by Jack Stewart
I must have passed out for a good long while since when I woke, it was silent and still around the dumpster. Silent as a grave you might say were you the literary type. But since you are currently busy reading a zombie story, I am going to doubt that.
The shirt had clotted full of dried blood over the glass cut and rebar hole. I slowly peeled it off the glass wound hoping not to tear off the scab. I left the rebar wound alone. I managed to remove the shirt without opening the wound then felt over my body to see if anything else was broke. I was sore and stiff but apparently the trash that had broken my fall had also prevented me from breaking anything important. I stood up feeling my two wounds throb but my legs held me up as I slowly moved across the rubble pile to the edge of the dumpster to the handholds welded into the side. I slowly climbed up one rung to the next thinking each time my leg would give out and down I’d go, but they held so, as bad as the wounds looked, they must not have done serious muscle damage.
At the top of the dumpster, I carefully cracked the lid of the trash bin open and looked around. The sun was setting in the west and around me were ten or more of the dead shuffling aimlessly back and forth. The sprinters, the ones with the weird radar in their heads were nowhere to be seen. The ones that had been trying so desperately to get in earlier must have found another, more accessible victim to go after. I silently closed the lid and lay back in the trash trying to plan my next move. I would stay here until the area had cleared out. There was no way I was getting out until the street was completely empty.
Not a good plan. The dead came and went in waves. Sometimes there was just a few, sometimes there were hundreds so the problem with my plan was that in a city of millions and most of them walking around dead and all, the streets were never likely to be empty. But I’m a kid. My brain’s not fully formed nor is it good at thinking things all the way through so give me a break, all right?
So I waited. And waited. And waited. Then I had to pee. Fuck.
The dumpster was really big, like twenty feet long so I gingerly crawled over the metal scraps, pieces of wood, and broken glass trying not to fall on my wounds. I found a relatively clear spot, hitched up my skirt, pulled down my panties, and let that piss just fly. You’d think I had just come off of a beer bender I peed so long. In my “before” life I would never have dreamed about peeing in public let alone a dumpster! “What if somebody came by and opened the lid?” I would have said, “what if someone sees my pee?” I would have protested. But I was adjusting to the new reality and in my “after” life no one would care about a puddle of piss in a dumpster.
After a few blissful minutes of christening my new toilet, I finished, hitched up my clothes and crawled back over to the other side of the dumpster. Mission accomplished. Exhausted and bruised, I fell asleep and woke up late the next afternoon to the blazing heat of a California summer and so hungry I could eat the dead…ha, ha. More zombie humor. But worse, as the heat baked me into a puddle of sweat, I began to get thirsty. I knew that I wasn’t going to be hanging out in this dumpster for very long unless I wanted to die of thirst so I climbed up the side rungs of the wall and peeked out into the street.
Dead folks to the left of me and dead folks to the right. The dumpster I was in had been placed in a wide alley between two apartment buildings so at least they were just to the left and right of me and not in front and behind as well. I quietly set the heavy steel lid down, climbed back to the bottom, and sat on top of the rubble. I was going to have to make a break for it. But to where?
I thought it over for about a half an hour then climbed up the ladder to have another look. Fewer dead to the right than to the left and across the street to my right was a chain link fence that barricaded off a construction site where they had been building the city’s longest apartment complex and social center ever. They called it “The Wall.” If I could get past the few walkers and up over the chain link fence, I could get into the construction site. But then what? Well I didn’t have a fucking clue.
The police station! Of course. If anyone was still alive, I mean not technically dead, I mean…whatever, you know what I mean…it would be there. The police station was just a few miles over to the north. Maybe five. Or more. I don’t know but I was headed there just the same! Besides, I didn’t have a better idea. I could get most of the way there through the construction site. But I would need a weapon, just in case. I looked around the dumpster in the pale light looking for something that could easily bash in the head of anyone looking to take a bite out of me. The selections was rather limited: two by fours, metal rebar, a few lengths of PVC pipe. Then I spotted a three foot length of steel pipe about three inches thick that looked like it would do the trick. I pulled the pipe from the rubble and swung it about. It would do nicely.
I climbed to the top of the dumpster now armed with my pipe and pushed back the lid. It rolled silently to one side and I poked my head over the top. To my right, four dead stiffs shuffled back and forth between the walls of the alley like Pong players. To my left, the nearest dead were a good twenty yards away. I slipped my legs over the edge wincing in pain and hitching my skirt up to my thighs giving anyone who cared a good long look at my ass. Maybe wearing a skirt to the Apocalypse wasn’t such a good idea. Too late to change now.
As it were the dead did not care. I carefully climbed down the side of the dumpster and stepped down onto the asphalt of the alley moving right and facing the four dead shufflers in front of me. Glancing back over my shoulder, I could see that I had not attracted the attention of the shufflers on the other side of the alley. Then the adrenaline kicked in, the pain faded, and I burst into a sprint headed right towards the nearest dead; an older gentleman of good taste and upbringing if the remains of his suit were of any indication. He still wore his wire rimmed glasses. I briefly wondered how they had stayed on through all of his “being eaten and then eating” frenzy that followed. I made it to within three feet of him before he noticed that something was amiss. He looked comically startled as he spotted me and raised a finger as if to ask me a question just as I swung the pipe and connected with his forehead. His head snapped back as his glasses and his head parted ways at last. The pipe sunk in nearly three inches shattering his skull and driving all those long, sharp bone fragments deep into his brain. He dropped like, well, like the dead, and hit the ground with a mild thump. The other three dead looked up as their buddy fell to his eternal rest but I did not hesitate. I swung the pipe back up and to my right connecting with the temple of a lady with most of her lower face gone. She dropped to the ground and joined her friend as I swung the pipe back towards the next nearest walking corpse connecting a little low and hitting the thing in the throat. The pipe bounced back with the recoil and I lined up my next swing in an overhead arc crashing down on the top of the thing’s head and crushing its skull cap deep into its brainpan. The fourth one had now…um…come to life? Sprang into action? Whatever. The thing noticed that a fresh meal was nearby and had closed the distance between himself and me so I stepped back and placed my foot deep into his stomach. He doubled over with the force and released a long, gassy burp as my ever so cool, Steve Madden retro city combat boot sunk into his soft, rotted belly. Yuck.
Before he could recover, I had spun around and swung that pipe over my head in a high arc bringing it down onto the back of his skull hitting it so hard the force of the connection vibrated up my arms and sent the back of his skull caving inward nearly six inches. I pulled the pipe from his brain pan with a small thwacking sound as he joined the others on the ground in a heap. I stood stock still for a second, then slowly looked around to see if my activities had attracted the notice of the other shufflers: they had not. All was quiet and serene in the City of the Dead.
I walked to the edge of the alley and poked my head around the corner. Again, a few dead wandering about the streets but no hordes and no sprinters. I took off as fast as I could towards the chain link fence of the construction site and tossed my pipe over the fence as I launched mys
elf up and over the top. I landed in the dirt lot with a thud, stumbled, regained my feet and my pipe without missing a beat, and sprinted towards the construction site’s office trailer without looking back.
I slid under the trailer, crawled under the stairs, and froze scanning the area and listening for anything that might be crawling towards me. As my eyes adjusted to the shadows I could see the area under the trailer was clear of all things living and dead. In fact, I could see across the entire construction site through the skeletal frame of the building they had been putting up when the Event kicked off. They must have closed the site and sent everyone home because in the entire four blocks the site spread across, I could not see a single stiff shuffling about. On the other side of the fenced in boundary, however was a damned different story.
To the east and south, dozens of the dead shuffled back and forth along the edge of the fence wandering around looking for their next meal. There were fewer to the north and from the direction I had just came and to my great relief, none of them seemed to have noticed my mad dash across the construction site. The construction fence might keep out the shufflers as they wandered about, but it would probably topple over if a few hundred of them got it in their head that a fresh and tasty evening snack was hiding under the construction office.
I stayed under there for a good half an hour watching as the sun slipped down the sky and the dead drifted round and round. It was going to be dark soon and there was no way in hell I was sleeping under the trailer, essentially out in the open for the night. It looked like the only shelter to be had was the office I was currently hiding under and it was most likely locked. It wouldn’t do me any good to break down the door or smash out one of the windows. That would leave me just as exposed as I was under the trailer. I didn’t see that I had much choice. I’d just have try all the windows and door and figure out what to do if they were locked. And just as I was about to slip out and start, the smell hit me.
Warm, moist, and thick, a wall of rot rolled out of the south like a…well…living thing? A dead thing? Whatever. The stench was overpowering and I pulled my tank top up over my nose trying not to gag. A few minutes later, first starting low and far off, then increasingly louder every second, came the moans, farting, burping, and grunting of a whole horde of dead as they closed in on the site. Then I saw them (hello, dead!). They poured in from every street from the south, then the east and west quickly surrounding the construction site. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them all heading north, shuffling along towards what I could not even guess like some sort of Dead Pride Parade. If there was one sprinter among the mass, I was dead meat. Well, living meat that was about to become dead. You know what I mean. It would zero in on me in a second and then the whole fucking circus would be on me like fat kids on cake. Or Slim Jims. Or a buffet. Take your pick.
I froze and tried to make myself as small as possible watching them pass by, waiting for the scream of rage that would let me know I was a goner. But the scream never came and after about an hour, the parade of dead tapered off, then vanished completely with not a single one having spotted me in my hiding place. Lucky me.
The sun had since moved behind the buildings to the west casting the entire site in deep shadows. Well it was now or never, I thought as I crawled out from under the trailer and quickly made my way up the stairs to the door of the construction office. I stood in front of the door looking at the silver handle thinking it would be locked. Knowing I would pull down on it and it would stay firmly in place. I’d have to crawl back under the trailer and wait out the night there exposed and vulnerable to any sprinter that just happened by.
I grabbed the cool, smooth metal surface of the handle and pulled down, so sure that it was locked that I stood there for a moment dumfounded as the handle swung easily down and the door opened. I might have stood there a good while longer with my gob hanging open but the far off scream of a sprinter let me know that first, it had found a new victim whose life was about to end and second, I needed to get my ass indoors and sealed up for the night. I quickly slipped inside, closed the door behind me, and locked it tight.
I looked around the trailer: everything was neat and tidy having been closed up at the beginning of the Event waiting for the crews, bosses, and managers to come back and finish the building they had started. They’d never be back, at least not in my lifetime. This neat and orderly trailer represented the last thing most of them would ever do, the last actions of a dead world. Other than running, screaming, being eaten, and dying that is. Oh, and then reanimating, running, screaming, eating, and decaying.
But I digress.
I looked around the place checking for any uninvited guests. Uninvited guest you ask? Ugh, really? And by uninvited guests, I mean the dead. Come on, folks, get with the program., You can only say “zombie” or “walking dead” so many times before you get sick of it so I have to throw in some clever euphemisms to mix it up a bit so pay attention, Pole Queen. Geez.
Once I had made sure that I was alone, I headed into the bathroom and flipped on the light switch. The industrial fan above came on with a loud clatter as I carefully peeled off my blood soaked shirt and cleaned up my wounds as best I could. They looked nasty and I could feel my gore rise but they had sealed up and did not seem to be bleeding even after my running around like a mad…man? Chica? Girl? Whatever. I looked around the office and found a shirt someone had left behind. I hoped it was clean and tore it into a new set of bandages for my injuries, tied them up, and called it good.
I walked to the back of the trailer and through a door marked “Site Manager.” It had a water cooler, a small fridge, and a couch. I went in, locked the door behind me, and chugged down as much water as I could then popped open the fridge. The power had not yet gone off in most of the city and the fridge still had a stash of deli food (bologna and salami to be exact), bread, and mayonnaise. Mmm, mayonnaise. Elixir of life my friend.
I quickly gobbled down a sandwich, followed by chips, and a coke. If people tasted like bologna sandwiches, I could see why the dead were so damn excited to eat them. I dropped my tired body down on the large couch and let loose with a long satisfied burp. In the corner was a coat rack that the site manager had hung his large winter coat on. I pulled it down and bunched it up into a pillow and stuck it under my head. The wind picked up as I drifted off and gently rocked the trailer back and forth lulling me into a deep, dreamless sleep as the sound of sirens, gun shots, machine-gun chatter, and screams drifted across the city punctuated every now and again by an explosion. My mom was dead, my dad was dead, the city was dead. Maybe I’d be dead soon, too. In the meantime, shit was going down, my friend, shit was going down.
The trailer wouldn’t work as a long term shelter. Too bad, I thought, but the walls were thin and with enough of the dead trying to get in, they would eventually succeed. It would have to do for tonight though. So I slept through the long night of chaos and death when sometime around two in the morning, the power went off in Los Angeles for good.
ɸ
I woke up with a start the next morning with something bumping up against the side of the trailer. Then another something. Then three somethings.
Shit.
I got up from the couch and opened the door into the outer area of the trailer. The sun was just coming in from the east and cast a pale light through the partially closed blinds. I stood stock still waiting for the bumping noise again hoping it might have been my imagination.
Bump.
Followed a few seconds later by a bump, bump.
Then by a bump, bump, bump.
Followed by the shadow from the top of a head passing just above the widows to my right.
Fuck.
I crept closer to the east window and peeked out between the blinds: seven walkers were moving around the edge of the trailer.
Double fuck.
Not too bad, though. I could dodge a few of those things and make a break for it. I crept to the left side of the trailer, carefully peeked out throu
gh the blinds, and saw a whole fucking orchestra of walkers milling about the construction yard. Or maybe a really big marching band. Or maybe a…well, concert of some type. Whatever. There was a whole fucking bunch of them out there. Way more than I could dodge or break through. I peered over the heads of the locals and could see that the south fence had been knocked over during the night letting in the strays.
Triple fuck.
And now that I was fully awake, I could smell them. Stinky, rotten, gassy, and meaty all at once. I swore I’d never eat meat again right there on the spot until I realized that fresh veggies might be hard to come by in the near future. Well, I’d limit myself to spam and other unmeaty foods like processed meat products and Velveeta cheese. Maybe tuna and cured bologna (if that even existed). Beef jerky, too. Definitely hot dogs. No more steak Tartar though.
In Soviet Russia, you eat steak Tartar. In the Great Wreck, steak Tartar eats you. Ha, ha. No more eggs for that matter either. God, the stink!
I shuddered thinking what might have happened had the trailer door been locked and I had been forced to sleep under the trailer last night. Well, I guess I’d be one of them now and wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. That thought brought me a cold sense of comfort as I crept back away from the window and back into the office. It was clear that the morons shuffling about outside didn’t know I was here but it would only take a small noise from me to alert the general population to the fact that they had spam in a can just a few short feet away. Or maybe a pressed ham. Bologna in a box? Sealed sausage in a sack? Boiled beef in a bag? Or a can of Vienna sausages (does anyone actually eat those things?). I giggled and thought I was definitely losing it.
I sat on the couch thinking about an exit plan and came up with nothing. If I set foot out that door, I’d have the whole bunch on me. If I waited in here, it was only a matter of time before I made some noise that let them know I was here or before a sprinter happened by and locked in on me. And I had to pee again.
