by Sikes, AJ
“Yeah, I’m done with the Corps, man. You eat the apple, but fu—”
A car swerved out of an alley up ahead and came roaring down the street past them. Jed and Chips had to jump to the side to avoid getting run down.
“Crazy motherfucker!” Jed hollered after the car as it sped away.
Chips shook his head and tapped Jed on the shoulder. “Let’s go, man. We still got about a mile to home.”
Jed did a quick sprint to get back into rhythm before he settled down to a steady pace. Chips was right alongside him, and for a second Jed thought his homie would hit him with questions again, but Chips stayed quiet. Jed was grateful, both for being let off the hook about his past and for the chance to just think about what the hell he was doing with his life now.
The Corps didn’t want him, so they sent him back to Georgia. And all Georgia had was crystal and cotton to offer. Jed got in with a guy who sold to the high school kids. He made a few bills every week. Then he got rolled for his wad.
Then Jed did a short trip inside on a possession charge. Jed got lucky they didn’t slam him for intent to sell to minors.
The fuck didn’t Jed do? Jed didn’t get his shit together, that’s what.
Fucking parole officer hounding him every week, sometimes every day. Making Jed score for him so he could resell the gear to pay for his girlfriend’s apartment. Did he let Jed touch it ever? Even a little?
Nope.
And then the parole officer started coming around every day. Jed’s mom decided she didn’t want him either. So she sent him up to his grandma’s in New York.
Go on back to New York. Go back to where you really come from.
He’d lived with his grandma in high school, and she still had his room set up the way he’d left it. He was out of the suck, out of Georgia. And out of options.
On cue, Chips fired up the question engine again, like he was reading Jed’s damn mind.
“So that’s it, man, huh? You just out?”
“Yeah,” he said to Chips as they ran. “I’m out, man. Out for good.”
“What happened? They find out you just a punk from the block?”
Jed swallowed hard and kept his hands loose. The urge to ball his fists and rock Chips’s world flamed fierce in his chest, but he fought it down and stayed cool. He needed his homie now more than ever. If it meant taking a few shots Chips didn’t know he was giving, so be it.
They ran a little ways more and the city’s silence hung over them like a cloud. In the weird quiet, Jed found his voice.
“I got hit.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Chips said. His voice was all calm and casual, like he figured Jed was joking. “Where? How’d it go down?”
Jed was ready for that one. He’d practiced this part of the story. Every night in his head before he went to sleep in his cell. On the plane, too. The one that carried him home with his bad conduct discharge papers in his pocket.
“We were doing this patrol, you know? Fucking Al-Qaeda don’t play games. We lost half our guys. Got all split up and crazy. Then it’s just me and this kid from some flyover state. Farm boy. He’s pissing in his clothes, right? Like he’s gonna start crying for momma. And I can see the LT. The lieutenant, you—”
“I know what a LT is, homie,” Chips said. Jed looked at him, thinking maybe he’d played it wrong, but Chips was staring straight ahead, pumping his arms and running, with his face all slack, like he was someplace else inside his mind.
“Yeah. So the LT is on the ground out there. He’s holding his stomach. I see his guts hanging out. But he’s moving. Farm boy, he’s fucking useless. So it’s on me. I crawl out and the bullets keep coming. But they miss me, man.”
“They missing you,” Chips said, like it was a church sermon Jed was giving and Chips was repeating all the holy parts.
“Yeah. They miss me. Then I get to the LT, and he’s shot bad. Stomach all torn up. But I pull him out of there. Bullets still coming in. Still missing me. Then I have to get up on my knees. I drag the LT around the corner. Right when I do that, I feel it.”
The city was still silent, and Jed felt something tug inside his mind. There should be a lot more cars on the road, trucks and busses. People everywhere. It wasn’t that late in the morning, but it was late enough.
But New York City wasn’t screaming and roaring like the monster Jed knew it was.
“Yo, Chips. You think maybe something’s going down? Shit’s all quiet, man.”
Chips just stared at the road ahead, off in some world Jed could only imagine.
The hell’s going on? Why’s it so quiet?
“You feel it,” Chips said, shaking Jed out of his thoughts. “What it’s like, homie? Getting shot? What it’s like?”
“You ain’t been shot yet?” Jed asked, surprised. The way Chips and his brothers used to run before Jed enlisted, he figured the guy would have taken some lead by now.
Chips still wasn’t saying anything, just running and staring at the city in front of him. Jed thought he should ask again, but decided to keep on with his story. The city was still weirdly quiet, but it had given Jed just the thing he was looking for: a place to stop running and maybe even pick up something to take the edge off of his day.
“Yo, let’s hold up here, at the corner store. I’ll show you.”
They brought their run down to a trot and paced around the sidewalk in front of the store.
“We should pick up a couple bottles. Some fortified sound good to you?” Jed asked.
Chips shook his head and leaned down, resting his hands on his knees. “Nah, homie. I’m off that shit. Only drink mezcal now. But I thought you gonna show me where you got shot. Let’s see it, Jarhead Jed.”
Jed sniffed and resisted the urge to clock his friend right there. If he was going to make it with Chips and his crew, Jed had to get his cred. So he pulled his shirt up until he revealed a quarter-sized scar over his ribs on his left side.
“Right there, yo,” he said.
Chips leaned in to look at it and his eyes bugged out a little. Then Chips laughed and slapped Jed on the shoulder.
“Amigo! You hard, man. You hard!”
Jed dropped his shirt and said he had to take a piss.
“Bet they let you use it inside,” Chips said, aiming a thumb at the corner store. “Dude who runs this place used to be in the army. Went to Panama. He hook you up, I bet.”
They went to the tinted glass door and pushed it open, but it stopped against something. Jed gave it a shove and the door slid farther in, and Jed felt something heavy sliding behind it. The place was a wreck, like straight out of some zombie movie. Blood stains covered everything, and the shelves were ate up like hell.
“The fuck happened here?” Chips asked.
The cash register was on its side behind the bullet-proof glass at the counter. Coins spilled all over the place back there. A blood stained dollar bill flapped in the breeze of a little electric fan that sat next to a stack of porno mags behind the glass.
Jed looked down at the floor, behind the door they’d shoved open. That’s when he saw the first zombie. Except it wasn’t like the kind in the movies. He wasn’t sure it was even a zombie at all. It looked more like a monster.
The skin was all white and gross, and the veins bulged out around the muscles. The face was ripped up and bloody, like it had been blasted by a shotgun. But the mouth was visible. It was different, like a circle of raw puffy pale flesh. And instead of teeth, it had little needles, like spines.
Chips came around Jed’s left shoulder and looked down at the thing. “The fuck is that? Shit, homie, we gotta go. We—”
Before Chips could finish, a groan echoed out from the back of the store. Jed went still, and felt ice run through his veins.
“Let’s go,” he said, tugging on Chips’s shoulder. His friend didn’t waste a breath. Chips whipped around behind Jed and was out the door running. Another groan came from the back of the store and then a shriek ripped through the air. Jed fe
lt warm piss run down his leg as he sped out of the store, running for his life.
— 3 —
South Jamaica, Queens
Meg heard a horrific clicking and popping sound in the hallway outside the bathroom door. Then more shrieking in short, sharp bursts. Then silence.
Meg closed her eyes.
You don’t run from a fire. You run into the fire.
She should go out and help Tim, and the infected man. But she didn’t know what they would do to her.
Oh God, Tim’s infected!
Would Tim kill the other man? Or would they both come after her? The newspaper said—
Meg felt her legs go weak at the thought. But she had to keep the door closed tight. If it had only been Tim who was infected, maybe she could have helped him. She could restrain him, get him to the hospital. But with two infected people outside the door—and if what the newspapers had said was true…
Get Tim. Get him restrained. Get him to the hospital.
“You’re okay, Meg. We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”
But how? How do I get out of here and how do I get to Tim?
Meg kept whispering to herself, listening for movement in the hall. She heard a scratching sound, then a scraping, like when Biggins sharpened his claws on the wood floor. But this was louder. Much louder, and longer.
Another shriek cut the air, followed by the sound of splintering wood again. Howls and screams cascaded through the house, but quickly grew quiet.
They’re gone. They left the house.
But she couldn’t be sure. If they were still inside and she went out there, she could be infected. Or killed. She had to isolate herself from the pathogen if she was going to be any help.
Tim’s face came to her then, like the image of a terrified child. She’d pulled a little boy from a burning house once and he’d looked the same way when she told him it would be all right. He’d been frozen with fear, curled up under his bed. But he came out, shaking and sobbing.
She’d had to chop through a wall to get to him—
“I’m going to get us out of here, Tim. Wherever you are, I’m coming.”
Meg waited, listening for sounds of movement in the house. A floorboard creaked. Something scraped, like knives on glass. Another shriek came then, and Meg tensed, waiting for the scraping and clawing sounds to get closer.
But they didn’t. If Meg’s ears could be trusted, whoever or whatever had come inside, they were leaving the house again. A shriek came, and she heard a rapid scrabbling, like the cat racing for the dinner bowl at mealtime. The scraping and clawing sounds faded away after a bit, leaving Meg tense in the dark and tiny sanctuary of the bathroom.
Quiet seconds passed with Meg calming her breathing until she heard more screams and howls from outside.
After a few more breaths, Meg released her legs from holding the door closed. She settled back against the vanity. In a quick motion, Meg turned, climbed onto the vanity, and put a foot on either side of the sink. She reached for the ceiling fan cover and worked it loose. It came free, but slipped from her fingers and clattered on the floor.
Waiting to ensure no other sounds came from inside the house, Meg gripped the drywall next to the ceiling fan and yanked hard. A piece of it came away, showering dust and tufts of pink insulation onto her head. Meg turned her face down just in time to avoid a mouthful of the debris.
Ignoring the fear in her gut that told her she would be heard, Meg kept at it. She yanked another chunk off the ceiling and then another, dropping the pieces now as fast as she could, and doing her best to let the insulation fall on the outside of her shirt. She felt the sting of the fiberglass against her skin, but most of it landed in her hair or tumbled off her shoulders.
Finally she had a hole big enough to climb through. But she still had to push aside the plywood boards they used to create a floor in the attic. Meg hoped she hadn’t dug her escape route under the heaviest boxes up there, or this would be the shortest exit strategy ever.
Working one hand into the narrow gap between the pieces of plywood, Meg wrapped her fingers over the rafter beside the ceiling fan. Making sure she had a good hold, Meg hoisted herself with the hand on the rafter and pushed against the board with her free hand. It moved only a little and dropped back down just as fast.
Shit.
She had found the heaviest boxes after all. But the board moved, so she could get out if she worked at it.
“Nothing’s going to slow you down,” Meg’s grandmother said in her mind. The mantra kept her going during Ironman races, and she forced herself to chant it under her breath now.
“Nothing’s going to slow you down, Meg. Nothing.”
She hoisted herself once more and pushed again. The board moved and slammed back down. She did it again, pushing up and then flexing her wrist to the side when she was at the peak of her reach.
The board slammed down, but it had shifted. Meg kept it up. Hoist, push, flex. Hoist, push, flex. Each time the board came back down, Meg worried she wouldn’t be able to get it to move again. But it did move, until she finally had a good six-inch gap between it and the next board.
With a grunt, Meg used all her strength to shove the board aside. It moved slowly, inch by painful inch. Her shoulder was on fire from the strain of holding herself up with just the tips of her toes on the vanity. The board slid to the side, and then she felt the weight shift suddenly, followed by a heavy thud on the ceiling beside her.
A scrabbling sound came to her ears from somewhere in the house. Had they heard her? Were they coming back?
Meg listened. The scraping sounds came through the walls, and a kind of popping or clicking, like a ratchet slowly rotating. The gap above her head wasn’t big enough to get through yet. She lifted up, on her toes, and gave another shove against the board. It moved aside and she could see a thin line of light against the inside of the attic roof.
Meg climbed up into the close, dark space with only slivers of light creeping in from the one small window at the end of the attic. They had so many boxes up here it was a wonder any light got in at all. Meg slid her escape hatch closed behind her and replaced the heavy boxes on top of it.
When she looked around her hiding place, Meg’s heart sank.
What have I done? I haven’t helped anyone but myself.
“Oh, Tim,” Meg said, worried now that her husband might be losing his sanity. If the virus acted as fast as she’d seen, what would be left of him even if they did get to a hospital? His brain could boil away from fever before—
“Someone will come,” she said, forcing calm into her chest. “Help is on the way. It has to be.”
Meg’s breathing slowed, but she still felt guilty that she wasn’t out there bringing that help where it was needed right now. There had to be people who needed medical attention. Emergency crews would—
Why haven’t they called me yet?
Her fear magnified until it felt like she would suffocate under it, trapped in the attic and with no one to call or any way to get out. Meg practiced her breathing exercises, relaxing her chest and abdomen, letting the tension out of her shoulders and arms.
A scraping along the roof shook Meg from her calm. Then a ghastly shriek sounded out and was answered by more calls from nearby. Including one inside the house, under her feet. She felt it move, whatever it was, scampering away from her and going into the bedroom below. Then she heard the shattering of glass and more screams from outside the house.
Meg flinched with every sound that reached her ears. Even the tiniest creak set her off, fighting down the urge to panic. She shook her head to clear her vision as the room went dim around her. Meg blinked and turned, slowly, to look down the length of the attic space.
Even with the boxes in the way, Meg couldn’t help but see the dark shape moving outside the window.
But that means they’re on the wall outside. They can climb walls!
Tim’s voice came through the boards beneath her.
“Mee-eg. Help m
ee-e. Hel—”
He coughed and Meg heard retching sounds below. Another voice was added to his. Then someone screamed in agony and Meg heard gunshots as the snarling and shrieking sounds moved through the house and toward the front door.
“Tim!” she yelled, dashing on her hands and knees, following the sound beneath her toward the end of the attic. But it was too late. Meg could see him outside now, through the attic window. Tim raced across their front lawn with another infected person.
They moved in a crouch, on all fours, and their arms and legs seemed to have extra joints in them, almost whirling in their motion as Tim and the other one galloped across the lawn. They darted side to side in a zig zag as they chased a police officer who had her gun out. The woman screamed and fired behind her as she ran.
Meg cried out when Tim tackled the officer and latched his mouth onto her neck. Blood sprayed out onto the street and the other infected person raced up to join Tim as they—
Oh, God. They’re…they’re feeding.
— 4 —
Elmhurst, Queens
Jed caught up to Chips at the next block. Together, they raced away from the screams and shrieks that split the quiet air around the neighborhood. They juked through alleyways and down streets choked with cars stopped in the middle of the road. He spotted a couple nice rides all the way up on the sidewalk, like they’d been crashed there.
“Chips, we should grab one of these rides man.”
“I ain’t stopping for shit. Just keep running.”
Jed kept pace with his friend. Two blocks along, he was about to argue about getting a car again when Chips split off the street and dashed into the side yard of a boarded up house.
“Yo, where you going?” Jed yelled, chasing after him.
Chips didn’t say anything, just sped off around the back of the house. Jed followed and rounded the corner just as Chips was lifting a board away from a basement window.
“C’mon,” Chips said. “This another stash house. We can hide out.”
Jed came up beside Chips and helped move the thick plywood out of the way. A rope that was dangling from one corner of the board kept getting tangled around Jed’s arms. He had to swat it aside twice before he could get a grip on the board. He nearly lost it when an animal shriek sounded from a few yards over.
