“Shut up,” Danny says. “It’s not whore-time, it’s dinnertime.”
The blade presses up against my testicles. I’m shaking now, trying to collapse inwardly on myself, trying to save everything down there.
Please, anywhere besides that, I almost say, but bite my tongue.
The world is going gray. Outside of the windows are purple thunderheads masked by overcast. It’s going to rain. I’m going to die.
No.
At the first poke, the first burning sensation of pain, I kick my leg. Froggy jumps back with the motion and as he does I feel fire. He wasn’t careful. Not that I think he wanted to be or anything and the blade slices the inside of my thigh. Blood trickles from the wound, burning.
Bud is a big man, but he’s no match for the, now half-hearted, kick. When one’s balls are literally on the line, one can muster up a lot of strength.
“Hold him! Hold him!” Froggy shouts. He bares his teeth. I see a drop of blood on the edge of the steak knife.
Danny is laughing. “This your first feast?” he asks. “Jesus!”
Froggy doesn’t answer. He looks pissed. As soon as he gets close enough, I kick out again, missing his chin by centimeters. He doesn’t flinch. Bud tries to get ahold of me. Things aren’t going well for him. He ends up pressing his big gut on my leg, to quell my kicks.
“He’s got a lot of fight,” Steph says. “I like that.” She puts the thermometer back in her mouth.
“Fuck you,” I say.
She titters. “You wish.”
“Got him?” Froggy asks Bud.
Bud nods.
The blade snakes its way back below the belt. It’s not touching me, but my flesh is crawling, trying to run straight off the bone and get as far away from the sharp point as possible. I stop fighting. Not because I’m giving up but because I’m tired and Bud weighs close to three-hundred pounds. I’m content with passing out, now. Maybe then there won’t be any pain. I close my eyes, feeling a tear squeezing out between my lids then running down my face.
They’re laughing and taking their time. Demented foreplay.
And someone whistles. Loud. The blade’s coldness leaves my skin.
“What was that?” Danny asks.
I open my eyes.
Forty-Three
All of their heads turn toward the direction of the sound, my eyes with them. Through the murky glass, I see a figure on the building opposite. It’s higher and next to it is the building Billy was pushed from. So, I’m automatically filled with a sense of dread.
“Who’s that?” Danny says. He turns to Bud. “I told you to have them guard the lobby, not the building.”
Bud cocks his head. “I told them to stay put. Let me go check.” He gets off my leg and just when I’m about to kick, he sticks a finger on the bloody hole in my thigh. I howl in pain. My body feels like it’s shutting down, overheating, overdrive, blown engine. My vision blacks out momentarily. He removes his sausage finger and my vision comes back. I try to move my leg much to the wound’s protest but can’t. Great. I’m strapped in again. Buckle up, keep your hands and feet inside the cart at all times, and most of all, enjoy Hell’s rollercoaster!
The whistle sounds once more. It’s high, shrill, almost shrieking. But I’m not imagining it.
Steph puts the thermometer back in her mouth, sucks on it nervously. She was definitely a smoker, I guarantee it.
“Are they — are they waving?” Danny asks.
“Yeah, they are,” Froggy answers.
Bud crosses the room toward the door and opens it.
I turn my eyes toward the silhouetted shadow. Yes, the person is waving. It just keeps getting weirder and —
“Gun!” Danny shouts. “Get down!” He drops to the floor, sending up crinkled, dead leaves. Froggy drops, too. I hear the the blade clatter off the table and land in dusty soil.
The thunderheads burst, except they don’t. The flash of lightning comes from the muzzle. I don’t even have time to close my eyes. The murky glass shatters. The sound is head-splitting. Steph jerks back. The damn thermometer is still in her mouth. Her hands shoot to her midsection. A spray of red goes out of her back, misting my bare feet in warmth. Now, I’m squirming again, trying to get free.
Gunshots. That was a gunshot and I’m a sitting duck, probably trapped in the middle of a war. I’m a casualty about to be crushed under the debris of a bombed building. The other guys don’t care about us civilians. They only care about winning.
Steph turns toward me. The front of her torso is drenched in blood. Both hands clamp the smoking bullet hole, white-knuckled. It’s as if she could squeeze the wound shut and it’ll go away. Her lips are puckered and between them is the thermometer. Eyes wide, bloodshot. She falls forward, dead or pretty damn close to it.
Timber!
Her head hits the edge of the table, half a foot away from my own face. When she hits, her neck snaps backward. I’m reminded of the Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots I had many years ago, or even Pez Dispensers. There’s a sickening rip, like the tearing of wet fabric as she hits. Another spray of blood. A peak of white bone on the bridge of her nose. The thermometer has gone through the roof of her mouth and out of her face, right between the eyes. She is frozen there on the edge of the table, the gray point sticking out like a blemish, red blood rivulets running from beneath her eyes like tears. Danny is screaming.
“Steph! Steph!”
Another whistle, then carried on the wind — deep, rumbling laughs. I look back toward the silhouette. I can see him now without the glass. It’s Jacob. Holy shit, it’s Jacob. He survived.
He throws me a salute, and takes aim with his rifle again, squinting one eye and crouching.
Danny crawls up from his prone position and takes Steph’s head in his hands. He shudders, but he doesn’t sob.
Another shot sounds. A crack of thunder. Danny convulses as the bullet takes him in the midsection. He drops from the table, still holding his sister. I hear a rattle from his throat, see a spurt of red from his mouth. He’s dead.
Thank God I’m being saved, but I’m still strapped to the table, still a sitting duck, and Jacob isn’t going to do much for me if the dead start flooding in.
“Stop!” Froggy shouts.
Fuck.
I feel his presence. He is below me, but his hand is above my middle and in it, is the big steak knife. “Put your weapon down, pal! Or I’m gonna pop Jack Jupiter like a fuckin balloon!”
I look toward Jacob. He pulls his head away from the scope, then starts to lower his weapon. “Okay!” he shouts back.
No, not okay. Jacob, what are you doing?
“Guess you’re not worth it, Jupiter,” Froggy whispers to me.
A muffled popping from below us creeps under the door. It sounds like muted fireworks and screaming. But these aren’t screams of joy. No, these are screams of pain and agony. Froggy’s head turns toward the sound. So do my eyes.
“No! No!” someone screams. I think it’s Bud, but I can’t tell for sure.
Three pops. Three bottle rockets. I think of Woodhaven, the roof and Freddy Huber. My stomach roils with fear. I don’t know who’s shooting who, and right now, my life depends on it.
A thud against the wall. A meaty thud.
Another pop. A spray of wood. The knife hovering above me disappears as Froggy prepares to defend himself. The door bursts open so hard, the hinges seem to bust off and the door knob rattles. Bud is still standing, he has a weapon in his hand. A one handed machine gun, something like an UZI.
Another pop.
Bud screams. He stiffens, goes rigid, and falls backward into the room. As he falls, he squeezes the trigger of his UZI and shots ripple upward, breaking wood and ceiling until he thumps hard onto the dirty floor. Shards of glass fall down on top of us like rain. I close my eyes. The bits bounce off of me.
“Don’t come in! I’ll kill him, I swear to God and all things holy I’ll kill the son of a bitch!” Froggy is saying.
Dimly, I’m aware of the knife pressing into my gut.
“I mean it, I’ll — ”
Two quick shots. The knife is gone. Froggy cries out, goes flying backward, scraping glass and crinkled leaves with his body.
Dead.
“Jesus, Jack,” Grady says, “cover yourself for Chrissakes!”
I’m beaming, smiling so wide, I must be all teeth. “Grady, holy shit, I’ve never been so happy to see you.”
He walks into the room, his head turned, not at the blood and gore, not at Danny who’s been shot and bled out all over the floor or Steph whose head has thermometer poking out from right between her eyes. None of that. He’s turned away from my bloody dick and balls. It’s a weird world we’re living in.
He undos the straps. It feels so good to not have anything holding me back. I sit up and pull my pants back on. I use both her and her brother as stepping stones as I get down walk over to my boots. I put them on, tie them tight. I think we’ll be doing a lot of running, but that’s okay. I take Dan’s belt and cinch it around the hole in my thigh. It hurts like hell, but I have to get it to stop bleeding.
“Hurry up,” Grady says. “There was more outside.”
“Zombies?” I say.
He nods his head. “Isn’t it always?”
“Thank you,” I say. I try not to show just how grateful I am. If I did that, I think I’d be on my knees, kissing his feet. I was so close to death and not even normal death — but cannibal death. They were going to eat my balls, man! My balls!
Grady looks at me, a smile on his face. “Don’t mention it.”
I’m thinking of Darlene and Abby and Norm and Herb, thinking about how I’ll never leave them ever again. Thinking, maybe I can’t save the world now anymore than I could’ve saved it before the zombies came. The only way to save some things is through destruction. Starting over. Maybe that’s what happened to the world before. Our society was broken and someone — God or the scientists at Leering outside of my hometown — thought it was time to hit the reset button. I realize too late that I am crying, tears are rolling from the corners of my eyes.
“Jack?” Grady says. He is reloading his AR15. “It’s okay, man. You’re safe.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s just…I’m happy to be alive. They killed Billy. This bastard right here.” I nudge Danny with the toe of my boot. “And that one over there, the one you shot last, is one of the cannibals that jumped my group and me on I-95.”
“You’re not very popular,” he says, grinning. The AR15 is loaded and he turns to the door. “But there’s at least one person who likes you in this city.” He waves to Jacob, Jacob waves back.
I walk over to Bud and take his UZI. It’s much heavier than I expected, a little bigger, too. Again, I’m going by video game experience, but I don’t think this will be a good weapon to fight zombies with. The range isn’t far enough and it’s too erratic. Oh well, it beats a steak knife.
Jacob whistles twice, both low and droning.
“Zombies,” Grady says. “Stay frosty.”
I turn and head toward the ruined door frame, ready to take out all of my pent-up aggressions on some dead motherfuckers.
Forty-Four
I’m halfway out of the greenhouse and in a shadowy stairwell when a voice says from behind me, “This isn’t over.” I turn back to see Froggy half-propped up on his elbows. Two red roses have blossomed on his chest and stomach and they’re are getting bigger and bigger. “I’m g-gonna haunt you, you p-piece of shit. You think this is over? I-It’s j-just starting.”
“Grady, hold on,” I say.
I have to finish this.
He doesn’t say anything back, but in the faint light streaming in I see understanding in his eyes.
“Yeah? Haunt me?” I ask. I walk right up to him, trying not to show the limp in my strides.
“Yeah,” he answers. “Even as we speak, they’re coming for you. C-Comin for all of you and that little village and your girls.” He smiles with teeth stained red. His eyes are dark and hollow. “If I don’t c-come back, that village is fucked.”
“Then,” I say, raising the UZI up to his face, “I’ll just kill them again because I’m not making the same mistake twice.” He’s smiling wider. He doesn’t think I can kill him because I didn’t do it the first time. But I’m done being nice, I’m done leaving loose ends. I have a family to protect. I have a village to defend. I have a life to live. Besides, I can always tell when someone’s bluffing.
Through that devious smile Froggy starts to say, “We’ll see ab — ” I don’t let him finish the thought because I do what I should’ve done the first time. I squeeze the trigger. It’s sensitive, but I’m able to let go before I waste the whole clip. A barrage of shots take him in the face, turning his smile into a bloody pulp. Not only do I see the light go out from his eyes, but I see the eyes go out from his face. It’s gruesome and dark.
It’s not me.
Or is it?
He made me do it. If he would’ve never came back for me, would’ve never grouped up with the D.C. cannibals then he might’ve been able to live out the rest of his miserable life.
I stand up, thinking of Darlene, thinking of what Froggy had said to me: I’m gonna find that pretty blonde bitch with the nice tits and pass her around and gut her when I’m all done. No man or woman would ever get away with saying that about Darlene. I did what I had to do.
I give Froggy one last look and wipe his blood from my face.
“Geez,” Grady says.
“Don’t,” I say. “It wasn’t as bad as I wanted to do to him. Plus, he wanted to die. I could see it in his eyes.”
Grady nods. “Let’s just not tell anyone about this when we get back home.”
I agree.
We head to the stairwell.
The rampant sounds of the dead are already revving up. The gunshots and breaking glass and whistles probably had a lot to do with that, not to mention the city was already swamped with dead to begin with. As we make our way down the stairs, I see bodies and brains and shadowy blood stains. “Let’s not talk about this, either, ” I say to Grady, motioning to the destruction.
“Wasn’t me,” he says, laughing. Then, after a moment, he says, “Yeah, let’s not tell anyone about this, either,” in a serious voice.
We get into the lobby. There are three bodies on the floor. Near one of them is an M16, probably my M16. In the corpse’s belt is my SIG. I check the ammo. Almost full — good. From the lobby, I can see the street. Thankfully, I can’t see the alleyway Billy and I ran to because it’s the alleyway that wound up being his cemetery. That is, if there’s anything left of him. But with the street, I can see the dead. There are more of them than I expected. Much more than we can handle.
“Shit,” Grady says.
The lead zombies are a man in construction gear, jumpsuit, yellow hard hat, tool belt, and a woman with dreads and a tattoo on her sallow face. Her nose piercing gleams in the dying sunlight. There’s blood in her hair. I shudder…as if white-people dreads weren’t already terrifying enough. As she gets closer I see the tattoo is a crescent moon over her eyebrow, or at least it was. Half of her forehead has peeled off, the skin flapping with every shuffled step. And each time she moves with the jerky movement so common with zombies, yellowish-white bone shows through.
“What’s the plan?” Grady asks.
“Me?” I say, incredulous. “I thought you knew what we were doing.”
“Dude, I don’t know anything,” he says. “All these zombies wouldn’t be in my plan.”
“Well, what did you think would happen when we lit up that greenhouse like it was the Fourth of July?”
He shrugs.
Oh, c’mon, Grady.
The lobby’s facade is virtually all glass. Most of the windows and doors have been boarded up with thin plywood but not all. It’s maybe enough to stop a few dead, just not enough for this army coming toward us. Two pieces have already fallen over. I guess you can’t trust canni
bals to do anything right.
I switch the M16 to full auto, feeling a weird mixture of fear and excitement. “Okay,” I say, “here’s the plan: We kick some zombie ass.”
Grady looks into my eyes, snarls, and says, “That’s a good plan.” He releases the AR-15’s clip or magazine (I’m not sure what you call it) and let’s it clatter to the floor, barely audible over the groans and moans of the dead.
“It’s the best we can do,” I say.
Grady dips into his vest and pulls two more magazines out. He tosses them to me. “Found these on my way up here. You’ll need ‘em.”
The tension in my chest eases. I wasn’t sure how many shots I had left, now I’m set.
“That’s good for about forty shots, give or take. I’d say use them wisely, but fuck it, Jack. Let’s get out of here.”
“Where?” I ask. “The hospital?”
He shakes his head, smiling slightly. I flick my gaze over his shoulder to the zombies. Construction Hat is coming up the steps toward the lobby doors. Dreadlocks isn’t far behind. And behind them are scores more, their faces blending together. Rotting skin hanging off the bone. Blood-stained. Walking with crooked legs and arms outward. They look extra hungry, maybe extra-pissed, too, after missing out on Billy. “We got what we could from the hospital,” Grady says. “Not much, but enough to last us until next winter. And we saw someone, Jack.”
“Who?” I ask, but the question isn’t answered.
Construction Hat clinks his head against the glass. His yellow eyes glow like headlights in the dusk. He claws the door, leaving streaks of blood and black muck.
“Ready?” he asks, ignoring my question.
I get it, now’s not the time and all, but I say, “Ready,” anyway. “We make a run for it. Kill as many as we can.”
Grady nods, raises his pistol out of the holster and pulls the trigger. The glass shatters, the top half glittering with red and white brains. Construction Hat takes the bullet in the face, and with the bullet goes a chunk of his cheek. I’m reminded of Spike after I shot him. The zombie drops to its knees and falls forward.
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