“True that,” Vance says.
“As a matter of fact, I did see a couple black girls in there. Maybe one of them was his girlfriend?”
Vance smirks. “His girlfriend’s Asian, from the Philippines.”
“Oh.” I smile. “Of course.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “We’ve all got these dumb ideas.”
I can’t remember any Asian girls offhand. “I’m not sure you’ll be safe going alone,” I say. “Maybe we could scope the place out, like my friends and I did. Stake-out style.”
“No. Time is the essence. I need to either know he’s there, or keep on lookin’.”
Chapter 31: Then
Hasbro was the menacing guy with the 86 jersey, and instead of punching me, he shook my hand and introduced himself. Then he said, “I like you, man. I was just fuckin wit you, to make sure you aight.”
Seena was the name of the Sparkle girl. Everyone’s attitude pretty much shifted immediately once Hasbro accepted me. It reminded me so much of pack animal behavior, and he was some kind of alpha. He wasn’t the only alpha. The Fridge was an alpha in the pack, too, and there were others I could see. They had weird group dynamics going on; politics that could only be understood from the inside. I might as well have been a bird watcher, trying to understand the flight patterns of a flock of seagulls.
I wasn’t the only white person there. I noticed four white guys and a white girl, but I didn’t get their names, nor feel any racial connection to them; I was the odd one here, and it had little to do with skin color.
I decided to stick with this group for a while--there were about seventy people here, most or all had guns because they’d raided two pawn shops and a gun store, so it seemed like the safest spot in town. They were friendly, and quite different from any people I’d really socialized with.
Basically, they were drinking, smoking pot, celebrating their dead loved ones, and feeling happy about the end of the white man’s rule, all at once.
There were tears, but more laughter I noticed. Tiny altars scattered around the sidewalks told stories of the dead with photographs, candles, or hand-written signs. The nearest altar had a framed picture of a smiling little girl blowing bubbles at the camera, and next to that a pink-and-white stuffed unicorn and a little kid cup with a plastic straw built into the lid. “Kea Jane Johnson -- Always Missed” was scrawled on a piece of cardboard weighted down with a rock. Looking at it broke my heart a little. I wanted to ask about her, but I also didn’t want to pick anyone’s scab.
In these moments, early in the apocalypse, I felt so human. If you were around then, you might know what I mean--how emotional and intense everything felt. It’s like those feelings held on and got more intense before the whole thing collapsed--love and racism and friendship and laughter, everything was easier to see, and easier to understand. I’ve never felt so truly alive before or even after. I would’ve broken down and cried so many times if I wasn’t being herded along by survival into the next moment. Writing this memoir is kind of like stopping and going back to taste what it all felt like.
While I stared at what was left of Kea’s life, strewn across the sidewalk altar, Hasbro told me there were a lot of older folks and children barricaded in the nearby church, since they didn’t want anything to do with the crazy shit out here. “We all lookin’ out for each other,” Hasbro said. “We just hopin’ we can clear the streets and protect our neighborhood. The undead are comin’ steady but slow, and seems like we got this, you know?”
I nodded, only half present. It didn’t seem like a good plan, but it made sense that they were out here because they had families in the church. I never really had family, and this strange acceptance Hasbro was giving me felt familial.
Hasbro told me a lot about himself. First thing I asked him was, “Were you really named after a toy company?”
He grinned at that. “Nah, I named myself that when I was a kid cuz I liked the Transformers. We all wanted a street name when we was ten. I just kept calling myself that.”
Some childish part of myself hoped that Hasbro would give me a cool street name. It’s so juvenile, but I had never wanted to be Samuel Edgar Bland. I had wanted my childhood over, and I’d wanted to make different choices. I’d been sitting outside of everything, just watching people from my little glass house, studying them, imagining that I was this deep, insightful person while everyone lived life and had fun around me. All I could do is stare at Hasbro as this terrible awareness washed over me.
He didn’t notice my mood, because I must’ve had it carefully contained behind my stoic, professionally detached face. “My real name is Hanson,” he said, “and if there was ever any chance of going back to that name, then that goofy boy band killed it for me in 1998.” I laughed at that. “Now I just say it like this: I’m Has Bro, as in, when you wit me, you has a bro! Corny, right, hahaha.”
Something pulled me out of myself and into the beautiful world of this big, infectious man. His massive jaw full of big white teeth, a couple of which were missing. His eyes shined so much as he talked to me and looked nothing like the cold, reptile eyes he had scrutinized me with earlier.
Hasbro was thirty-one, which surprised me. The way he was dressed and spoke made me think he was in his mid-twenties.
Seena was his girl. They both grew up on the west side, went to Fowler, and were high school sweethearts who got back together a year ago.
“This our town, man, that why we ain’t leave when aybody else did,” he said. “How come you still here?”
I fumbled for words. “Oh, um, I was asleep for a long time. Just sorta woke up a few hours ago and the world had gone to shit.”
He guffawed and one of his friends said, “You hear this motherfucker? He pass out drunk and wake up with zombies aywhere.”
“No, I wasn’t drunk. I was just tired.”
People cracked up at this.
“A few hours ago? Nigga, this shit been here for two days!”
I couldn’t grasp this, but it was embarrassing. “No way! I just saw all the zombie stuff on Facebook, but I just thought it was for a movie or something.”
That made everyone really laugh. Basically, they were saying the apocalypse had hit my town Thursday and I didn’t find out until Saturday night! It takes a really oblivious guy…
“Don’t you watch the news? Or hear people getting’ shot, walking around outside ya house all covered in blood?”
I shook my head and had no clue how I could’ve missed it. Just shows what a recluse I was. “I don’t have Friday classes, so I guess I just shambled through my day like a zombie, not noticing. Lame pun, I know.” I managed a smirk.
“Oh man,” Hasbro said. “You such a crazy ass white dude. You’s just…somethin’ else, man. Even white people think you crazy, huh?”
“Yeah well, you a crazy ass black dude,” I said.
“Straight up,” he said. “I’m one crazy fuckin nigga! Nobody fucks wit me. Feel?”
I nodded. I felt like saying, “Yeah man, I feel you,” but it would be totally inauthentic coming from my mouth. Still, I liked the way he talked, it made sense.
The truth is, while everyone was getting bit, I was playing a stupid addictive video game called No Man’s Sky.
I pretty much hadn’t been able to put it down for a week straight, but then it started getting repetitive, and that’s why I whacked off to Lewd Contact #29 and then got on Facebook. If they’d made a better game (and I didn’t have a job), I could’ve conceivably played for weeks without noticing anything amiss until I had to grocery shop. Which made me wonder if a disproportionate number of gamers were surviving right now, still plugged into their X-Video Rocker chairs.
There seemed to be a regular cacophony of gunshots in the background now, but Hasbro and the others didn’t seem bothered. I’d gotten used to the gradual increase in gunfire but somehow felt totally safe, because everyone else seemed to feel safe.
Hasbro told me about when it first happened, how the radio a
nd TV and internet were going crazy. First, New York City was under attack, and it was the biggest news. And a half hour after NYC was all over the news, Syracuse was hit hard.
“The Greyhound bus station by Infinity Mall was Ground Zero for the ‘Cuse, then it spread from there,” Hasbro said. “The fuckin’ mall was packed, so infection spread fast, hundreds bit before anyone really knew what was going on.”
“How long does it take to turn into one?” I asked.
“Depends,” The Fridge said, swigging his beer. “I’ve seen a dude get bit and be up in five minutes biting, and we got a lady in the church who got bit hours ago and she still okay last I knew.”
I must’ve looked back toward the church with horror because Hasbro said, “Don’t worry, she’s tied down. So anyway, the whole mall had thousands of people in it, and then they all got infected, spreading out into the north side and the city.”
Seena cut in and said, “News crews was tryin’ to get into the mall and film it, and you saw this one reporter get bit while he was tellin’ aybody what was going on.”
“And it ain’t like real zombies,” someone else said. “If you get killed by them, you don’t get back up. But if they bite you and don’t kill you, then you change into one of them.”
“We was the first big city other than New York to get it,” Seena said. “First, they try evacuatin’ aybody, but then it got too bad. It spread all over. They was tellin’ people and police and emergency workers to go to the airport for a command headquarters, but then the airport got overrun; the highways was a death trap. They’s nowhere to go. The whole city gone--aybody either left or infected.”
“What about the Army? We’ve got a National Guard base right here in town!” I asked.
Fridge laughed. “Oh they didn’t do nothin’. All this talk about them comin’ in to contain the epidemic on the news and shit. Nobody seen shit from the Army except a few helicopters circling the city.”
“My cousin saw an Army convoy heading out of town on 481!” someone shouted from the crowd. “They got out while the gettin’s good.”
“Chickenshit Army,” another voice said.
“That fire is getting closer,” I said, noticing the orange glow to the north had gotten brighter. It was at least a mile away, but I could smell the smoke and fuel.
“Did you see that airplane crash?” Seena asked.
“Yeah, I was on the 690 bridge!” I said. “It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”
“I know right?” Seena said. “Me too!”
“I think the fire is spreading this way, though,” I told them. “People won’t be safe in that church if it comes here.”
Hasbro was staring at the fire-soaked horizon pensively. Suddenly, a series of rapid gunshots sounded at the south end of the street, and the dreaded words rang out from someone’s mouth, “FUCK! Motherfucker bit me!”
Chapter 32: Now
The morning brings a thick blanket of fog--both in my head and outside the window. I wake in a kid’s bed, staring bleary-eyed at the white cloud wall pressing against the window, not sure quite what I’m looking at, or if I’m awake or asleep.
For a moment, I have no clue where I am: there’s robots on the curtains, which are open. Ugly colorful curtains that remind me of the race car curtains I had as a kid. I never gave a shit about race cars, and the ugly red, blue and gray and white cars made my room more dreary than childhood usually was.
I remember something bad happened with Marsha, but my hangover throbs every time my heart pulses. Slight recall. Did I actually punch her?
I’d had some bad dream that I can’t remember. Strangely, I’ve never once dreamed of zombies after The Shit went down. You’d think all of us would be having constant nightmares about it. Who knows, maybe other people do, but no one’s ever told me about it. If they ever get the world back together, that’s how time should be labeled.
BC – Before Christ
AD – Anno Domini
SD – Shit Went Down
I have no idea what time it is. Time is fairly irrelevant. Reaching under my pillow, I feel the gun there. I tuck it into my jeans and go downstairs. I can smell piss on my own pants, which meant I’d been wearing these too long and it was time to find a new pair. No matter how much you shake and how much you dance, the last few drops go down your pants! Especially if you pee all over yourself while running from Mavmart. Hygiene is one of the first things you forget when shit goes down.
These jeans haven’t been washed since laundry day with Team Doyle. We’d all used an ice cold creek and stripped down and washed our clothes. It must be about October now, judging by the freezing nights. Team Doyle had planned to take Mavmart or head south to warmer climates.
Army Dave had tried to teach me how to fish while our laundry was drying, but I didn’t catch anything except clumps of seaweed. It was a weird moment, sitting around naked with a bunch of dudes, drinking beers and fishing while our clothes dried in the sun.
In fact, it was so weird that it became not weird at all. I was the least comfortable stripping down, but I forgot about that once we all started laughing at each other’s flaccid schlongs. Stan had the biggest by far, like an elephant trunk. I was glad to see that I was bigger than Doyle and Brock, and around the same size as Army Dave. These things mattered a lot to people before Shit Went Down. I just didn’t want to be the smallest.
At one point, I had joked to them, “It looks like Stan should be our leader!” And everyone laughed.
Doyle laughed and said, “I’m a grower not a show-er! Send a woman here to perk me up and I’ll have y’all burying your heads like a bunch of ostriches!”
“What the fuck, Doyle, your cock is hiding in the jungle!” I said.
“Where’s my hedge trimmers?” Army Dave joked.
Everyone had a field day talking about our dicks until Stan said, “Wow, you guys sound really gay going on about dicks nonstop!”
We all laughed but that pretty much ended the Team Dickpocalypse!
Do you see how weird it is—even after the world ends, people are still comparing dick size! Flaccid penises are still goofy looking, and I have no idea how our caveman ancestors really dealt with this. Were they just chasing game, swinging in the breeze and cracking up nonstop?
There’d been a lot of good-natured ribbing that day, because what else can a bunch of naked men do? It was the last peaceful day I remembered; just boys being boys without all the ugly stress of the world today. That last carefree day seemed like a year ago: we’d drunk beer, and hung out, and it was that male bonding you always hear about that I’d never been privy to.
Anyway, I ramble too much that’s why this isn’t a real book and I’m not a real writer. But I’m still the Historian of the Apocalypse! I check Marsha’s room but she isn’t there, so I go through the drawers and find some clean clothes. Yes, I’m now wearing some strange guy’s underwear, which you get used to in times like these.
Heading downstairs, I find Marsha cooking on the Sterno. I check the front and back yards through the curtains, but it’s totally foggy and you can only see about thirty feet.
“How you feeling?” I ask Marsha, seeing the big greenish purple bruise on her forehead where I’d socked her. I remember a little of the night, mostly just her mouth attacking me.
“Like one of them must feel,” she says with a toothy grin.
“Yeah. I thought so.” I pause. “Vance up yet?”
“Ain’t seen him.”
“We’re gonna go to Mavmart today,” I say. “I thought it best maybe if you stay here. With the gun, I mean.”
She shakes her head, flipping a pancake. “I think I should go with y’all.”
I don’t say anything. Who am I to tell her what to do?
She continues. “You can’t even go there, because they’ll recognize you and kill you. But if I go there, and pretend to be Vance’s woman, then they’ll let us in.”
“No way—they’ll kill Vance and add you to t
heir harem,” I say. “That’s what they do there. They’ll think he’s a weak old man with nothing to contribute. He’s better off going alone, then they’ll just turn him away.”
“What if he tells them he has some women and people with him nearby? They might try to wine him and dine him like they did y’all,” she says.
“Did I tell you about that?”
“Yeah,” she says. “You wouldn’t shut up about that Charisse girl.”
“I don’t even remember that.”
She throws two big pancakes on a plate for me. I scoop off a little green mold island that’s floating on top of the maple syrup bottle. The rest looks okay, though, so I pour it on.
“Coffee!” I say excitedly as she hands me a cup.
“Better,” she says. “We’ve got creamer!” She sets down a bottle of creamer powder and a jar of sugar cubes.
“This is a hell of a treat to wake up to.” I stir the creamer in and the sugar, relishing the smell. “That’s really sweet of you, Marsha.”
She beams at me with this charming smile. “The way I figure it, I owe you one.”
“Oh, no, not really,” I stammer. “I just see--humans are just happy being nice to each other and helping each other. It isn’t just some math equation in our heads trying to get something back. It’s really touching.”
“Are you talking about God?”
“No,” I say. “Sorta. Not all that Bible crap, that’s all just human psychology. I mean, there’s a spirit living inside us, and it makes us feel good when we are good to people.”
“So yeah, God,” she says. “You can complicate it however you want, but most of us just call it God.”
I roll my eyes. “Whatever. It has nothing to do with Christian mythologies. The apostles were ignorant pig farmers who thought the earth was flat and vampires were real. Before that, it was all Zeus this and Apollo that. Humans back then were superstitious monkeys.”
“Yeah, but then Jesus commanded us all to love each other.”
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