by Urban, Tony
Ramey ran to it, passing by Adele Miller, the park’s office manager, who lumbered along dragging a dog leash with no dog at the other end. Ramey jumped into the truck and pulled the door shut.
She threw the truck into gear, thankful that they were too poor for an automatic and she’d learned to drive a stick, and gunned the engine. As she did, a burly man with an American flag bandanna tied around his forehead and carrying a flat screen TV ran out of the closest trailer.
“That’s my truck!”
Ramey slammed the gas and the almost bald tires squealed as the truck took off.
“You bitch, bring back my truck!”
Ramey checked the rear-view mirror and saw him toss down the TV. He chased after for a few paces, but gave up as she gained ground.
She was almost to the exit when she saw Bobby Mack, the de-virginizer, stumble into her path. Bobby’s white wife beater tank top was red with blood and his right arm looked like half-eaten hamburger.
Ramey didn’t slow down and the chrome bumper hit Bobby at thirty miles an hour. He bounced a few feet into the air, allowing her one last look at his dim face before he crashed back down. She heard bones break as the truck rolled over him. She may have even smiled a little.
Chapter 28
Mead never made it back to his apartment. As he drove away from the buffet, it became clear the world had turned to shit over the last few hours. He saw zombies in the streets, zombies trapped inside cars, and zombies eating humans.
The few live and uninjured people he saw were running for their lives. He saw no first responders or anyone interested in coming to the rescue, a fact that did not surprise him. There wasn’t anyone in Johnstown worth saving, anyway.
As he drove, he passed a small sporting goods store, saw the plate-glass window shattered and stopped. He crawled through the opening and was careful to not impale himself on any of the larger shards, which clung to the frame like jagged teeth.
He kept his eyes forward as he dropped into the building, watching for both zombies and looters. He came down on a chunk of concrete, the source of the destroyed window, and went sprawling into the broken glass.
“Fuck!” He climbed to his knees and wiped bits of glass from his arms and legs. Aside from a few minor scrapes, he was fine. Be more careful, dumbass, he thought as he stood. His ankle was sore but not sprained.
A torn ligament or broken leg in a situation like this would be the end of him. He knew that. Mead wasn’t stupid, even if most of his teachers and his parents would have said otherwise. He knew he could survive this.
He had always been a zombie fanatic, whether they were piece of shit Italian gore-fests by guys like Fulci, Lenzi, and Mattei or the more cerebral Romero movies. Mead watched them all and, sadly, he now thought, he always rooted for the zombies.
It wasn’t that he hated everyone, although in real life he loathed his fair share. No, in the movies the heroes were always idiots. They deserved to die because they did stupid things like try to save babies or old people. Or they didn’t look where they were going and stumbled right into the zombies. Or they holed up inside a building where they ended up surrounded and trapped. He'd be smart.
A large display case by the cash register was also smashed open and emptied. Mead had never been in that store in his life, but he could tell by the price tags that it had housed the firearms once upon a time.
That was okay, he didn’t want a gun. The closest he’d ever come to firing a pistol was playing Duck Hunt on his old school Nintendo, and more often than not he missed the ducks and the damned dog laughed at him. Besides, guns jammed. Or you ran out of bullets and had to go hunting for more ammo. He wouldn't fall into that trap. That was just another easy way to die.
Mead examined the store and found it empty of anything currently or formerly human. As he searched, he grabbed a few buck knives, but he wanted something he could use without getting so up close and personal. He sorted through a rack of wooden and aluminum baseball bats. He considered one, but they also seemed too short. The bows and arrows he came across next were even more useless to him than guns.
He’d almost given up hope and decided to make his stand with one of the bats when a rack of hockey sticks caught his eye. A sign above them read “The first truly unbreakable sticks” and beneath that, a price sign listed them as “Starting at only $149.”
“Jesus. Who has that kind of money for a stick?” he said to himself. When he picked up one of the sticks, he was amazed at how light it was. Maybe a pound, if that. The shaft and blade were metal. It seemed impossible that something that felt so inconsequential in hand could be unbreakable. It must be some sort of modern day alchemy.
To test this out, Mead stepped to the cash register, the drawer of which hung open and empty. Idiots, Mead thought. Money was worthless now.
He raised the stick above his head and swung down as hard as he could manage. The metal whistled through the air like a sword before crashing into the plastic machine. Mead felt electric shockwaves fire through his arms. The plastic frame of the cash register shattered into large chunks and the hockey stick remained in one piece without so much as a dent.
“Well, holy shit!” Screw the Ark of the Covenant, Mead had just found something much more practical. The stick was five feet long, well beyond arm’s reach and would be exactly what he needed, with a little customization.
Mead scavenged the store. When he finished, he felt he was more than adequately suited for going to war against some zombie bastards. He taped large knives to the butt ends of two hockey sticks, then followed that up with taping two ice skate blades around the blade of the stick. He checked their sharpness by lightly touching the blade against his forearm and opened an inch-long gash. Perfect.
He used heavy duty backpack straps to fasten the double bladed hockey sticks crisscross over his back. He wrapped his arms and legs in duct tape, only allowing enough empty space for his joints to bend.
He found a lacrosse helmet which even had a cage to protect his face. He slid a variety of knives into a utility belt, then finished off the outfit with a pair of heavy duty steel-toed boots and thick leather gloves. He’d gained about thirty pounds’ worth of armor, but had a feeling it would be more than worth its weight.
Mead crawled back out the window and hopped down to the street. A dilapidated duplex further up the block was ablaze and orange-yellow flames clawed out open windows. A woman, half her skin charred black, wandered down the street. An elderly man, so stooped over he looked like a hunchback, loped toward her.
“Oh, God, miss! We need to get you help!” the man said.
What a fool, Mead thought. When the old fart grabbed hold of the burned woman’s uninjured side and she responded by jumping on him and tearing open his throat, his skepticism was proved correct. The geezer didn’t even have time to scream.
Mead ignored them both and retreated to his Cavalier. He deposited one of the hockey sticks in the back seat and went to follow up with the second, but paused. Mead glanced back at the burned zombie who had moved on from the geezer’s neck and was now dining on his face like it was an Easter ham.
He moved up the sidewalk, walking at first, then changing gears to a quick jog as he got closer. He was in a full sprint by the time he reached them.
“Head’s up, bitch!”
She looked up, a ragged piece of flesh dangling from her mouth. Mead swung the end of the hockey stick with the skate blade attached.
The blade hit her in the temple and tore through the front of her face, slicing through her right eye, the bridge of her nose, then the left eye before ripping free at the opposite end of her head. She tumbled backward and remained motionless on the sidewalk.
Who needs Sidney Crosby? Mead thought, and he fought hard to suppress a primal scream of victory. Got to be careful, you don’t know how many zombies are out there.
The hunchback on the ground had stopped bleeding and when Mead looked down at him, he saw his dead eyes open. The lifeless thing tried t
o growl, but with most of the bottom half of its face missing, it came out in more of a gurgle. It reached up, swatting at Mead but only caught air.
Mead straddled the zombie and spun the hockey stick around (like a ninja, he thought with glee). Now, the knife end faced downward. He clenched the shaft with both hands and guided the knife into the zombie’s eye.
He stopped pushing when he felt resistance from hitting the back of the monster’s skull. Mead gave the stick a quick jerk from side to side to make sure the creature’s brains were scrambled. The zombie went limp.
Mead stepped off it and jogged back to his car. He set the now bloody stick in the passenger seat for easy access. The Cavalier started with a loud backfire, and as Mead drove away, several zombies, drawn to the sound, followed.
Chapter 29
The relief officer never arrived and three days later Aben was still handcuffed to the toilet. He gave up and drank from the bowl halfway through day two. Even for a man who had slept in gutters and eaten from restaurant dumpsters, he felt that was a new low point.
Dolan’s decomposing body laid where it fell in the center of the room. The smell of his rotting corpse filled the hot, cramped office. His exposed belly had swelled to three times its normal size and Aben half expected it to burst like an overfilled water balloon.
The officer’s skin had first gone pale white and more recently turned a putrid gray-green. His eyes bulged like they would pop from their sockets and his black tongue jutted from his mouth like he was giving an undead raspberry.
Watching the decomposition process up close and personal was a fascinating, if revolting, way to pass the time, but what really bothered Aben were the flies. Thousands of them.
They invaded the room about ten minutes after Dolan died, like they had some sort of death sonar. Maybe they did. They landed on the body and the splattered blood and brains to eat and lay their eggs.
The next day he saw the first maggots. He tried to tell himself his eyes were playing tricks on him. That it was hunger and dehydration and he wasn’t seeing what he thought he was. But toward the afternoon they were large enough he couldn’t deny it any longer.
The tiny, writhing worms crawled over the body, eating and burrowing into the dead flesh. He could see Dolan’s skin pulsing and rippling as the worms ate him from the inside out.
Forget ashes to ashes, dust to dust, this was what happens when you die. You get eaten up and shit out by maggots, then more flies show up to eat their shit and lay more eggs and round and round she goes. This was the circle of life. Hakuna matata.
Aben tried off and on to slip the cuff, but all he ended up with was a bloody and sore wrist. He’d seen prisoners break their thumbs to get out of handcuffs in the movies, but his were squeezed on so tight he doubted that would do any good.
Sooner or later someone had to show up, and when they did, at least he’d have ten working fingers. There were two in particular he looked forward to showing them.
One thing he was not was hungry, and that surprised him as the last thing he’d eaten was the shitty pizza. Of course, it was hard to work up much of an appetite with a festering corpse twelve feet away.
Aben had almost resigned himself to the fact that the third day would come and go with no relief when he heard a thud and footsteps outside the office.
“Get in here! Officer Dolan shot himself!” Aben waited. The footsteps came closer but slow, so damn slow. Why the hell were they taking their time?
“Hey! Hurry up!”
The same plodding steps followed his plea.
Aben banged his handcuff chain against the pipe, which didn’t do anything to speed up the footsteps and only made his raw wrist sore all over again.
Finally, a shape appeared near the doorway but the hall outside the office was dark and Aben couldn’t make out any features.
“What the fuck are you waiting for?”
The figure stepped into the room and Aben saw that the man who had just strolled into the office was only marginally better off than the dead policeman on the floor.
The man wore blue mechanic’s overalls with a tag that read, “My name’s Steve. What’s yours?” but Steve didn’t look like he was interested in small talk.
His flesh was lifeless and gray and he had matching eyes. Dried blood covered the lower part of his face and Aben swore he saw a hunk of skin — skin with human hair still attached to it — stuck between Steve’s buck teeth.
She came back. That’s what Dolan had said about his wife. She died, but came back. Was that actually true? How the hell could that be?
Steve staggered into the room, his arms dangling limp at his sides. He saw Dolan’s body on the floor, walked to it, and crumpled to his knees. He leaned over Dolan’s lifeless corpse, grabbed an arm, and started eating.
Son of a bitch, he was right. Steve’s a zombie and now he’s in here eating this rotten bastard right in front of me.
Now, the broken thumb trick sounded not only plausible but damned appealing. Aben grabbed the thumb on his cuffed left hand and tried squeezing it inward. He could feel the tendon stretch and the knuckle gave a resounding pop, which sounded like a corkscrew blowing out of a champagne bottle in the small, quiet room.
Zombie Steve looked up at the sound of the knuckle cracking and he lost interest in the dead flesh before him. He rose to his feet and started toward fresh meat.
Aben’s thumb hadn’t broken and, as Steve got closer, he tried again. He gritted his teeth and jerked his thumb outward and again the finger cracked, but this time it was the joint separating. Hot pain shot up Aben’s arm and he pushed the dislocated thumb into his palm and pulled like hell against the cuffs.
His hand still refused to come free. He jerked hard and the metal cuffs sliced further into his wrist. He could see the flesh gaping and blood ran steadily from the red bracelet he’d carved.
The zombie took another step, but this time his foot came down on a chunk of Dolan’s maggot infested brains and Steve’s leg shot out from under him.
Aben watched the zombie pratfall with a mixture of amazement and horror. Steve flailed sideways but his slow, awkward movements gave him no chance at stopping the plunge. The zombie fell through the air and landed on Dolan’s distended midsection.
When the zombie fell on it, the skin covering Dolan’s guts exploded. Aben had earlier thought of it like a water balloon, but when it burst, it became the most vile, revolting piñata in the history of the world.
Rotting intestines and tissue and black coagulated blood and maggots, my God, so many maggots, blew out like gory shrapnel. Aben only had a moment to take in the visual carnage before the smell hit him.
The aroma of the rotting corpse was fresh apple pie compared to the abomination that came from Dolan’s insides. Aben gagged and retched, but after three days had no food to come up.
Another wave of the stench hit him and this time when he gagged yellow bile rocketed up his throat and burst out his mouth and nose. The bile ran down his chin and seeped through his beard, which only made him gag again.
His retching refocused the attention of Zombie Steve, who flailed atop Dolan’s body like he was swimming in mid-air. His arms and legs smacked into the piles of rotten organs and maggots.
Steve grabbed a handful of something black and full of worms and shoved it into his mouth. After he swallowed it down, the zombie escaped his sandbar and was back on the hunt.
Aben pulled again, and again his hand would not come free. He saw the top of his wrist was cut to the bone. Blood didn’t simply running from the wound, it gushed.
The zombie was closing in and Aben could see that his observation about the skin stuck on Steve’s mouth was indeed correct. Apparently Steve had recently dined on flesh a la blonde.
Aben could feel the zombie’s rancid breath on his face. He knew he was about to die but decided to give it one more try.
Aben threw himself sideways with his much force as possible so that all of his body weight would be acting against
the cuffs. He expected to end up hanging from them like a side of beef on a hook, dangling there for the zombie to feast upon, but to his amazement, he fell the whole way to the floor.
He was free.
Despite being loosed from the cuffs, Steve was almost on top of him. Aben belly crawled through the gore that had been Dolan’s stomach, toward the cop’s right hand which still held his pistol. He could feel things squishing under his elbows and knees and didn’t know whether it was intestines or maggots and he didn’t want to find out.
Aben pulled the gun free from the dead man's hand, rolled onto his back and looked up at Zombie Steve.
“My name’s Aben. And it definitely was not a pleasure meeting you.”
Aben squeezed the trigger and shot Steve in the face. The zombie fell first to his knees, then forward where he landed across Dolan’s legs.
They all laid there for a moment, Aben and the two dead men. Then Aben looked at his left hand which, only seconds earlier, had been cuffed.
What he saw first were the bones. He wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing and when he closed his hand, it was like looking at one of the skeletons in those Ray Harryhausen movies with stop motion animation. Only this was his hand.
The skin had been peeled away from his wrist all the way to his fingertips. He could see the tendons still attached to the white bone, but the flesh was gone. The pain was exquisite.
“Oh, shit,” he said and his head felt like it would float away. As fast as he could manage, he used his right hand to pull off his belt, then looped it around his left forearm and pulled it as tight as possible.
He was still holding on to the leather when he passed out.
Chapter 30
The muscles in Emory’s legs burned like they were aflame. He’d been peddling the bike for miles with intentions of going to the police station, but the further he rode into the city, the pointlessness of that plan became obvious. The horror he’d seen up close and personal inside the tunnel was not an isolated incident.
