Welcome To Hell.A.

by Stephens, L.

  It was too late to be subtle. Spurred on by the other zombies, more zombies were coming into the alley. They clawed at the sky, trying to reach the fresh piece of meat that dangled above them. There were no two ways about it, she was going to have to take Ava down the rickety fire escape and pray to Buddha that she didn’t have to make a choice between a child and the man she loved.

  CHAPTER 138: THE DEATH OF JAKE MEYERS

  Jake wished the sentiment was true, and he wished he wasn’t kidding for a change. Death was imminent. He was hanging from an electrical cable forty feet off the ground as a blood thirsty crowd gathered below, all of them encouraging him to let go. He wasn’t suicidal, but the thought of sucking another day’s dick in this new world with all its horrors and tragedies didn’t really get him too excited about holding on. All he had ever wanted to do was to have fun, fuck bitches and get wasted, and there was definitely none of that shit in the Dead Zone. The line for the Pearly Gates was short, and he knew he didn’t have the price of admission. Brownie points had been very scarce since he’d adopted a zero fucks given lifestyle. He didn’t care though. He knew Heaven would be boring as shit, and given the choice he’d rather spend an eternity getting his balls lanced by some beast in the pits of Hell, content with the knowledge he’d be joined by only the filthiest of the unredeemable females.

  Landing on the cable had taken the air out of him, and hanging from his armpit had almost wrenched his right arm out of its socket. Now, as he hung from his hands, he inched his way along the cable. Every purchase he took cut deeper into his palms. It was less than ideal. It was the beginning of the end. He started remembering all that had brought him to this moment, all that had amounted to this laughable existence he had carved out for himself, and, for the first time, he realized he actually had a purpose. This purpose wasn’t his usual degenerate motivation to fuck the hottest girl in the club or do the biggest line of coke on the table; it was to do one selfless act, and that made him want to hang on. It made him want to be a part of something.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Sarah called down. “I’m going to get you!”

  Sarah took a step out onto the top landing and the whole fire escape shuddered and groaned.

  “No, Sarah!” Jake screamed. “Stay there. I'll be okay!”

  Jake looked down at the gathering mass below him. Sweat was beginning to mount on his forehead, and blood was trickling from his hands to his wrists. He jerked a little, swaying his body to get a better hold of the cable, and the zombie crowd below got excited. They began to join each other in a choir, singing their spine-chilling groan.

  One of Jake’s shoes slipped off his foot and fell into the crowd below. Jake saw it hit a female zombie, and he caught himself checking her out. He wasn’t normal by society’s standards, but he thought this was strange even for him. It was like his brain had reverted to its primitive nature and was processing information differently now, because his stress levels were at their peak. His grip was loosening, aided by the blood that was coating the cable. He knew there wasn’t much time left. The crowd of zombies was growing by the minute, their siren song begging him to fall was almost deafening. His every move brought louder and more violent chants provoking Jake to surrender.

  “Sarah!” Jake yelled. “I’m sorry! I’m so fucking sorry!”

  Face-to-face would have been his ideal situation to apologize to her, but he knew this was as close as they would ever get to each other again. If it wasn’t for the zombie apocalypse and everything that came with it, it was obvious that he was on a trajectory that would inject him back into her life, and he would never fucking let go. It would have worked too. She would have fallen back in love just as easy as he had fallen in love with her the first time he met her. He wouldn’t make it easy on himself though. He would apologize, he would grovel at her feet, he would promise never to do the schmucky, fucking loser ass crap he had subjected her to in the first place.

  “Jake!” Sarah screamed. “Stay where you are! I’m coming!”

  He could see and hear the fire escape shaking as she ventured out on to it. This wasn’t what he wanted. He’d rather die and have her live to see another day than risk her life for the piece of shit hanging from a cable in a dingy alley in downtown L.A.

  “Don’t!” Jake screamed. “I got this, okay! I’m almost there!”

  Lies came easy to him. They always did. After all, Max’s genes ran through him like a lie tornado, destroying everything that was good and real. One of Jake’s hands fell free, and he heard Sarah scream. He tried to return his hand to the cable, but it was too late. He had lost his grip completely and was beginning to fall into the horde of zombies.

  His brain went into its favored slow-motion speed, and he started to dwell on the situation as he watched the horde get closer and the love of his shitty fucking life get further and further away. He had tried, and he had failed. He was falling, he was fucking falling and this was fucking it! He had done so many bad things in his life, but he knew one thing: he didn’t regret a single fucking one of them, except for Sarah of course. He regretted the fuck out of that. With sad resignation, he gave up on everything that had brought him to this moment. He was happy to go out the worst fucking human to ever set foot on planet Earth.

  Suck my fucking dick, world, he thought. Enjoy every fucking second. I’m not going to be here to ruin your good times.

  CHAPTER 139: THE IN CROWD

  If you took a poll of men aged sixteen to forty-five, Joy was still a Los Angeles seven, a New York six and definitely a Chicago nine. But, if you took a poll of women aged sixteen to forty-five, they’d all say it together in one giant cacophony: “What is this poll for? And why the fuck are you so rapey?”

  Joy was used to winning, but she never expected to come up on top in everything she put her mind to. Plan for the worst and keep hope alive for the best was her mindset, and, this time, she had made her bed and was now lying in the filthy street, miles away from her freshly cleaned sheets and her five-thousand-dollar mattress.

  Her hair and makeup, which was usually meticulous, was smeared and messy. Most of her left arm was missing, and her clothes were covered in dirt and blood, but despite this laundry list of problems she didn’t have care in the world. As she wandered aimlessly down the street, her once-focused life was a distant and murky memory that was slowly fading into a blank fog. In her former life she would have cared that she was missing an arm, cared that she was only wearing one high heel, and she would have definitely cared that the sole of that one and only heel was covered in blood, making it look like she had downgraded from Valentino to Christian Louboutin. All those pretty things that used be a part of who she was were now meaningless, lost in another life where things mattered, where presentation mattered, where minutia mattered, but sadly, there was no one to celebrate this elevation to a higher plane of existence. Joy had left the building.

  It didn’t take long for her to bleed out. She tried to stem the flow of blood, but her hand barely covered the fountain that spewed from the stump that was her upper arm. Sadness overwhelmed her, and tears welled in her eyes before trickling down her cheeks. Thoughts of her father and what he would think of his little disappointment ran through her fading mind. She tried to scream his name to the sky; not her dad’s name but the name that had gotten her to this bitter end, but all that came out was blood.

  The only remainder of Joy Tannen was the pile of flesh, bone and coagulating blood that was slowly moving down the street. Zombie Joy had no goals, no ideas and no attachments, but she was open to everything, a lump of clay ready to be formed into something new. The distant sound of a crowd was like Demi Moore’s hands. She instantly had a goal, something to do, somewhere to go, and she moved a little bit more swiftly. After all, she had a purpose now: find the crowd and be part of something. She had torn through her cocoon and emerged into the world, ready to eat anything that was alive, anything that reminded her of what she wasn’t.

  The sound grew steadily
louder as she was drawn around the corner into a small alley. It was little more than twenty feet across. Her excitement increased as she moved through the zombies that had congregated in the center. She hadn’t found her reason for being just yet, but she was part of something and that was a start. The crowd was wedged tight, and there was no moving further. Both sides of the crowd were pushing into the center, and she had reached its focal point. Like a drunken teenager at Coachella, she moved in place, looking the part but not feeling the part. She was jealous of the other zombies. They knew what they were doing. She was just faking it, and she wouldn’t rest until she got to the bottom of this new world she inhabited.

  Suddenly, like a gift from God, a dirty sneaker fell from the sky and hit her in the chest before falling to the ground. It didn’t match her high heel, but with her newfound way of thinking she could make it work. She looked up to see where her new shoe had come from, and there it was: a real purpose. It was wriggling and it was vulnerable and it was right above her. Being named queen of the zombie apocalypse was definitely on the agenda, but first she had to taste the reason why she was walking the earth.

  She managed to get what was left of her arms up above her head and reached for the plump and juicy foot that dangled above her. Every move he made, no matter how minor, was like ecstasy. The moving meat sock above was like a god, and she wanted to be inside him, live in every fiber of his being, and, although not being able to reach him was torture, it fueled a desire that made just being in his vicinity bliss. The crowd moaned with excitement and so did Zombie Joy. In her previous life she didn’t travel with the herd. She floated her own boat, but her purpose now was real, and nothing could ever replace the rapture she was feeling.

  CHAPTER 140: SOLDIER BOY TELL ‘EM

  First aid and triage had been one of the classes Jennings had taken as part of his basic training. He’d had plans to be a field medic but after he showed aptitude in tactical and combat exercises, the higher ups had decided it would be best for him to focus on kicking ass and deleting names. He had deleted more people today—if you could call them that—than he could ever do in three lifetimes in the army, and even though he kept telling himself they were mindless and taking them out was most certainly doing them a favor, the sheer magnitude of his body count was starting to eat him up.

  After leaving Jake to his own devices, Jennings had been enlisted to lead a ragtag bunch of soldiers who had either lost their company or were the only survivors of a plan gone awry. He hadn’t complained, and if anything he had stepped up to the occasion, making sure everyone he took out on mission came back, and for the most part they did, but the plain truth was, they were up against it from the start. Every mission brought a side mission, which then brought another mini mission and so on. It was like playing the eighties arcade game Tapper; it didn’t matter how quickly he served the beers there were always more people wanting frosty beverages.

  As the day had gone by, each mission had become less search and rescue and more search and destroy. The battle zone was growing, and no one wanted to say it out loud but Los Angeles had fallen. Troops were being shipped in from as far as Hawaii and Texas, but they weren’t coming to downtown L.A.. They were being deployed in Hollywood, Koreatown, Pasadena, Rosemead and Orange. There was a clear plan here: save the city as a whole but let the center rot. By the time Jennings was told they were pulling all military personnel out of Los Angeles, he had reached the end of his tether. This wasn’t what he enlisted to do. He was on home turf, and submitting to an enemy was not what this country was about. He had made sure his new charges were secure on the chopper before he made his exit. He didn’t hide the fact he wasn’t going with them, he just made excuses. As far as they knew he was getting the next one, and no one questioned him. They were all just grateful to be getting out of the Dead Zone, alive.

  Jennings commandeered a military truck, one with room to carry thirty survivors, maybe more if they got crafty, and within an hour he had realized what he was doing was futile. There was no one to save. He had been naïve and insubordinate. The higher-ups knew what they were doing when they started retreating out of the Dead Zone. There was a bigger picture at play and Jennings’ impulsiveness had cost him a chance of really helping his country.

  He drove aimlessly through streets that were filled with walking dead or people soon to be walking dead. It was clear he couldn’t do the job alone. He needed support. He needed an eye in the sky to point him to the right places, but the airships and helicopters hadn’t hovered overheard for hours. It was like they wanted to let everyone in the Dead Zone know there was no more hope. Whatever they did, they were on their own. He continued on his mission. He checked the side streets for survivors, and he plowed through groups of zombies wherever he could, their dead eyes looking up at him as he crushed them just to remind himself this wasn’t a game.

  The bitten survivors, the ones who were still alive but the virus hadn’t taken over yet, proved to be the most haunting. They tried to pretend they were fine, but he knew how to weed them out. He would give them false hope with stories of a cure so they’d let their guard down. It was heinous, but he wouldn’t forget their faces, especially after he pulled the trigger and put them out of their misery. The truck had power but it couldn’t move the big blockages like car wrecks and large debris, so often times Jennings had to backtrack and hope he wouldn’t get swarmed in the process.

  Jennings was about to swerve around an abandoned car when he noticed a large group of zombies gathered in an alley. This wasn’t abnormal, but staying in one place was. It meant there was something that was attracting them, something they wanted. The glint in the sky that got Jennings attention was like a homemade lure handed down from generation to generation, and there was a reason why it was kept in the family. It was tattered, grungy and by God it stank to high heaven, but it worked. Records had been broken and trophies won with it.

  CHAPTER 141: B.F.F.

  Jake’s peaceful slow-motion death was interrupted by a loud and obnoxious horn. He couldn’t even die in peace it seemed. The blood thirsty groans from the zombies were drowned out by the smashing of their bodies as the grill of the truck spared no one. The tires began to screech before Jake even knew what was going on. He was falling fast, and the zombies below seemed to disappear in a sea of green. Jake held his breath, ready to fall into the deep abyss, and he did, only to be shot straight back up into the air. He floated for a second or two before the green canvas came rapidly back at him.

  Jake lay on the top of the truck as he caught his breath. Besides the ligament damage to his arm and the probable broken ribs, he was okay, but more importantly he was alive. Sarah looked down at him, tears in her eyes and a massive smile on her face. For Jake, it was like looking up at an angel, and he thought for a moment maybe it was, until the loud rapid fire of Jennings’ assault rifle snapped him out of it. Even though he was mowing down zombies left and right, he was more like a mama bear protecting her cub than a trained killing machine. Jake watched in awe as any surviving zombie got their just rewards in the shape of a bullet, delivered with love from his protector below.

  “Looks like you just won the lottery, asshole,” Jennings said, dispatching the last of the zombies that were squashed and smeared under and around the truck.

  “Where the fuck did you come from?” Jake asked after the gunfire had subsided.

  “I came looking for you of course,” Jennings said as he reloaded his assault rifle. “I give you credit, I honestly thought you’d be dead by now.”

  “You’re such a sweetheart,” Jake said as he sat up.

  He instantly regretted it. His arm, chest and back felt like they had gone through a pasta maker. Jake struggled to get a deep breath into his lungs, which resulted in him coughing up a couple mouthfuls of blood.

  “Fuck me,” Jake groaned as he discovered even more injuries. “I’m fucking ruined.”

  Jake’s shoe, covered in blood and gore landed next to him on the roof of the truck
.

  “That yours?” Jennings voice called from below.

  Jake looked at it, then decided, disgusting or not, there was no way he was walking around the zombie apocalypse barefoot.

  “Yeah,” Jake said as he scrunched his face up and slipped on the shoe. “Thanks.”

  “For the shoe?” Jennings said stiffly. “Or for saving your miserable life?”

  Jake wondered if he was serious. He guessed the proper etiquette for someone whose life had just been saved was to say ‘thank you’, but he really hadn’t been given time to do so. Jake ignored the barb and gingerly clambered to the front of the truck, sliding down the windscreen and stopping on the hood.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Jake said as he raised his hands submissively.

  The barrel of Jennings’ rifle was pointed straight at him.

  “Jake!” Sarah screamed from the rooftop.

  “Don’t worry, Sarah!” Jake yelled back, keeping his eyes locked with Jennings’. “I got this.”

  “Don't you fucking move!” Jennings spat. “You been bit? You been fucking bit? Don’t fucking lie to me, man!”

  “No, no,” Jake said, patting his torso like TSA searching for weapons. “I'm good, I'm good.”