Fire: The Collapse

by William Esmont

The metal security door clanged shut behind Pollard as he stepped out of his trailer into the heat of midmorning. With a quick tug, he checked it to make sure it was securely latched. After sweeping most of the undead from the immediate vicinity, the last thing he wanted was for a straggler to wander into his house and surprise him. It still happened—had happened, in fact, only a week earlier.

  Shielding his eyes, he set off at a brisk pace, heading southwest down the palm tree-lined street. The residential section quickly gave way to a commercial district, complete with the requisite cluster of big-box stores and row upon row of abandoned cars. Evidence of the undead rampage was everywhere. A ribcage, half-buried in a sand drift. Dark smears of gore baked into the pavement where people had been dragged from their vehicles and torn to shreds. Cars, filled with former undead, now sporting neat holes in their heads courtesy of his men.

  His destination was the Home Depot the next block over. A hot wind pressed at his back. A tumbleweed rolled past, tiny branches scritch scritching the asphalt as it bounced over the curb and became momentarily stuck on a chain link fence. Pollard loved tumbleweeds.

  He nodded at the two heavily armed men standing in front of the garden section as he approached. They straightened up and gave him their full attention. The older one saluted. The younger one stuffed a small black book with gold lettering on the cover—a bible, Pollard thought—into his back pocket.

  Pollard waved him off. “At ease.”

  “Morning, Mr. Pollard,” the younger man, really only a teen, said. The other man was much older, a former Army Ranger named Steve. Pollard didn’t know either of them well.

  “How’s he doing?” he asked, looking past the men into the high fence of the garden section.

  “Haven’t heard a peep out of him all morning,” the teen answered.

  “Hmm. Let’s take a look.” He rubbed his hands together with anticipation. The subject of his curiosity was a man named Christian Fuller. Christian, a middle-aged, former auto mechanic from Bisbee, was quarantined in the garden section while they waited to see if, and when, he would turn. He had been bitten two days earlier when they were clearing the Sonic parking lot a few blocks over. Christian had been in the process of putting down a family of zombies in an old Chevy Suburban with Sonora plates when a zombie crawled out from underneath and took a bite out of his calf. Knowing it was an instant death sentence, he had hid his wound from the rest of his unit, returning to his trailer as if nothing had happened. It was only blind luck that his roommate had caught a glimpse of the bite as Christian was dressing the next morning. Twelve hours had passed by that point, and he still showed no signs of infection. That was highly unusual.

  Once his roommate raised the alarm, it was up to Pollard to decide what to do with Christian. His first impulse was to take him out back and put a bullet in his head. Just because. But he was curious. Bites typically resulted in death within an hour or two, and reanimation shortly thereafter. He had decided to wait and see what happened.

  Pollard gestured at the door. “Keys?”

  “Yes, sir,” the teen responded. He pulled the keys from his pocket and tossed them over.

  Pollard approached the gate on full alert. There was no sound from within. Putting his face up to the thick wire mesh, he scanned the cavernous space, searching for Christian. Dead plants. Enormous ceramic pots. Piles of tools. There was no sign of his quarry.

  He rattled the gate. There was a low growl from beyond, and he instinctively took a step back. “Fuck!” Christian had turned.

  Pollard pointed at Woo. “We need to talk. But first, we’re going in there to check on him.”

  Woo’s eyes grew wide. “In there?”

  Pollard straightened and rested his hand on the butt of his pistol. He dropped his voice an octave. “Do you have a problem with that, son?”

  Woo stole a glance at Steve, and then returned his attention to Pollard. “No, sir. Not at all, Mr. Pollard.”

  All morning Pollard had been mulling ways to test the boy. Feeding him to Hollister was a no-win situation for both him and Woo. She would screw him senseless for a week, maybe two, and then tire of him, at which point she would have him shot.

  They would toss his corpse into the desert and leave him for the coyotes. He couldn’t let that happen. This was a chance to get someone he trusted inside Hollister’s room to learn just what the hell she was doing, to get a shot at taking her place. But first he had to let the kid in on his plan.

  He had long ago abandoned the idea of challenging Hollister directly. As a submarine commander, she had done an adequate job. She was a little harsh on the crew, Pollard thought, but that was to be expected since she was the only woman on an all-male boat.

  Ever since reaching land, though, she had changed into something he didn’t recognize, as if her sense of right and wrong had been obliterated along with the cities destroyed by her missiles. Something inside had snapped, or maybe it had snapped earlier, and he had missed it. The more Pollard considered her behavior, the more he realized she may have been flawed from the very beginning. That, unfortunately, made him flawed by association. He couldn’t live with it.

  He hoped God, if he still existed, could forgive him for what he had done so far, and especially for what he was about to do in the name of setting things right.

  “Weapons ready,” he ordered, drawing his own pistol. Woo raised his rifle, a Browning .30-06, to his shoulder. Steve raised a wicked-looking double-barreled shotgun.

  Pollard inserted the key into the lock and turned it slowly. It clunked as the bolt slid free. Through the mesh, he caught a flash of color and heard footsteps as Christian scampered through the space. Pollard held his breath for a second. The zombie, if that’s what Christian was now, wasn’t charging the door. Very strange.

  “Cover me,” he said, pulling the gate open just enough to slip through. Woo and Steve followed close behind.

  “Lock it,” Pollard said once they were all inside. Woo did. In front of them, a pair of check-out lanes flanked by more gates created a single point of entry into the dead store. Just beyond, brown, wilted plants cluttered the tables and benches to the far wall. A few cacti here and there had survived, splotches of dusky green in a vast sea of dingy brown. Pollard eyed the plants. At least they don’t come back. If they do, we may as well lie down and die.

  He called out, “Christian?” Nothing. He did it again, with more conviction in his voice. “Christian? It’s Andrew Pollard. I’ve come to talk to you.” Silence.

  “He’s in here somewhere,” Steve whispered. “I saw him.”

  Pollard glared at him. “Quiet!” He took a few steps forward, past the end of the registers. Peered around the corner. All clear. Shit. Where the hell did he go?

  He heard a crunching sound coming from behind a pallet of mulch. Woo’s eyes grew wide. Pollard pointed at him and motioned to the left. He sent Steve to the right. He put his finger to his lips. Held their eyes until he was sure they understood. He put his finger on the trigger and made for the pallet. Woo followed.

  Pollard thought he was ready for what he would find on the other side, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Christian, a thin and dirty man, was squatting behind the mulch, vigorously slurping the marrow from a splintered femur. He gagged, then choked it back. The femur was from a week-old undead he himself had executed. A morbid grin stretched across his face. I was right! They do eat each other.

  He had suspected this for a while—that if the undead couldn’t find a live food source, they would turn on each other, but he hadn’t seen it in person. Not until today. His first hint had come when he and Hollister were in Northern Mexico. Somehow they had ended up at the tail-end of a long, snaking column of undead traveling in the same general direction. They hung back a safe distance, pacing the zombies, figuring that knowing where they were, and where they were headed, was far more valuable than hurrying to their destination.

  Over the course of several days they had encountered numerous corpses tha
t had been picked clean, bones cracked open like discarded sunflower shells, everything consumed but hair and teeth. None of it made sense. Zombies almost always left enough behind to reanimate. But that time, they hadn’t.

  He was walking point a few nights later when Hollister had suddenly grabbed his arm and hissed at him to stop right now. She had saved his life. Less than a hundred meters ahead was a small cluster of ghouls. Through the gloom, he and Hollister watched in mute horror as the creatures feasted on someone, wolfing down bits of flesh, tearing at the unlucky soul like a pack of starving hyenas. He couldn’t make it out at the time, but Pollard swore the victim looked a little too ragged to be a living human. And besides, he had thought, how would an uninfected wind up in the middle of a swarm this large?

  It hadn’t added up at the time, but now it made perfect sense. They were cannibals. On top of everything else.

  Christian eyed them each in turn, a low growl building in his throat. The femur shard clattered to the ground as he rose. Pollard’s gut churned. He hated being this close to the undead. The stench made him ill. Worse than that was the knowledge that they were once people just like him. Sometimes he imagined they even looked like people he knew. Every time he killed one, he gave a silent apology.

  “Ready?” he asked. Steve shifted to the right a foot, boxing Christian in. In a sudden moment of clarity, Pollard realized that if Steve shot from his current position, there was a good chance Christian’s blood would spray all over himself and Woo, possibly infecting them.

  “Steve!” he yelled. “We’re in your line of fire! Move!” Anger surged through him. His pulse quickened. He should know better. Steve didn’t move. He watched Christian, his eyes like a deer in the headlights. His finger slipped around the trigger.

  Pollard nudged Woo with his elbow and nodded at Steve. “Shoot him.”

  “Huh?” Woo said, shifting his attention away from Christian.

  “You heard me. Shoot him.”

  Christian opened his mouth. A moan was percolating deep in the back of his throat.

  Steve’s aim wavered. “What the fuck, Pollard?”

  With a last uncertain glance, Woo swiveled his aim to Steve and pulled the trigger. Steve spun around as if grabbed from behind, crashed to the floor, and tumbled from view behind a stack of gravel.

  Fresh meat. That was all the invitation Christian needed. He dove on Steve with a roar. Steve screamed and thrashed, his feet kicking wildly against the concrete floor. He’s still alive, Pollard realized, sickened. Pollard and Woo watched and waited as Steve struggled with Christian, a losing battle to fight off the creature as it tried to consume him. It didn’t take long. Soon the sounds of Steve’s protests were replaced by the obscene cacophony of teeth rending flesh. Bits of gristle and blood flew indiscriminately, splattering the concrete.

  Woo was shaking, the barrel of his gun jittering in crazy figure eights.

  Pollard sighed. “Ok. I think that’s enough.” Woo gave him a blank look.

  “That was a good shot,” Pollard said, clapping him on the shoulder. He took a step forward and fired two shots into Christian’s head. The zombie crumpled onto Steve’s chest.

  Sorry, Steve. He put three bullets into Steve’s face, enough to guarantee he wouldn’t get up again. “Don’t worry,” Pollard said as he turned back to Woo. “You passed the test.”

  Woo finally lowered his gun. “The test?” he asked incredulously. “What are you talking about?”

  Pollard grinned and motioned at the exit. “Walk with me. I’ll explain everything.”

  Twenty-One