“Sorry about that.”
“I like you, Sam. I can just see something so kind and different about you. And that’s a really good thing.” Her tone was somber, and there was a lot behind it. All the world had gone to shit, and we were standing here awkwardly in the bathroom while I shook drops of pee off of my penis.
It felt like the best moment I’d ever had.
Chapter 9: Then
The dead zombie in my attic was so beautiful, even in death. Why couldn’t this be some kind of Amazon Women on the Moon nymphomaniacal lust plague?
I heard the thwupping of an aircraft outside my window. I looked, and there it was—a big police helicopter hovering over the burning Sunoco station. There were bare tree tops between me and the chopper, and I knew it would never hear or see me. I didn’t even bother to yell. And soon it was gone, fwup fwup fwupping into the distance.
I saw a couple zombies wander out of my living room window, the light from my house casting shadows on the road in front of them. Then I saw a huge fat woman I knew trundle out of the shadows and head across my lawn with a comical zombie waddle, going right for my living room. Her name was Cindy Brodman, and she wore tight spandex leggings and had a bloody cheek and mouth. She lived two doors down from my house, used to work at the Kwik Fill station across from the Sunoco, and I’d slept with her one pathetic night a few months ago.
I’d gotten drunk and walked down to Kwik Fill just before closing time to buy more beer. Cindy was my students’ age and recognized me as her neighbor, then asked if I wanted to get drunk together. She had a pretty face, intense eyes, and I was feeling unusually sociable from the beer, so agreed to go to her house. She changed out of her work clothes into a dress that showed her voluptuous cleavage to me. We drank and talked and laughed about life, and how terrible humans in general are at her job and mine, and I truly enjoyed her company.
Her cleavage called to me the whole time, until eventually we wound up naked. I don’t remember who made the first move, but I remember the discomfort I felt when she took her dress off and the folds of her spilled out in rolls. Her body didn’t appear human, really. I’d never seen a fat person naked. I tried it with the lights on at first, but kept going soft. She then turned the lights off, as if she knew intuitively what was happening. That was better. Then something beautiful happened. In the dark, her voice sounded gentle, almost musical. She was saying sweet things, and I felt myself calm down. Her warm, soft skin suddenly turned me on. She was on top of me, holding herself up and rubbing her breasts up and down my body, and it felt incredible. I told her as much.
“Yeah?” she said. “How about this?” And she slid further down and held my shaft between her heavy, soft breasts, and started sliding up and down. It was so incredible--the first time a woman had done this to me. I came very quickly and the minute I started spasming, she put her mouth on me and swallowed hungrily. It was so intensely sexy that I was ready to go again in about ten minutes. And all night long we went at it, then cuddled or drifted into states of light sleep, before one of us started pawing the other and we were on again.
We laughed so much that night, and in the dark, she felt like the most beautiful, soft thing I had ever touched. I couldn’t get enough. I had profound spiritual realizations in her arms, figured out that life without sex isn’t worth living, told her I loved her at least thirty times. She said it too, over and over, and it felt like pure bliss, like I had finally found someone to love me and could just be happy forever.
In the morning, I woke with the harsh light of day streaming in, and I felt horrified at the sight of her. Her sleeping body, curled next to me like a giant potato bug, its carapace made of unsightly rolls. Sheer panic flooded me. I wanted to leave immediately but didn’t know how to extricate myself. I moved like the shame ninja as I tried to wiggle stealthily free of her bed and collect my clothes.
“Sam, come back to bed,” she said, opening her eyes before I had even managed to slither out from under the comforter. Unbelievable, I thought, she’s like a spider, monitoring her web for disturbances, even in her sleep.
“Oh sorry, I can’t, sweetie,” I said, that saccharine reassurance spewing out of me, overcompensating.
“Oh bummer,” she said. “Hey, what are you doing tonight?”
“I’m out of town tonight,” I lied, because it was the first excuse that came to mind.
“Well, I hope I get to see you again. I had fun. I hope it wasn’t just a one-time thing.”
“No, of course not,” replied Sam The Pathetic Lying Weasel while he was hastily putting his clothes on like Speedy Gonzalez, guiltily avoiding eye contact. “Of course I’ll see you again.”
“I like you, Sam,” she said.
“Yeah, me too. Okay, I really gotta run.” I had given her an obligatory peck on the lips as I tried to flee, but she insisted on a real kiss, so then I was stuck gagging as her tongue prowled around my mouth like some huge slug.
That night I’d slept in a motel because I didn’t want her to think I was lying about going out of town. Afterwards, I had never set foot in the Kwik Fill and always looked down the street to make sure the coast was clear before I went to my car. I hadn’t seen Cindy Brodman until this moment, when she suddenly came back from the dead and wobbled across my lawn to wreak vengeance on me!
There were a steady stream of pedestrian zombies in the road, and I have no idea what made her zero in on my house, but suddenly, I heard her ascending my porch with meaty steps. Then more crashing glass as she entered my living room window. She must have some dim memory of me inside that swollen zombie brain--why else would she leave the herd and accost my residence?
Suddenly, a car came flying east down Kirkville Road toward the gas stations. It was a police car, its top lights off, hitting every zombie it could in the road. Bodies flew and bounced and rolled into the ditches on each side. This scene just needed some banjos or a soundtrack by Goblin.
Something crawled from the dim recesses of my mind that urged me to get out of here now, because this might be my last chance.
I descended the ladder with my butcher knives tucked safely in my belt and the rocking chair club in one hand. I attempted to scurry down but merely succeeded in tumbling. My entire house smelled like an overflowed toilet. I looked in my bedroom for the goddamn cat, but Shakes must’ve been hidden deep beneath my bed, or perhaps she’d gotten out the front window.
I turned just in time to see Cindy Brodman coming into the hallway. She must’ve heard me and was drawn as inexorably toward the sound of my clumsy body as some megalodon shark toward the flapping of human arms in water. I didn’t think at all; my club came straight down on her head with all of my adrenaline and blind panic, then I was jumping over her before her body crashed to the floor. My foot tripped on her bulk, and I stumbled and caught myself with the wall. I looked back, and she wasn’t dead. Well, she was dead, but not dead dead. Instead, she was ineffectually rolling around in the hallway and trying to grab me though I was nowhere near her reach.
I shivered involuntarily at the sight, emotions broiling in me, sadness, regret that I had used her, some memory of her eyes that day when I tucked tail and left. She had known, I could see it in her eyes, after that last kiss. I watched her heart break right on her face, her youthful, girly smile going slack as some desperate, dreadful awareness sank in that I was just another liar.
Seeing her bloody face and blank eyes stabbed me inside. I was nothing but a guilty bastard, and I was sorry. And I actually was sorry, but all I could do was run. Almost immediately, I careened around the corner of my living room and came face to face with an old lady who lived up the road. I didn’t even see any signs of wounds on her--for all I know she had come here to ask me for help! I just instinctively shouldered her as hard as I could and sent her flying like a sack of potato chips as I dashed through the room.
A clear path stood before me--the cop car had left a wake of bodies, and I was like a water skier jetting down that road toward the red
tail lights. The vigorous movement caused my makeshift bandana to slip down around my neck, and I gasped for breath as I ran, choking in lungfuls of burning gasoline and human flesh.
Pop pop pop went the sound ahead. At first, I was startled then I realized the officer was discharging his weapon. I could see his shadow now, and I could see the army of darkness closing in. The cop dashed for his car, a few feet away from him, and I calculated that he would never notice me over here.
“Please help me, officer!” I yelled, running toward him. “I’m alive, I’m human!” I added, as if somehow that would stop him from driving away.
The man was already slamming his car door as undead crashed against it. His red tail lights were washing my body in their blood coloring and I knew that was likely to be the next color spurting out of me. The way back to my house was blocked by creepy shambling shapes, headed my way.
Then white washed my skin--the burning white salvation of reverse lights as his car backed toward me. I ran to the side until he flew past me, and I changed direction and dashed up to the car. For a moment, I almost grabbed the back door like a taxi, because it felt wrong to get in the front seat of a police car. But a body lurched from the side of the road, my instinct changed, and I threw open the front door and jumped in.
A hand thumped against my window before I’d gotten the door shut, then the engine roared its victory and we thundered forward, crashing through a wall of dead. Their bodies tumbled onto the hood with the sickening thump of human bones and flesh splitting, and then we were rushing past the blazing Sunoco station into the night.
“Sorry I got in the front, I know I’m not supposed to,” I said, fishing a clipboard out from under my butt.
He said, “Lucky you didn’t try the back, since it’s locked.”
Chapter 10: Recently (2 weeks ago in Mavmart)
I stood at the urinal shaking it off, feeling shy that Charisse had watched me piss. Peeing was the sort of thing that was uncomfortable enough in front of Team Doyle and was impossibly embarrassing in front of a woman. The shake off just makes it look like I’m jerking off into the urinal, so I started blushing furiously. “I’m just shaking it off,” I told her. “Because if I don’t, it will drip down my pants. Wow, this is all really awkward.”
Charisse giggled. “Don’t worry, I didn’t see anything. You know, I find you so charming, Sam. You’re so…” she trailed off. “…boy-like,” she finally said. “There’s an innocence about you that’s just sweet. It’s the kind of quality I don’t think I would’ve appreciated unless all of this had happened. But I’m glad I can see it.”
“You’ve lost me. What are you saying exactly?””
“Oh, you’re just a real gentleman. You’re not embarrassed to be sensitive. I feel like I used to love this quality in boys, and then I stopped noticing it.”
“Why?”
“I guess I started paying attention to other things. Like guys who are cocky and act like they know something about women. Like ninety percent of those types don’t understand women at all.” She paused, then added, “and they mostly suck in bed.”
I blushed, trying to duck my head as I headed for the door.
“Aren’t you gonna wash your hands?” she asked.
I stopped, even more embarrassed. “Oh, I yeah…I just assumed the water doesn’t work.”
“We still have water,” she said.
“You guys really got something good here.”
“Yeah, if there weren’t all these pricks running things, it would be about the best we could hope for.”
I laughed and turned to her. “I like how you talk,” I said.
“I tell it like it is,” she said. “I’ve seen a million dickless assholes like Mav in my time, flashing their Burberry watches and expecting my pussy to start panting because they bought me a Screaming Orgasm.”
“I can understand them,” I said. “I would’ve kept buying you drinks too just to talk to you.”
“Yeah but that’s not why they’re doing it,” she says. “You’re actually a sweet guy, and it means the world. I hereby apologize for every single over-sexed bitch who looked at you like you’re invisible. You’re seriously better than every man in that room put together, and we were all just totally blinded by our vanity.”
If Charisse wasn’t staring at me with so much intensity and adoration, I would’ve assumed she was mocking me. “Wow,” I said. “I couldn’t make this shit up. I just can’t believe a guy like me is standing here with a girl like you saying this stuff to me. This is like some ultra dweeb jerkoff fantasy where the girl is--”
She pulled me into a kiss, cutting me off and making me forget how it felt to be a dork. Everything inside me sang and responded to her, and our hands clutched each other’s bodies, exploring innocently, teetering on the edge of sex. Her hips melded against mine and she rubbed against my hardness, and this sacred primal dance surged inside of me.
Chapter 11: Now
So that was three weeks ago, and Charisse had been on my mind every second, even though we didn’t have sex. And here we are now, Team Doyle vs. Operation Mavmart.
I’m crouched in the turret above the cab of the big rig, scoping the head of a sentry on the roof of Walmart with my sniper rifle. All for Charisse. Like some clown who’d listened to one too many Brian Adams’ songs.
When I’d told the guys what I’d heard about Mav and his raping and murdering, it had sealed all our fates: we were now the heroic liberators, which of course had nothing to do with the fact that Mavmart probably housed three vaginas for every penis on Team Doyle.
It isn’t a terrible plan Doyle made. In fact, it very well might’ve worked. How many of us would’ve survived was certainly up in the air. They had the home field advantage and way more men than us, but we had the element of surprise, combined with a really disorienting plan of attack.
All of that is moot the minute I hear gruff voices saying, “Get out of the truck.”
“Keep your fuckin hands up or you’re gonna eat it!”
I hear this in stereo and realize there are men on both sides of the truck with weapons aimed. So much for future ballads.
I almost stand up and raise my hands, but instead, I freeze and sit tight. I expect to hear them executing Stan and Gary any second, and then the clang of a grenade toppling into my nest. But none of that happens. The truck doors open, I hear the chunk of boots hitting pavement, then men barking orders, and the rustle of other men obeying.
Peering through the slit in my armored turret, I watch Gary and Stan being marched down Kasson Road toward Mavmart- which is when I realize that none of them know I am up here. I can’t see who is who, just the shapes of men and gruff voices.
Because the rig is parked up so high on Kasson Road, I spot a bright spotlight flare on in the parking lot of the high school next to Lowe’s where I know Army Dave and Brock were preparing their assault. I assume they, too, are surrounded by gun-toting men.
“We got two more on the east side of the parking lot,” crackles a walkie-talkie voice somewhere below me.
“There’s still two out there,” a nearby voice barks. Yup, it was them alright. That means Doyle and I are the only ones left.
A walkie-talkie crackles back, “Find them!”
Someone hammers against the back of the truck with a rifle, creating a slight vibration in the walls of my turret. A voice shouts. “I’m gonna open these doors, and if your hands aren’t in the air, we’re all gonna open fire.”
Clang, clonk go the back doors of the trailer. I know no one is back there; just racks of food, supplies, and bunk beds.
More inaudible shouting and talking behind the rig. Then a startlingly close voice yells, “We’ll check the yards over here. You guys cover the north side of the building.” Some people stride purposefully past the front of the rig, across the road, and into nearby neighborhood shadows.
Gunfire makes me jump, then the men laugh.
“I didn’t even smell that fucker!” a voic
e says.
“She almost got you,” someone replies.
“Quiet,” a voice hisses. “Eyes peeled.”
No one notices or even thinks there’s a guy up here on top of the truck. I’m safe for a moment, but still trapped because they have me surrounded!
Then my radio crackles. The volume is turned low, but the sound makes me jump.
“Hello Team Doyle,” a familiar voice says. You can practically hear Mavreides grin through the airwaves. “You birds are so smart for using fire department CBs--we’re using military frequency ourselves…and you’re so stupid for thinking we wouldn’t have a scanner in here. Why don’t you come out now, before I kill all your friends. I’m sure we can work out some kind of agreement.”
When a cat is batting around a helpless mouse, and you know it will kill the mouse, many people think that’s viciousness. But it isn’t. For the cat, which has no concept of life or death; that’s just a desire to play. What you hear from Mavreides is malevolence--a person who lives to hurt others. Like some prick cop dominating you at a traffic stop. In civilization, those types of people always gravitate toward power. And those same people will do it in the absence of civilization, without any fear of repercussions.
I’d read a recent book that claimed as much as 4% of the population, or 12 million Americans, were sociopaths. People with no conscience, master manipulators who blended in and pretended to have feelings so that they could rise to positions of power over others. I saw it in academia, even in the Psychology department. Mav is definitely a sociopath, and he would prolong our deaths because we had crossed him, and he would enjoy it.
Doyle would’ve hunted me down and killed me on principle if I’d successfully deserted our gang before the attack, because Doyle is a fair man who cared about his people. Mavreides is pure gloating, dripping sadism--the mask has come off, and whatever evil shit is inside him has already tasted his own victory. He has four little toys to play with, and he knows the other two are around here somewhere and that his teams will find us.
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