm and the head were still attached. Gil managed to lift the mutilated segment, was surprised at how light it was, and got it outside the station’s back door before vomiting. He leaned his head against the rough stucco outside wall, letting the rain spatter down on him, keeping his thoughts as clear as he could by muttering a prayer for forgiveness.

It had never occurred to him that he could kill another human being. Never in his worst nightmares had he thought that he would have to kill someone. But, in a way, he was obscurely pleased that when the crunch came, he had been equal to the task.

Recovering some of his poise, he wiped the moisture from his eyes and went back in. After all, Tommy had attacked and murdered Byron, and would obviously have attacked him next had he not done something to protect himself.

He finished the rest of the disgusting chore more easily and was back inside without having gotten sick again. Come daylight there’d have to be something done about the dismembered corpse outside and Byron’s body in the common room, but for now Gil felt he had done his best. He covered Byron’s corpse with a tarp from the utility shed.

Toni had fallen silent. She sat with her eyes fixed on the mound under the tarp, with a strange light in her eyes. Gil wanted no hint of what hideous thoughts might be passing through her mind. He slumped down into a chair and lit a cigarette. There wasn’t supposed to be any smoking inside the station, but he muttered a curse at the rule. Let ‘em reprimand him. He’d been through enough tonight; he’d earned the smoke.

He was exhaling the first big plume of smoke when the girl spoke.

“You think you’ve won.”

He sighed through another lungful of bitter vapor. “Won? Why, was this a game? All I know is, I was trying to do you a good turn, you and your brother. You repaid that by assaulting me and killing Byron. And you’re complaining because I defended myself?” He snorted and took a deep drag on the cigarette. “You can bitch about it to the cops.”

She looked at him and smiled, and a chill rippled up his spine. The light of madness shone in her pretty eyes. “I don’t expect it’ll come to that.”

He opened his mouth to respond when the station’s front door crashed inward in an explosion of broken glass. Shocked, Gil whipped around in time to see the trash can that normally sat by the door roll to a stop just outside the common room. Someone had thrown it through the glass!

He leaped to his feet but before he could take more than a step he heard a horrible blubbering moan grind through the humid air. It was wordless, furious.

“Mom! Daddy!” shouted Toni. “In here! Help me!”

Dad? Mom? The implications slammed together in Gil’s head.

Growling, muttering, Toni’s parents stumbled into the room, preceded by a graveyard stench such as Gil had never experienced in his life. If he had had anything left in his stomach he would have vomited again. Toni’s mother fumbled at the girl’s bonds while her father turned to Gil. What was left of the man’s face contorted in rage.

Gil snatched up the axe from the table and brandished it. The adult zombie took an uncertain step back, clearly wary of the bloodstained blade.

“No, Daddy! He’ll get away!”

Alerted, Toni’s mother turned away from her fumbling efforts to free her daughter and advanced on Gil from the other side of the room. Desperate, Gil swung at the male and it stepped back again, allowing Gil to duck out the door. With the zombies in pursuit, he raced for the back door. Once outside he knew he could easily outdistance the slow-paced monstrosities.

He threw open the door and dashed outside, only to trip over something on the threshold and fall headlong onto the walkway. His hands took his weight when he landed and searing pain lanced up his arms. Looking up he found himself peering directly into Tommy’s glazed, staring eyes. The boy’s dismembered torso had dragged itself forward by its one remaining arm. The other one, and the legs, had been piled against the steps to form a barrier.

Gil shrieked as Tommy’s severed arm snaked around his neck. Tommy’s legs levered themselves up onto his back. Tommy seized Gil with his attached arm and yanked himself forward, fastening his discolored teeth in the bleeding hand Gil raised to shield himself. Tommy bit down hard and Gil felt bones snap.

Something heavy landed on his back. Slimy talons dug into him.

Lightning flashed overhead, allowing Gil a final glimpse of his attackers. His screams were lost in thunder.

He did look a bit like a homeless person, but he was not.  He was so “not homeless” that it pissed me off when he was regarded as such.  He was old, weathered, educated, alive.  “Helooooo, Ryaaaaaan, how are you?, are you getting good maaarks in your school?”, he dragged every word out, each syllable passing through its own accent, French, Jamaican, English, erudite, academic, compelling.  This man could read the phone book to me and I would sit, glassy eyed and cross legged in front of him until the birds stopped singing.

He said the most amazing things whenever we spoke.  Things that I had wished I could write down and remember.  I never had a pen, but his words found a way into me, forgotten until they would be released at the most perfect moment.  The guy was liquid inspiration.

A hitman wandered by, mumbling to himself, dragging one foot, the other kicking up dry leaves on his way in to murder the guy who lives above me.

Pete thought I was a student.  I never had the heart to tell him I had just graduated and moved here to start working.  I told him I was doing well, and asked him how he was, taking great care to enunciate my words and hold my shoulders straight.

“Well you seeee, I’ve just come from the doctor, and my eyes, they have been fixed”, he dropped the word ‘fixed’ about three octaves, ten years of emphasis in one word. “My cataracts, seeee.  This doctor has helped me. This street, I haven’t seen it in ten years, all of you look so much younger nowwwww, the trees, they are bloooooming, and I can see so much in the light.”

He smiled.  He had the most fantastic smile.  12 minutes had passed since I came in.  Pete hadn’t seen anything clearly in 10 years.  Ten years and everything was milky to him, and today, he started seeing everything that we take for granted.

I suddenly hated everyone in my building.  I hated them for being so caught up in their own minor dramas; getting their mail from the doorman, staying glued to the TV’s latest crisis, signing in their visiting boyfriends, getting stabbed in the neck, quibbling over details.  Here we had something actually magical, and they all still treated him like he was a beggar.

I shook hands with Pete and wished him well.  I’d see him again.

Night came and I was on the roof with a bottle of cheap wine.  The city looked hazy from my perch in Brooklyn, the lights looked like everything I’d pictured from home.  I still had the eyes of someone from David’s “Big Country”.  I still saw it all as a teeming pile of smelly opportunity.  I knew I could barge my way into that beast and write my name all over its insides.

I chose music for the moment, but who knows where I would end up.  I wanted greatness, and my eyes were wide enough to look for it.    For now though, I was sitting on top of the stairwell to the roof.  I was sitting on the door-high cement structure called a “Steve”, as my friend Cliff and I had once named it in a fit of hallucinogenic giggles.

The Steve swayed a little as the door opened.  Someone else was on the roof.  I didn’t want company, so I crossed my digits, hoping that they didn’t climb up here too.  This was my Steve, damnit.  I looked over the edge and recognized him.  It was the walk.  He had a limp, an old injury that never healed right.  I recognized him from the lobby earlier, I wonder if Pete saw him too.

He didn’t know I was there as he shuffled to the edge of the roof.  He was facing the side of the building that looked over nothing really…no street, no other roof, just a small gap between the buildings that was full of junk and stagnant water.  He threw something into the gap.  It glinted in the spare light as it went down.  He then pulled out a rag, wiped his hands, and threw the rag into the gap.

I was frozen and worried.  I couldn’t move or he would see me, and something told me that I did not want this guy to see me.  I looked up and there were so many planes in the sky, bringing people like me here to join the chase.  Someone had their window open and I recognized the song…

“Up on cripple creek, she sent me….”

I looked back and he was vomiting.  Retching and coughing and dumping so much dark fluid onto the ground, over the side.  He held his head as he did it, as if he was trying to resist the force coming out of his mouth.  Then he was screaming, making terrible pained noises through the liquid, through his teeth.  He threw up for a long time, the noises got worse and worse until he stopped.

Now he was crying, holding his head, now he was punching himself in the head, teeth, eyes.  Crying and screaming, he came apart right there in front of me.  I’ve never seen a person betray their composure so completely, not when my father died, not when the bridge in my hometown collapsed and the wife of the man who was trapped, fused into his burning car, was caught on film.  It was a destruction so complete that I knew this man would never be made whole again.   He knew this, and instead of coming apart figuratively, he chose to physically dismantle himself.

I was horrified.  I didn’t move for what seemed like hours.  He eventually took himself up, wiped his mouth, barely removing the mess he had made of his face, and shuffled towards me.  Towards the Steve, towards the door.  I pulled back from the edge.  I laid as flat as I could.  I didn’t move.

The air stayed cool.  The city shuddered.  It was built on so much granite, and just to remind everyone of its charge, the granite shrugged, just as confused as everyone it was carrying.  Support girders cracked, but not enough for anyone to notice yet.  The veins running through the island spit their blood all over the streets.  The streets spit blood back into the veins.  Nowhere was a heart.  Every liquid cranked into alcohol and grease, every molecule saw itself in a mirror and was scared.

A star came down, didn’t crash, but came closer, just to make sure it was real.  The divine left in disbelief, muttering nothing under its breath.   Rock became soil, human became soil, soil became nothing but a novelty.  Something for people to take pictures of and send home.

The wind blew and the air above me smelled sweet and human.  It smelled like the inside of something.  I felt dirt and gravel grinding beneath my shoulder, hurting, almost tickling.  I turned my head and realized. I had fallen asleep.  The wind blew a little more and it was another song I recognized…

“Doctor my eyes have seen the years…”

I was glad, and it was still night.  I must have been out for an hour or so.  The wine must have gotten me, oddly, but I was thankful for the bottle that was rolling around near my feet.  What a terrible dream.  The wind blew again, and there was that smell again, human, pungent, sickly and sweet.  Again, and it wasn’t sweet anymore, it smelled like bile and bad breath.

“YOU WERE DREAMING. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DREAM”, belched a huge, wet, ragged voice, just inches away from my face.  Something dripped onto my nose.

It was him, fuck me, it was him.  Adrenaline shot through me and my heart flipped and jumped up to meet my face.  I ratcheted around and scooted on my butt as far away as I could.  I hit the back ledge of the Steve hard, bruising my tailbone, almost falling off.  There he was, just far enough up the ladder that he could see over the edge.  I looked him dead in the face.  His dead, mess covered face twisting, “well, what happened in your dream?”, he choked and wiped bile and snot from his lips.

“I, I….”

“Ack.  Eye?”, he grinned as he pointed to his wide right eye.  It was crisscrossed with thousands of burst blood vessels from all of his retching.  He kept pointing though, until he was touching it.  He touched his eye harder than anyone should touch their eye, pushing stomach acid and dead skin cells right up under his eyelid.

“I didn’t see anything, I didn’t see you.”

“Neither did I” he said, staring.  “Come with me you little shit.”

He grabbed my leg and dragged me off the Steve, my head hitting the rail ladder on the way down, knocking me into a daze as I landed flat on my back on the roof.  “Get up”, he spat, as he hauled me to my feet.  Into the stairwell.

He walked me down to the room right above mine, room 523.

He showed me the man he had murdered.  He showed me where the blade went in, right underneath the Adam’s apple.  He showed me where he extracted his pound of flesh.  He showed me the money he received to murder him.  It was a lot of money.  He showed me the pictures of the man’s family and friends, now with no precedent or reason to be in the room.  He showed me what his blood would look like when they found him.

He took me outside and walked me through the streets, he took me past happy restaurants and bars, full of happy people and friends.  He smashed my face against their windows and made it clear that none of them could help me.  He pulled me by my arm until my collarbone broke.  He dragged me underground.  He showed me where the rats lived.  He showed me how to lie down with them and listen.  He showed me how to wait there for him to come back.  They crawled over me and left their waste in my mouth.  Stopping in back alleys he made me watch as he used a broken beer bottle to remove living things beneath the skin of his arms, legs, hand, calves, eye.  He vomited and spewed, he pulled chunks of his hair out and showed them to me.

He took me to the freeway and showed me what the car looked like after 52 bullets went through it, before the cops put their guns away, before the driver stopped twitching, before they called it in.  He showed me my idols, rock stars, in the privacy of their lush homes as they beat their wives and snarled at their children.  He showed me the foam under the pier, the foam in the mouth of an army of rabid dogs, neglected and staring me right in the eyes.

He showed me the girl I would fall in love with.  He let me feel the love.  She was so beautiful.  He showed me everything as he murdered her right in front of me.  He slowed down time so the loss crept through me molecule by molecule, so I could feel every millimeter of pain and sadness as the light left her eyes.

He never obscured anything.  He wasn’t capable of metaphor or any other mechanism.  He wasn’t capable of anything that wasn’t literal.  He laughed at me when I broke, when he laughed he lost teeth.  When I cried he lost more teeth and they dropped all around me.  He disintegrated and pulled himself apart.  His clothes became only an idea as his bones showed, splintering when he needed to pick me up, to make me see whatever it was he had to show me.

He showed me a man.  This man had a name sort of like mine, and a face that was another sort of like mine.  He showed me how dark this man was, how consumed by his own greed and sapped of creativity.  He was so sad as he wept into his last dose of some drug whose name he could not pronounce.  As this man kicked his legs and foamed at the mouth he kicked up regret, only pieces of his own horrid history.  Pictures of mistakes.  Signed documents that proved his lies.  One by one.  This man was weeping and dying and he wouldn’t let me look away.  I felt his horrid fingers break against my chin, breathed his skin flaking off as he struggled to keep my head up and seeing.

I crouched and hoped for darkness, hoped for nothing.  He was on my back screaming into my ear.  All awful breath and dried out gums.

He showed me nothing.  He told me everything.  His hate came out of him in the most vile voice imaginable, each syllable more putrid and hateful than the one before it.  His was the language of metal on metal, of bones breaking in echo chambers, of frequencies beyond hearing, wavelengths that made me deaf to everything except his voice.

He told me of civilizations devouring each other alive for no reason.  He told me, in detail, about the deaths of everyone I had ever known.  He told me every secret I have ever failed to keep.  Called me every name anyone ever called me behind my back.  He took all the pity and mercy I have ever given and turned it into a vicious rant, condemnation, spraying the opposite of love deep into my ear.  His hate went deep and infected me.  It turned my whole being as black and deep as the center of his eye.

“YOU WERE DREAMING.  TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DREAM!”, he screamed.  I didn’t think he could get louder, I prayed he wouldn’t.  But he did.

My eardrums buckled under the bulk of his words.  There was a wind now.  It howled out of him, screaming and ripping his now frail body into twisted jerky poses.  His hands still held me, and as they broke and snapped they only got stronger.  His grip grew tough, like a closing vice with no ‘off’ switch.  There was no mercy in his grip.  I felt my jaw collapse.  My screams now mixed in with the roar around me.  He vomited dust and bad ideas, his last two fingers crushing together until there were only teeth between them, then dust.  I choked on my own teeth and swallowed my tongue just as his final finger broke.

He was unable to hold me anymore so he just lay on my back, his mouth still licking horribly at my ear, beating his handless bones against my ribs, cracking them, frustrating his scream to an even higher pitch.  I beat my hands, started pounding them on whatever I could, screaming as the blackness screamed back, loud as a train falling down a set of stairs.

The more I pounded the more my hands hurt; I beat them until they were raw.  I beat them on the ground until I could finally see them in the storm raging around me.  I beat them one more time and….light….

My eyes started to clear a little in the sunlight.  They felt dry, wasted.  The light hurt.  All around me the world was tearing itself apart.  There was noise, sirens, and chaos.  I could hear fire burning, smell smoke.  People were screaming everywhere.  The wind blew and I felt wet. My clothes were sticking to me.  I was covered in blood and my mouth was full of something vile, something…substantial.  The smell was awful.

What had I done?  I took a step forward as the contents of my mouth fell out and slapped my chest and I almost slipped…the ground at my feet was slick with something…hands, teeth, hair, insides, all wiggling about.  My eyes were so dry, I blinked, but they did not focus the dark figure in front of me.  One step closer and I saw.   It was Pete!  I was so thankful, “Pete, what happened?  What have I done?”  I was so terrified, but I knew Pete could help me.  As I tried to speak though…I couldn’t…nothing came out but a dry croak from the back of my throat.  No words, no communication.

“Please help me, Please”, but he could not hear me.  I only dragged my vocal chords into a horrible moan.  This made me angry, and the hate He had spattered so carelessly all over my insides started to make itself known.  “Destroy him.  Negate him”, His words echoed from a dream that did not end.  As the wind kissed the blood on my arms I saw Pete’s face, and he raised one arm.

“Help me”, I said one last time.

“I can seeeee you now, my friend”, he said.

A click, and the hammer came down….

“Dis guy in a yellow hoody, he da one that tore out my liver with his bare hands. It took me almost an hour to die, scweaming and spitting and sprayin’ blood all over the place. He just stood there watchin’ me, chewing on my liver like it was the Colonel. Musta been finger-lickin’ good. Man, I know it was. I know, Trevor.

“It ain’t all like they says it is, like they shows on the CNN and Fox. The dead gots feelings. We knows what is going on. We just ..”

There are more slurping noises, as if someone were sucking thick ice cream through a straw.

“Uh, yeah. It is a miscon- … miscon-… misconception that the dead don’t know no fear. We know lots of fear. We jus’ can’t do nothing about it.

“But eat. That’s all that drives away the fear, and that only for a little while.

“I guess you wonderin’ why I left you this tape, and how, cause you know I wasn’t home when the shit went down and the world ended and all.

“After the yellow hoody guy, I went dark, don’t remember a thing until comin’ too sometimes later. I was still at the laundromat, spread out on the floor next to clothes and rags splattered red. My side was torn open, and the red stuff had stopped leakin’ out and had turned black.

“When I pushed myself up off the floor, I found I could not move real well, but bad, like drunk or high on crank. My eyes still work, though, but a little blurry.

“I look ’round for yellow hoody man so I can kick his ass, but he gone.

“Then I look outside. I see the new world for the first time.

“There is dead peoples all over the place. Some of them are actin’ dead, like they supposed to, layin’ still and all in pools of blood. Most of them look like they been attacked by wild dogs. Big chunks of them are missing, ripped away.

“And then there’s the other kind of dead folk. They up walkin’ around. And I see real quick they is the ones doing the chomping. Most times they only stopped if one of the layin’-down dead peoples is still twitchin’. Then the walkin’ dead grabs the twitchin’ dead and puts bite on them real hard.”

There are grumbling noises.

“I think the whole world gone crazy. Then I ‘member the TV news shows, talkin’ about the dead coming back to life and how they’s pissed off. You and me, we laughed at it. Said it was just a bunch of folks stoned off their noggins.

“But now I know it true.

“There weren’t nothing left for me to do but go out in the streets. I wasn’t feared of the walking dead people ’cause they didn’t seem to pay me no mind. So I walked out with dem.

“We walked and walked, shufflin’ around, me seeing store windows busted all over the place. There were wrecked cars too, and more bodies (the unmovin’ ones) than I thought was people in the world. Fires and smoke there was too, and for a while there were alarms from I guess cars and banks and places.

“Then after a long walk, the sun went down and I rested on a bench in the park. I would not say I was sleepin’, but more like relaxin’ with my eyes open.

“After it had been dark for a long time, other people came walkin’ along.

“These was live folks. I could tell right away. I could smell them. They smelt like bacon, and my stomach felt like it had not eaten in ten thousand years.

“I jumped up off my bench and started after these folks, and one of them had a gun and shot at me.

“The bullets just hit my chest like they was slammin’ into raw meat, which lookin’ back I guess is what I was by then. I didn’t feel no pain. I didn’t feel nothin’ but hungry, hungry, hunger.

“The man with the gun kept shooting until his gun went click, click, click, then I grabbed him and ripped out his throat with my teeth.

“It was like nothin’ you have ever experienced before, Trevor. It is like better than sex. Better than H. It was raw meat goin’ down my throat and it tasted like I seen Jesus.

“After that, the rest of the living people all ranned away.”

Coughing fills the recorder’s speaker.

“I apologize. You knows I can talks better than this. It is just that my voice don’t work too good.”

More coughing. Spitting.

“My mind don’t work too good too.”

Another cough, followed by more growling and tearing noises.

“The sun comes up pretty soon after that, and I see the deads man I been eatin’ on all night is a cop. Which suit me fine ’cause I never like the boys in blue. But it dawn on me I have killt someone and I have eaten parts of the body, and it does not bother me. I would do it again to get that Jesus feeling.

“Then I start thinkin’ about the Jesus feeling, and I start think about Janine.

“So I decide I have to go find Janine. I had not seen her since the world gone crazy. I loves her so much…”

Crying.

“I loves her, Trevor. I still loves her. I will always loves her.”

The crying grows louder, harsher, and becomes full sobs. The noise ends abruptly with a shout.

“I walk all the ways home, and I think it take me most of the day since I had been on other end of town when doing the laundromat and the yellow hoody kill me, and I no walk real good no more.

“When I get to apartment, I find the door is open and there is dead folk (layin’ down dead folk) piled up in the doorway. I climb over the dead folk and find more of dem in the livin’ room.

“I get kind of nervous and yell out, ‘Janine! Janine! It your hubby come home!’

“At first there is nothin’, then I hear cryin’ in the back of the house. I make my way there and I yell for her some more.

“Then I hear her yell back, ‘Lonnie, is that you?’

“I yell back that yes it is, and she comes runnin’ out of the back bedroom.

“She is a shock to see, my pretty Janine girl. Her face covered in blood, red and black and bad colors, and bruises. She carryin’ a pistol in one hand and over her shoulder I see more dead peoples in the bedroom.

“Before I can ask where she got gun she cries out and rushes to me, droppin’ her gun and yellin’ my name and telling me how glad she is to see me.

“Then she is on me, putting her arms aroun’ me and squeezing and all I can think of is she smells like Big Mac and my stomach is churning and by God I’m hungry and I don’t want to do this but oh sweet Lord please don’t let me do this I have to do this I have to I have to I have to …”

Silence. Crying. When the voice returns, it is barely above a whisper.

“I eats her, Trevor. I starts with her face, my sweet little angel girl Janine. She the only one who made me feel like I was in heaven and I eats her. I bites into her cheek and blood comes out all over us and she screams and shoves me, but I hold on to her real good and she tried to grab up the gun she just dropped but I bite into her neck and more blood sprays my face.

“I keep goin’ on and on, biting and biting, and each little bite makes me feel like I’m with Jesus on the Mount or someplace.

“She put up a fight, but it weren’t nothin’. Soon she one of the not moving dead people and my stomach not hungry no more so I drop her.

“I cry. I cry like I never cry before. It worse even than when pops die, Trevor, because I know I done a bad thing here eating Janine.

“She was love of my life. The only one. The only one. And I eat her up like she was pork and beans at county fair.”

Sniffling.

“So I know what I have to do. I has to warn any one else I love, and Trevor you are my brother and my last family.

“I takes the gun Janine dropped and I march out of the house. I remember you live on east side next to new baseball stadum, so I walk over there.

“It take me ‘nother day or more, and when I get to yer house I glad you and Katie and kids are gone because I don’t want you to smell like bacon and fill my stomach.

“I want to end this and warn you because I love you like I used to love Jesus before I became one of the bad ones like yellow hoody.

“So I break into your house and find this old Sears tape player we had when we was kids at Christmas, and I find old tape and batteries and I leave you message.

“This is message.”

An explosion booms, jarring the recorder. Then the hiss of empty, white noise.

A gurgle.

“Aim for head, little brother. Aim for head.”

A second explosion reverberates from the speaker.

I remember the lessons of my senior year biology seminar often nowadays. I wonder where Professor Schneiderman is now, if he’s still alive, still explaining virus behavior to a bunch of starving survivors. Probably not; most likely he’s dead and feeding on those starving survivors. I load my make-shift crossbow, take aim, and shoot–another undead falls and three push to take its place.

When the plague started spreading I was just starting my internship at St. John’s Hospital. I was one year from completing my Bachelor of Sciences with honors. I had a girlfriend, an apartment, and a closet full of jeans and hoodies. Now, I own a deserted hospital, about 50 miles of parking lot, and a few thousand undead who want to rip me to pieces. In terms of sheer quantity, I guess you could call it an upgrade.

Sitting on the roof of the abandoned St. John’s hospital, like every other character in a Zombie flick, I take aim again and another undead falls. If I keep this up I could kill them all in about three years. I grin and finish another Coke stolen from the broken vending machines. I’ll use it later for an improvised Molotov. In the meantime I aim and shot again. After all I got nothing better to do.

The first time I heard about the plague, I was in Professor Schneiderman’s class. Someone had asked him about the recent outbursts of unknown viruses in Africa or Europe. I wasn’t paying attention. I only remember the whole incident because Schneiderman seemed confused. He said it might be a new strand of the Marburg virus or maybe some sort of malaria. Someone noted that the two are completely different, and I asked what this plague was anyway. I hadn’t heard anything about it. Schneiderman started explaining and blamed the media for exaggerating what was probably a very local outburst. Classes were canceled a week after that because of undead janitors wandering through the science building.

I get out of my sunburnt recliner and pee over the ledge. The zombies stare blankly up and a few jump trying to reach me, three stories above. I laugh, and it sounds more like a cackle than the charming laugh my girlfriend loved. That scares me more than the hordes of undead under me. Once the plague started more people died because of stress, panic, and sheer madness then zombie bites.

The doors to the hospital are well-barricaded and I check them regularly, reinforcing them here and there. Between the food court, the hospital’s generator and the many vending machines I had enough food, fuel, and water for a hundred people. I even have enough work to keep me busy and happy, just making blots for my crossbow and thinking of new weapons. I just have to make sure I stay sane enough to enjoy all my wonderful blessings. I crash back into my recliner and, reaching for another hand-carved bolt, I think back to the night it all started.

It’s funny how a small mistake can change one’s life. I locked my car keys in the lab that evening. Laughing embarrassedly I turned back just as my colleague was opening the elevator door. There were a few doctors inside the elevator, and their white coats were splattered with blood. I heard my friend’s screams as soon as he entered the small metal tomb. Running towards the descending elevator I pounded on the metallic doors. Looking back, I wonder what I was planning to do. Fight three or four zombies unarmed?

The 911 number played a recording informing whoever called that all lines were busy. There was an emergency and we should stay inside, barricade ourselves, and wait for further news. Who was I to question a robotic voice telling me to hide? I ran back to the lab and locked the germ-proof doors. Nervously, I scanned the familiar cold room, expecting some insane cannibal doctor to jump at me. I was alone, surrounded by lab equipment, freezers with urine and blood samples and, thank God, a few computers with internet access.

Google was down, as were most websites on the West Coast. Luckily, the BBC website was still up. I browsed the headlines feeling nauseous. Most articles were just a few hours old and looked very much the same: “Zombie attack!”, “How to kill the undead,”, “Do not trust those bitten.” I skimmed the pages, wondering how the hell I could have ignored all of this for so long. News articles dating back almost two months warned about plagues in Europe, Asia, and the West Coast. Some politician in France pressed NATO for the usage of the nuclear bomb. An Israeli general ordered a draft of all the Jewish population. The whole world was crumbling to pieces, and I had had no idea. I had been too preoccupied by my own problems to listen to the news.

I searched the internet for hours. Spamming my girlfriends’ inbox with desperate messages and trying to find someone who had a plan. There were countless pictures and videos of the undead happily munching on the living. Wikipedia was updated every few seconds with entries about another Z-territory; that was apparently the proper term for an infected country. Someone erased the whole section on zombies and replaced it with a big font “AAAAH, THEY’RE COMING.” If the internet was an accurate mirror of the world, everything was going down the drain.

I finally found the blog of a renowned neurologist in Zurich. Locked in his lab, he updated every few minutes as he performed a biopsy on his bitten assistant.

“There are four clear signs of the Z-Virus,” he wrote in his latest post. “Those infected moan almost constantly. Their eyes are fixed and seem glazed over. They do not breathe and they have an easily distinguishable smell of rotten meat. Also, be aware that it takes about five hours since death occurs for those infected to transform into a zombie,” the German doctor explained in between pictures of dissected zombie tissue.

But I knew he was wrong. I remembered seeing at least one of the doctors in the elevator when we arrived in the building, just three hours ago. Even more, they didn’t moan, and their clear, normal-looking eyes fixed hungrily on my friend. They did not look pale and dead, they looked every bit like any other human. I left an angry comment describing what had happened and continued browsing the web.

Slowly, reading countless posts and forums, I was able to piece a theory together. The zombie virus had mutated. It made sense in many ways. Europe was hit by an early strand of the virus, version 1.0 if you will. Traveling through Asia and then somehow making its way into the U.S. the virus transformed to respond to the local fauna.

I found a video shot in the suburbs of Tokyo. Five people suddenly collapsed in convulsions and jumped up within minutes, ready to kill. They ran towards their prey, screaming something in Japanese and cornering a young couple. Still swallowing pieces of flesh, they looked up with bloodshot eyes, searching for more prey. Less than thirty minutes later they dropped dead, only to rise again, slowly dragging their limbs and moaning.

A short scream for help somewhere in the distance makes me leap up and rush to the ledge. A group of new zombies runs down the highway, ready to join the hundreds already surrounding the hospital. They all look fresh. Their skin is not yet yellow and decomposed, their eyes look normal, and they can still run. Probably some unlucky survivors who manage to hide for the last few weeks decided to make a stand or dash for escape, or maybe they ran out of food and they became desperate. It didn’t matter, they got bitten and now they were slowly decomposing corpses. I sigh disappointedly and return to my chair. I haven’t seen one single survivor since the outburst started and I doubt I will anytime soon.

The strand of virus that hit the United States was probably the most dangerous. Instead of affecting the spinal nervous system and then spreading to the brain, it worked the other way around. It collapsed the frontal lobe, spread to the temporal lobe, then eventually made its way towards the spinal cord. It eliminated one’s personality and large portions of one’s memory, but left the rest of the brain in almost perfect condition; until it killed you completely, of course.

That was why the virus had managed to spread almost everywhere. The few of us who were prepared, had expected a slow, moaning undead corpse, like the European or African zombie. Instead we got a bunch of people who sounded human, looked human, and killed you without mercy.

All over the country families barricaded themselves in their homes, but instead of a rotten moan they heard cries for help or “Hello, how are you?” They knew from TV that zombies couldn’t talk or knock on the door politely, so they opened the bolted doors. Just like my friend who ignored the bloodstained scrubs and entered the elevator. Those were his colleagues, his fellow doctors, not undead monsters. Why wouldn’t he enter the elevator? By the time you realized you were wrong it was too late and you had someone’s teeth lodged in your arm. Professor Schneiderman would have been proud of my theory, if his brain still allowed him to feel anything at all.

I spent almost two days hiding in the lab, posting on every forum and blog I could find. Slowly refining my hypothesis and trying to warn others about it. Sometimes I received grateful answers. Often, I found more stories that supported my idea. A group of survivors in Oregon saw a police bus trying to save some women who seemed surrounded by zombies; only to get bitten themselves as soon as they stretched their arms trying to help. The women were still crying for help as they bit into the police officer’s flesh. A woman in Colorado saw a man attack a zombie and kill it only so he could eat a corpse himself. There were countless stories going around the internet and I read them with a mix of shock and horror.

I continued posting messages for my girlfriend, but if she ever saw them she never answered and slowly I realized I was alone. By the second day fewer and fewer new posts would pop up on the many zombie survivor forums and more websites wouldn’t load. Scared I asked for advice and one or two survivors scattered around the globe encouraged me to find food and maybe other humans in the hospital.

During the second night, after the last forum I could find on-line went down, I decided to try my luck and leave the room. I had a few candy bars in my backpack but by now I was starving. Besides, the garbage can I used as a toilet stank up the room and I was certain I would get infected soon if I didn’t get fresh air. I printed all the information on survival and how to improvise weapons that I could find. I memorized three pages of best responses in crisis scenarios, and I felt as ready as I was ever going to be. The many forums helped me overcome my shock and the few posts encouraging me to seek help motivated me. I was alive and if I wanted to stay so I needed to act. Looking back, I wish I would have thanked all those strangers while I still could, they probably saved my life.

I had converted a metallic table leg into a club of sorts and I used a garbage can as a shield. Luckily, there was no one on the third floor, and I could make my way into the nearest bathroom. I took back as much water as I could and I broke open the mint dispenser. The next day, I broke a candy machine and twisted my primitive club beyond repair in the process. In a utility room I found a red, metal axe stored among the fire extinguishers. I still thank God for that amazing tool.

Even so, armed with an axe, it took me almost a week to dare visit the lower levels. Now, I know it was foolish to have delayed. If there were any zombies that accidentally found the stairs and smelled me I could have been trapped in my lab until I starved. I had to secure all entrances and clean the building as quickly as I could.

When I finally dared to sneak towards the lower building I only found three zombies. One was a janitor locked inside of a quarantine room. I blocked the door leaving him to scratch the bullet proof glass. Another one was trapped in the vent and only his legs were outside. I gave him a good push and blocked the passage. The third one almost bit me as I was breaking a vending machine open. Luckily, it still retained some of his speech abilities and called out before it attacked me. I turned in time to side step away from him, and he crashed into the wall. He was a big man, probably twice my size, and I was lucky that he had yelled before attacking me. I hacked him to pieces as he screamed bits of unintelligible phrases in a harsh voice. Later I would return to study his decaying tissue and complete my theory but then I just crashed, glad to be alive.

The first floor was the worst, but it was not nearly as bad as I had expected. Later, I found out from the surveillance cameras that most of the zombies had left the building within the first few hours of the outburst. Almost all the tapes showed the same scene: one doctor or nurse collapsing in convulsions, two or three people rushing to help them and being bitten. When there was nothing alive left in the building, the undead wandered outside, searching for more food. I wondered where they would go when there was no more food outside either, but I found that out soon enough.

On the third day after I barricaded the doors on the first floor and secured the basement, the first pack of zombies appeared in the deserted parking lot. They were all doctors or nurses, and they seemed drawn by the building, crashing into its walls in a wave of human flesh. I was curious if they could smell me or if it was the familiar sight of the hospital that made them come back. Ironic that even after dieing, we try to arrive at work in time.

Within a week, I couldn’t tell the doctors from the construction workers, the bankers, the teachers, the prostitutes, and all the other kinds of undead. I could just tell that there were more of them every day. Sometimes they would arrive at night, other times they would just show up in a pack coming down the interstate, like St. John’s Hospital was the holy grail of zombie-hood. I cursed them and threw improvised Molotov’s. I contemplated suicide several times and almost hung myself one cold, clouded morning. But what was the point though? In the end I decided I might as well keep all the moaning undead entertained. Maybe some poor bastard, somewhere else, would be able to make a run for it, as I put on my little distraction, although I had no idea where the hell you would run.

Over the last weeks I managed to isolate the virus and analyze it. I knew almost everything about its biological properties and I developed dozens of theories on how it could have appeared. I watched the zombies gather every day and I probably killed around a thousand. Did it matter at all? Probably not. Anyone who could appreciate the difficulties of my survival was dead anyway. But I did have a perfectly secure building to call my own and I could sunbathe in the nude, drinking Coke and shooting zombies with a homemade crossbow. I was living the modern American Dream, might as well enjoy the blessings of my situation.

I aim at another undead, a fat one with a funny moustache, and I shoot, narrowly missing his frontal lobe but hitting his left eye. He falls, and I take another bottle of Coke. I should probably make another run and get more sodas from the vending machine on the first floor. The sun is still up, and this is going to take a while.

—–

Bio: Alex Moisi is a Romanian born college student, living in Illinois and ignoring real life issues like angry friends and failing classes in favor of post-apocalyptic scenarios and disturbing “What if?”’s.  His work can be found in a few e-zines and on-line at www.dracken.co.nr.

###

“My God,” Janice breathed when we’d reached the front gates.
Crystal made the Holy Sign, and Pippin wrapped one arm around her, pulled her close. She began to sob.
“Would you look at those bastards?” Lars yelled, and whomped the gate with one large work boot. “Fuckers are mean.”
Children, from what looked to be the ages of just a couple of months to five-years-old, climbed and clung and scampered opposite side the security gates. They lashed out at one another like too many rabid dogs in a confined space; their bruised bodies the color of hammered steak. The blood vessels in their eyes had burst to a shocking red.
“They’re just babies,” Janice lamented. “Babies.”
“Them ain’t babies no more.” Crystal said in a soft but unwavering voice. “Them are hellions.”
The bodies of adults who had apparently tried to find shelter since we’d closed the gates lay twisted and ruined on the floor of the outer mall area. Some of the children still worked feverishly at their spoiled flesh; not content with what death had provided their elders.
“The gates seem to be holding them back,” I said between hot tears, unconsciously pulling Janice close to me.
Soon as those words left my lips, a girl wearing a tattered blue dress with little ballerinas on it began to squeeze her head through one of the slots in the metal gate. She grunted, coughed, and pushed with terrible might, and if raw conviction could have possibly won out, she would have definitely reached us, but that the slot in the gate proved too small of course. Her body convulsed, twitched, and then dangled there like a victim of the gallows.
Nobody had to mention that it was time to get moving, we just collectively did so. Perhaps twenty paces away from the front gate, Kia’s husky voice rose up from the other end of the store.
“C’mon over here, gang,” she shouted. “Electronics section. Clyde Allan’s about to give the lowdown on what’s making the kiddies go bad.”
Eager to get some answers, we ran in the direction of Kia’s voice.

###

Five television screens displayed the graven face of Clyde Allan. His necktie was loosed and his shirt cuffs rolled up. After shuffling some paperwork, he said:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I think I speak for the greater majority when I say that the past forty-eight hours have been nothing less than harrowing. Due to the countless reports of absolute depravity that have been coming out of the states of Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, we are broadcasting this Special Report to try and shed a bit of light on the whys and wherefores centering around this unimaginable crises.
“We have with us tonight Mr. Ronald Dash, who is a member of the FDA and a leading scientist with the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Before we speak with Mr. Dash, however, I’m to announce that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has issued what they are calling a Nationwide Obedient Quarantine. In short, this is urging all civilians of all states to stay within a closed and secure area. Although the epicenter of this crisis seems relegated to only the tri-state area of Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, they stress not to leave the location you are in lest said area is in unalterable peril.” Clyde took a deep, labored breath. The stress of the situation showed haggard on his unusually gaunt face.
The picture went to a split-screen and a short, heavyset man appeared on the right side.
“Mr. Dash,” Clyde said, “…can you explain exactly what it is that’s happening to the children of these three states? And should we expect their neighboring states to be affected in any measure?”
Dash cleared his throat and said, “Well, there are no exact answers as of yet, Clyde. I want to make that much clear from the onset. However in regards to your first question, as to what we think is happening, we’re leaning heavily toward Bioterrorism. This is to say, germ warfare of the airborne contagion variety. Now–”
“And from whom do we suspect this attack originated?” Clyde asked. “North Korea, the Taliban? Or are we talking about a radical faction within our own country?”
Dash looked annoyed. He said, “Seeing as it’s not my place, I’m certainly not here to point fingers, Mr. Allan, just to try and provide some speculative answers.
“Now, after doing some DNA sequencing on numerous young cadavers, we’ve come to the conclusion that something is attacking the brains of our children. Such as seen in a condition known as meningioma, tumors are forming within the brain. But, whereas meningioma will attack only regions pertaining to the protective membranes of the spine and brain, this condition seems to be affecting the hypothalamus, pituitary and amygdalae regions. This undoubtedly disrupts the emotional state and hormone production of the children, therefore causing an inconceivable spike in aggression.”
“So what you’re telling us, Mr. Dash, is that Bioterrorism is what’s causing these children to become monsters?” Clyde looked real tired.
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t have worded it quite like that, Mr. Allan. But for want of a better: yes. You see, a child’s brain is very susceptible to such a contagion because it’s still in the developmental stages. We suspect this Biological agent to be so powerful that it can cause even an infant–that has no due right to walk or crawl let alone move aggressively, mind you–to act out and manipulate its body into doing things otherwise impossible. You see, the electrical impulses received by the–”
“So what does the government plan to do about this shit?” Clyde spat, tears brimming in his eyes. He was obviously losing it on national television.
“Well, Mr. Allan, since you so adamantly make mention of the government. The Department of Homeland Security and Military personnel believe they have devised something of a solution. As to the specific time I can’t be certain, but within the next twenty-four hours numerous aircraft will deploy non-contagious agents in the form of bombs over the three states being influenced. These bombs will detonate four-hundred-feet from ground zero. We are in high hopes that this will act as a cure for these childre–”
“What is the government going to do, Ronald?” Clyde barked. “My brother’s family lives in Dearborn, Kentucky, Ronald, and he watched his two children rip his wife to fucking shreds. And I want to know what the fuc–”
Then the broadcast went dead. A humming blue filled the five screens.
“They pulled the plug on him,” Pippin said.
“Gee, do ya think, Blondie?” Lars said. “Don’t state the obvious now.”
“That’s it, you and me, right now.”
“I’ve already been jabbed and kicked in the nuts. Think you can do worse?”
“You’re soon to find out.”
But a noise from a near distance dissolved both their aggression in an instant. A scraping, scuffling sound that had each of us at a stand still.
“We have a guest,” Lars whispered as he stepped away from the electronics area and into the main aisle way, a sinister gleam alight in his eyes. “And there she is.”
Just down the way, maybe fifty-feet from our group, a girl with strawberry-blond hair appeared to slither on her belly, one aisle to the next, leaving a crimson trail in her wake.
Janice gasped, “She has no feet.”
“How do you guys think she got in?” Kia wanted to know.
“Doesn’t matter,” Lars answered, peering back at her with hate-congested eyes. “She’s here now.”
“What’re we gonna do?” someone said. Crystal, I think. My ears were ringing, so I can’t be sure.
But I’m positive it was Lars who said: “Let me handle this.”
He walked in the direction of the girl, and then took a hard left down one of the aisles. He soon reappeared holding a frying pan and a dog leash. Looking back over one shoulder and grinning, he held one finger to his mouth as if to say, ‘Shhhh’.
There proved no need for such a gesture, though, because as soon as he turned his attention back on the girl, she had spotted him and us both. With something between a whooping cough and a scream, she somehow mindlessly defied logic and rose up to stand on the ragged stumps of her legs–chewed to the ankles–and proceeded to gallop clumsily at Lars, her hands raised to form claws, those stumps gushing. He wasted no time in taking off toward her.
The girl stumbled, fell, got back up, and fell again. Lars had the frying pan at the ready when they met and bashed her face in with the thing. The coughs, the screams, the ridiculous slosh-patter of her stumps smacking the floor, it all came to an abrupt halt. With the ease of seasoned cowboy, he lassoed the dog leash around her neck and dragged her away to the far end of the store. We waited. We heard a few stifled screams from the girl. We waited some more. Finally he came strutting down the main aisle way, soaked in gore and smiling as if the cat got the mouse.
“He’s crazy as a loon,” Janice muttered from behind me.
“Don’t you forget it,” Pippin said.
“And that’s how you deal with an out of control rug rat,” Lars announced, halfway from us.
“What did you do with her?” Janice asked when he’d gotten closer.
Lars scrubbed a hand across his forehead and said, “Don’t worry about it, sweet cheeks. I took care of the situation and that’s all you need to worry your little self about.”
“Why do you have to be a bona fide penis about everything?” Kia said.
“Don’t you worry your black self, neither,” Lars snapped. “I still owe you and your pasty-bitch lover a little s-s-somethin’ somethin’. Don’t you go forgetting that, ‘cause I sure as shit haven’t.”
Flory’s face went beet-red, and she stomped off in the direction of the restrooms.
“Well, well,” Lars cackled, “guess the old girl’s got some life in her after all.”
Kia shot him a look as if to strike him dead, then yelled after Flory: “Flo, c’mon, don’t let him worry you, babe.”
She started out after her, stopped midway, turned and said, “She doesn’t talk much because she can’t. When she was a kid, her uncle raped her and drove a drill bit through her skull. He left her in a ditch. Left her for dead. She might be slow, yeah, but she has more warmth in her little toe than you have in that slug you call a body.”
“Bleeding hearts unite,” Lars said. “Not my fault you chose to split the beaver with a chick that’s been lobotomized.”
Thwack!
Pippin laid him out cold. Kia grinned like a Cheshire cat, said thanks, and headed off to look after Flory.

###

An hour or so later and the four of us were working out sleeping arrangements. Kia and Flory had yet to return from the restroom. Lars sat brooding in one corner, a raw steak slapped over his eye.
“What ya’ll reckon we could use for beddin’ down?” Crystal asked between mouthfuls of double-fudge ice cream.
“I spotted some of those blowup mattress jobs in the camping section,” Pippin said. “Those would due.”
“Good thinking,” I said. “But the real question is should we consider sleeping in shifts? You know, in case we have anymore uninvited guests.”
“You all can do what you like,” Lars put in. “I’m sleeping as far from you turds as I can get.” Then he got up and marched away.
Crystal made to say something, but Janice put a firm hand on her shoulder, and Crystal went back to her ice cream with great relish.
About the time that Lars was out of sight, Kia came walking down the way.
“What’s going?” she asked.
“Sleeping arrangements,” I said. “How’s Flory?”
“Rattled. But I calmed her down. Hey, Flo and I are gonna sack out in the ladies john. I know you all wanted to stick together, but if it’s all the same,
I think we’d be better off on our own. No offense. But that asshole has her a nervous wreck.”
“Whatever suits you two best, Kia,” I said. “It’s not like there’re any rules, or anything. Just suggestions. Wait here a minute, and we’ll be back with some blankets and stuff.”
“That’s cool,” she said.
A few moments later Pippin and I left off for the camping aisle.

###

Some time later, after the four of us had had our fill of food, we lay on our inflatable mattresses looking up at the large industrialized lights that hung from the warehouse-like ceiling. We were quiet for a time, until Crystal said:
“Where ya’ll reckon that peckerwood Lars got off to?”
“Who cares,” Pippin said, snuggled beside her. “The further away the better.”
“I don’t trust him,” Janice said.
“I’d venture to say that none of us do,” I said. “What do you say we change the subject?”
“Good idea,” Janice said. “…Anyone have a game we could play? You know, like the ones you played in the car when you were a kid. … I don’t know, something to occupy our minds.”
Considering that the noises from the front gates hadn’t let up a bit, I figured sleep wouldn’t come easy.
“Games?” Crystal said. “Not much for playin’ games. But…” She faltered, sounded choked up.
“What is it?” Pippin asked.
“Well, I figure I’d like to talk about what happened to my baby’s daddy.” She let out a heavy sigh. “I need to vent, is all I’m tryin’ to say. Besides, he deserves to be talked about. He was a fine man. I miss him.”
“Then tell us,” Pippin said.
“You’re one helluva good dude, Pippin,” Crystal said. “And I thank you for that. …Cute, too.” Pippin’s face went three shades of red. “Bashful to boot. I like you awready.” She kissed him on the hand, and then drew a breath and said: “Jacob’s his name. We’ve been together for goin’ on about four-years now. You see, we was comin out the doctor’s office from the baby’s checkup–out there in the waitin room–and that’s when all heck broke loose. I mean to tell ya it was like monkeys hangin’ from the ceilin’s out there. Kids goin’ this way and that. One had its mother all tied up like some fancy ribbon, and another had its little-boy face all covered in chunky stuff. Everything was blood and screams and Jacob hollerin’ for me to get down and lay low, that the Devil’d come on up from Hell and was havin his wicked ways with the world. He pulled me close and startin’ kickin’ and punchin them little hellions like they’s nothin but a bunch of roughnecks. Jacob, he was always a fighter, you see. Kinda like Pippin here. Big and broad in the shoulders. Never have to worry about bein’ safe with a man like that by your side.”
Then she abruptly broke down and let loose a stream of tears. Pippin held her close and whispered some words into her hair. Between sobs, she said:
“We made it out of that office. But on account of all them hellions, I still can’t be sure just how we done it. But we did. And once we made it outside, it was like the end of the world had fallen down on everything. Cars were slammin’ into the sides of buildin’s and people was squabbling’ in every direction like headless chickens. I saw a school bus whiz by with no driver at the wheel, then it crashed into a telephone pole and kids flung like arrows from out them tiny windows. Some of them got up, broken bones and all.
“Jacob lifted me up in his arms and swore to heaven that our baby girl was gonna live to see the light. He ran like folks in them horror movies always should but never do: like grease lightin. And I’m here to pay witness, it was like Jacob had been given a strength that could only be set down by the Lord Almighty. But then we made it to the entrance of this here mall, and it seemed like God had right changed His thinkin’ to the idea of forsakin’ us.”
A look came into her eyes, so serious, so intense, that even Pippin registered it and slightly moved away.
She said, “There was a bunch of them, but I remember one red-haired boy more’n the rest. He kept lookin from my eyes to my belly, my eyes to my belly. Like he was tied fit to have my baby for supper-chow and my eyeballs for dessert. They all just kinda stood there, you know, ever one of them, like they really had a plan workin between them. Well, Jacob leaned in close and told me he loved me, that he wanted nothin more’n our baby to see the light of day. He said that when he ran into that mob of hellions, I should make a beeline for the front doors, get inside and hide myself and baby-girl away in the safest place I could find.
“I shed tears and told him it wasn’t worth it, that we should stick as one and face them hellions head on. He slapped me a good one across the jaw, kissed me a better one on the lips, and told me to get with it. I knew not to cross Jacob when he had his mind fixed on somethin, but I went right on and said it anyway. I said that the world had gone sour and that God was to blame. I said that our God Almighty had forsaken us.
“I thought for sure he’s gonna plant another one on me–a slap, not a kiss–but he didn’t. Instead he told me that God’s creations could not work on good things alone, that the bad had to come along with the good or else everything was worth nothin’. But that for every bad act our God is forced to bear against us, He will return two good favors to try and make things right again.
“Now, I’d heard him say this exact thing on more than one occasion, mind you, but the way he looked at me … the meanin’ in his voice. … It gives me goose bumps even now.
” …Well, anyway, after another fast kiss he bolted straight for them little monsters like he’s on fire and they’s the water. …Jacob gave ‘em hell. I saw that much as I made my way in here, but they also had him tore up real bad and real quick. I saw that much, too. And here I am.
“I gotta give birth to our baby. If nothin’ else, I gotta give birth. His daddy deserves that much.”
Things went silent for a few minutes. Then Crystal asked Pippin if he’d take her in his arms again, and he did just that. She shed tears in the bulk of his chest.
Pippin rocked Crystal in his arms and repeated what Jacob had said to her: “For every bad act our God is forced to bear against us, He will return two good favors to try and make things right again. …Now that’s a beautiful philosophy to hold faith in.”
The quiet that followed was unsettling, so I asked Janice if maybe she had a story to tell.
“No,” she said. “I own and operate the Blossom Rise Preschool right next store to this mall. Me and my sister, actually. She was there, along with three other women. I was the only one that made it out.” She shuttered. “…Will you hold me, Hank?”
I did. Her body thrummed like a live wire.
“Do you have a story?” she asked me in a shaky voice.
Of course I had one, but I didn’t want to tell it; didn’t want to tell them how I’d been forced to empty two clips out of William Snodgrass’s pistol just to make it across the street and into the mall. Despite such internal wishes, I said:
“Yeah, sure.” I drew in a deep breath. “Well … I’ve worked for Knightdale Insurance Agency for going on eight years now. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s right across the street from here. Well, things were going as usual until around 12:30, I guess, when I heard what sounded like a riot from outside. Soon as I got up to see what was going on, William Snodgrass came barreling through the front door from off his lunch break. He was screaming blue murder, and it didn’t take long to see why. A baby–couldn’t have been older than two-years old–had latched onto the back of his head and was literally pulling chunks of his scalp away.
“I just stood there, you know? It’s all I could manage. Shock, I guess. He yelled for me to get the pistol from his desk drawer–‘Get that goddamn pistol, Hank.’ He just kept on repeating the same thing. I hesitated, and he stumbled toward me with mad-dog eyes. I aimed at the baby … but missed and shot William in the forehead.”
“Oh my God, Hank!” Janice yelped.
“Yeah. A man prefers to think he can hold his composure in a stressful situation, you know. But when you’re actually put into that type of situation, well … it’s just different. My hands, they shook real bad and–”
Just then, two screams lifted up and held dominion over the whole store. The four of us shot looks at one another, and no one needed to mention that they’d originated from the ladies restroom, just down the way. As if on cue, the front gates began to rattle with fresh vigor. We took off toward the restrooms.
Once there, Pippin flung the door open to reveal a bloody nightmare. At first, all I could make out was Kia standing in one of the open stalls, her back to us, and swinging a toilet seat over her head like a giant horseshoe. She brought the thing down and back up with a fierce speed. Two ragged stumps for legs, and what looked to be the end of a dog leash, trailed out from the stall and lay at her feet.
I pulled on Kia’s shoulder so as to move her back and out of the stall. She wheeled around, her eyes wild and unseeing, and made to swing her burden at me. Pippin luckily caught hold of it, and I managed to wrest her in a bear hug of sorts. She buried her face in my shoulder and began to wail.
The sight that met us in that stall made my gorge rise.
Flory, squeezed in beside the commode, had no face left. The girl that Lars had supposedly ‘taken care of’ lay atop her; brains oozing from her strawberry-blond hair and the dog leash embedded into her neck.
Pippin made a hissing sound between his teeth and said, “That sonofabitch held the girl somewhere in the store and then let her go in here.” He looked hard at me. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
I gave him a stare that confirmed what he already knew. Crystal and Janice held each other and bawled.
“Where is that sick fuck?” Pippin barked. “He’s out for more than an ass beating.”
Then came the sound of running feet and laughter like a witch’s cackle and Lars’s voice diminishing, saying: “I’ll cut your throat, Pip. I’ll cut you and that black whore.” He’d been standing outside of the restroom the whole time, checking in on his handy work.
“He’s heading for the hunting aisle!” Pippin grunted while sprinting out the door.
We took off after Pippin; Crystal pleading with him to leave the sidewinder be, that he could get him in his own time.
As it was, Pippin’s instincts hadn’t failed him. We caught up with the two of them in the hunting aisle. Lars was armed with a huge knife and Pippin with a metal rod of sorts. They circled one another like some scene from Westside Story. Lars jabbed once, twice. He missed both times. Pippin smacked him a good one in the elbow.
Then we heard the front gates come crashing down, followed by the patter of many eager feet. They coughed and yowled, and their noises filled the whole store like something from a battlefront.
Pippin clocked Lars upside the head, turned, and screamed for us to find shelter.
“Not without you!” Crystal hollered, and then doubled up and started screaming that her water had just broke. Janice went to her aid.
Pippin made to deliver another shot to Lars’s head (who was down on one knee from the first blow), but that Kia lunged in from seemingly nowhere and buried a blade of her own into Lars’s right eye. We tried to pull her away with words, warning her of the fallen gates and the hellions that would follow, but she just kept right on butchering Lars like he was something meant for a feast of many. It was a terrible thing to watch, even if only for a few fleeting moments.
As we made our way, the children, all frothy mouths and chattering teeth, crowded in at the far end of the aisle way. The last things I saw as I pulled Janice along was Kia opening Lars’s throat up, and then the two of them being overtaken. Kia’s screams died away within seconds.
As we rounded a corner and passed by the restrooms, I spotted the strawberry-blond girl that Lars had sicced on Flory and Kia slowly pulling herself out of the open doorway, and I knew that whatever biological agent worked in these children was beyond imaginable. In this one girl alone there existed proof positive: her feet had long been chewed off, her face bashed in and her neck lacerated, the plates of her skull undone, and yet still she moved with some misguided purpose.
We made it to the door of the back loading dock without further incident. The coughs and screeches behind us were all but deafening, yet not so much that we couldn’t hear the likewise commotion on the other side of that door. I cursed myself for not checking all possible entrances, as I’d earlier mentioned we should do.
Just like with the restroom, Pippin shouldered the door open to yet another nightmare in waiting. There must have been a hundred or more crazed children in that loading dock. They climbed in and over soiled boxes, empty skids, and open truck cabs. Two large garage-like doors stood wide open. The place reeked of shit and chaos.
Pippin swung Crystal up in his arms and wasted no time in heading for a metal ladder that reached into an upper storage area of sorts. The children bit, chewed, and clawed at each other as if their anger depended on it. Midway to the ladder, they must have smelled us.
Holding Crystal up with just one arm like some circus act savior, Pippin clubbed quite a few with that metal rod he was still gripping. Unfortunately, I had nothing save fists and feet to shield them off with. For that fact, Janice proved the worse for wear. A dark-haired boy with a mouth like a meat grinder, he bit a deep gouge into her neck. By no small miracle, we somehow made it up that ladder and into the upper storage area.
Once up top, we were met by three more children. They came sprinting at us from what was apparently a back stairwell. With a dreamlike quality, I recall Pippin and I pitching them over the upper railing. They landed with a solid sound, yet they still twitched like squashed insects refusing death.
A series of quick yelps came from behind us, and we turned to find Crystal laying on her back, legs spread-eagle, taking deep breaths and gasping that the baby was on its way. Janice sat beside Crystal, running a hand across her forehead and clasping the other at her own wounded neck.
“I’m havin’ this baby!” Crystal spat. “Help!”
Pippin ran to the steal door, which let on to the back stairwell, and slammed it shut, then was at Crystal’s side in one loping bounce.
I went to Janice to have a better look at her condition, and when I pulled her hand away, blood came as if from an open faucet. My guts knotted up. I took my shirt off and used it to hold pressure against her neck.
Pippin removed Crystal’s pants, propped her legs up on two discarded boxes, and talked her through the ordeal in reassuring tones.
“Breath,” he kept saying.
Then her pale, taut belly began to move unnaturally, as if something roiled from beneath the sheet of her skin. She screeched in a way that could only be described as primal, and, as if in accordance, the mob of children down below matched her with a chorus of shouts. Her stomach convulsed harder, faster; tiny hands and feet kicked and clawed to be let out.
Pippin backed away with a stoned look on his face, then rushed right back to her side and started waiving his hands inches over her body, as if to cast some sort of a spell.
Janice looked over at the confusion, and whether it was due to the horror of Crystal’s belly or whether blood lose ensued, she lost consciousness.
Continuing to hold pressure at her neck, I looked over at Pippin. He was glaring right at me, but I don’t think he was actually seeing me. His hands still trembled over Crystal’s body, his ritual proving ineffective.
She too had lost consciousness, and for a moment, it seemed that the infected infant within her womb had as well. Then the assault on her inner workings awoke, and a muted ripping sound brought Crystal right back to consciousness. Her eyes shot open, she made a few weak gagging noises, and went as silent as she’d been just seconds before–but with an almost imperceptible finality about it. Pippin put a hand to her neck, paused. He began to sob.
I looked back down at Janice. I dreaded the thought of putting my hand to her pulse. As I reached over to do just that, a series of deafening explosions rocked what must have been the whole hypermarket. Pippin and I had time enough to pass a solitary look of confusion off to one another before a noxious, pale-blue fog flooded the loading dock by way of the open garage doors. It pricked my sinuses and forced my eyes shut. I knelt down blindly overtop of Janice and reapplied pressure at her neck.
From within the ringing darkness behind my eyes, I recalled what that pudgy scientist had said right before Clyde Allan went bananas on live television. He’d said that within the next twenty-four hours or so, the military would drop bombs from the sky filled with non-contagious agents. Agents that carried with them the hope of a cure for the children.
Time passed with half of me lost in thought and the other listening to Janice’s weak breaths. I applied pressure and listened and thought about many things. I remained in the darkness.
Then Pippin was griping my shoulder and telling me to get up, that I had to see this.
The gas had noticeably dissipated, and the screams of the children seemed to have gone right along with it. Pippin stood at the railing and peered down, a curious look of pity lining his features. After I tied my blood-sodden shirt firmly around Janice’s neck, I got up and went to the railing.
The gas had done it’s job. But what the government had failed to anticipate (what no one could have reasonably foreseen under the dire circumstances) was the condition the children would be left in. Infants, toddlers, adolescents; they writhed not with the heat of the Biological agent that had once manipulated them, but with the pain of their nerve endings that the agent had once masked from them. The bites, scrapes, gouges, and amputations they’d inflicted on one another were now accounted for and equally anguished over. And the cries hadn’t lessened along with the gas as I had assumed, but instead consolidated into one collective melancholy moan.
Seeing them down there made me think of paintings depicting Hell’s tortures in their many, and photographs of manmade pits occupied by lifeless bodies. Seeing them made me wonder why humankind had to be so cruel.
Then I was hauled from my thoughts as Pippin pulled me into his arms, and I, without conscious thought, did likewise. And we stood in that upper loft embracing one another as two soldiers might after surviving a battle that had seemed too much like certain death. We wept hot tears for Crystal and Janice, Flory and Kia, for the multitude of children and a world that could never be the same.
Somewhere between our tears, the loud whirring of helicopter blades began. It reverberated within the expanse of the loading dock as if right outside the hypermarket. Then the sounds of heavy boots on the concrete flooring below us were followed abruptly by the voices of men.
A shout lifted up to our level: “Survivors! Any survivors?”
We looked down to see five men taking measured steps amongst the wreckage of the children below. They were each fit with military fatigues, guns and gas masks. One of the five shouted into a handheld transmitter: “Get the evac. Unit in here a.s.a.p. We have a multitude of children. I repeat, a multitude of children.” Then, again: “Survivors! Any survivors?”
Just where I found the voice I’ll never know, but I screamed: “Here! We have injured up here!”
Four of the soldiers shot cursory glances up at us, but were soon back to the business of cataloging atrocities. The one manning the walky-talky kept his sight trained on us. I heard him say something about survivors and getting a medical team in here, pronto. Then a sloshing-like noise came from directly behind us, and arrested both our attention.
My first thought was of a stray hellion, one that had somehow avoided the changes the gas had wrought. And I can only guess that Pippin had come to the same conclusion, because we both wheeled around as if our lives depended on it.
How very wrong we were.
There, from between Crystal’s slack, pale legs, purple and wet and fighting for oxygen, an infant wriggled on the floor.
As we fell to our knees, I gasped: “Its airway needs to be cleared.”
Not concerning whether the newborn was still infected, Pippin swung the infant upside down by its feet and firmly patted its back until it began to make that beautiful music of tear shed.
Pippin gazed down at the newborn in his hands and said, “How? Crystal … she’s gone. Is such a thing even possible?”
I listened to the sounds of the men down below, shouting orders, swearing against things unholy, even whispering at times; and then said: “Possible? I’m not so sure what’s possible or impossible anymore.”
He looked hard at me, tears brimming in his eyes. “…It’s what Crystal and her husband wanted most: for their daughter to see the light of day.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did she have to die, Hank?!” he sputtered, and then began to sob so hard his entire body heaved up and down.
I took the crying baby from out of his arms and asked, “What will you name her?”
This seemed to bring him back to the moment. He said, “Crystal. …I’ll name her Crystal. And if I have anything to do with it, I’ll be a father to her.”
“Crystal said something earlier tonight, Pippin, and I have to agree with her: you are one helluva good dude. But, sorry to say, I can’t agree that you’re all that cute.”
Despite everything, we laughed and cried and we shared that unforgettable moment with baby Crystal. She chirped, goggled, and farted a few times.
Exactly how long we stayed like that I can’t be sure (moments of such magnitude cannot be measured in time) but we soon heard the sound of the metal ladder we’d earlier ditched being set back into place.
I looked over at Janice, who was still unconscious, and reached for her pulse. I felt nothing.
A man in a white uniform and gas mask came rushing over to Crystal.
“She’s gone,” Pippin muttered. “But this woman needs your help.”
The man then went to Pippin and baby Crystal.
“I said that this woman, Janice … she needs your help!” Pippin shouted into the man’s mask.
“She’s gone,” I said.
Paying me no mind, the man crouched over Janice’s body. She had turned pale as paper. After a moment’s pause, he hollered at the other white uniformed man that had just cleared the ladder: “We have a live one over here, and a newborn. This one here has lost a lot of blood though. Call down for some stretchers. Tell them to clear all casualties from off the back stairwell. We need to get a blood transfusion going here. And call Saint Elizabeth’s and tell them to get the number three medical chopper out here with an incubator on board.”
My lips quivered and my heart thudded. I asked: “She’s alive?”
Pippin pulled on my arm and said, “Do you remember what else Crystal told us tonight, something her husband used to say? ‘For every bad act our God is forced to bear against us, He returns two good favors to try and make things right again.’”
Then he rocked baby Crystal in his arms and I held Janice’s hand until the men with the stretchers made it up the back stairwell.