Eye Witness: Zombie

by Lederman, William

  persons contribute to zombie epidemic * EWZN * More footage

  DredgeReported By Nikki Sedlock

  My plan was always the same, joking or serious. Grab everyone, steal a van, hit Wal-Mart, and go from there. Fuck that whole ‘off into the woods’ bullshit, who’s to say they’re not out there, too? That, and the only thing worse than rednecks is undead rednecks. So, I’m camped out here in the sub-basement of everyone’s favorite corporation, thanking deities that don’t exist for most likely sparing me a quick, painful death in favor of a long, miserable road lined with isolation and probably madness.

  There’ve been plenty of times I’ve thought of it. Just turn that gun around, man, I’ve thought more than a few nights, usually the quiet ones when I’ve got nothing to shoot at. And there’s been times, though considerably less, that I’ve wondered if maybe they’re better off than me; at this point, I think I just might welcome mindlessness. Hell, at least that way I don’t have a mind to lose.

  I don’t know how damn long I’ve been here. I lost electricity after the first month, so the last date I recorded off my cell phone (seems the damn thing was worth something at least) was July 21st, a day after my 25th birthday. Happy fucking birthday to me. Thinking back, it’s funny, all the times I joked with my friends—that are probably dead or worse now—that I was cursed. I’d say ‘told you so’ if it didn’t seem so fucking true now.

  The movies don’t do it justice, I’ll tell you that much (whoever ‘you’ are, if there’s anyone besides dust, and the roaches that’ll outlive us all). No matter how big the screen, until you’ve got forty-something half-rotting people coming at you, making that godawful noise...

  But fuck that for right now. The situation isn’t going anywhere, who knows how much longer I’ll be around to stink up this basement and write goddamn diaries no one will read. At one point, in another life it seems, things weren’t so bad. I played in a band that some people actually liked, had a decent job, was doing pretty well for myself.

  I think back to all the hours I spent watching horror movies and have to laugh, like I was trying to train myself for something we all knew was coming but wouldn’t look in the face, like the corpse of a loved one. Yeah, you know it’s there, you can even smell it. Hell, if you’re brave, you might even touch the sonovabitch. But look at it? No. See it? Hell no. Humans never see things, I’ve realized. We look, but we don’t see; touch, but never feel. I guess all this apocalyptic bullshit’s turned me into a real goddamn philosopher, hasn’t it, and for what? Maybe it’ll make my brains taste better when they’re ripping them out of my head. Maybe it’ll make going insane that much more interesting. At any rate, all I know is, it’s not helping me none.

  I’ll never forget the day I realized that I stopped living and started waiting to die. Back then, my bed wasn’t a pile of bloodstained towels in a cold, smelly basement. No, just plain blue sheets and soft pillows, maybe in need of some changing but not ruined. I was in the middle of a dream—some hot girl who actually gave me the time of day—woken up by an irregular bump-knocking. For a split second I wondered if my obnoxious neighbors were fucking again (or moving their furniture, or letting their kid stampede through the house; wood floors...I even miss that) or whatever it was that they did to make so much fucking noise.

  Once my brain cleared its cobwebs, I realized it was coming from my living room, so I assumed someone was knocking on my door or something. I don’t know what I thought. Anyway, I headed out there, cursing the stupid emergency broadcast that was always on for no reason (how clear is hindsight, eh?) and swung the door open, knocking a half-rotten motherfucker on his undead ass. At first I thought he was drunk, never mind the fact that it’s one in the afternoon and I’m three floors up.

  I was standing in the doorjamb, contemplating on helping this sad fuck up or slamming the door, when he popped up, looking at me with those eyes...you ever seen a dead person’s eyes? It’s not pretty. They just look wrong. Especially when the dead person is moving, staring at you with something akin to, but not quite, intelligence. Intellect maybe, instinct more likely.

  Predatory.

  I was so fascinated I almost forgot to be scared, watching him crawl to his feet, reeking to high hell. Imagine spoiled meat and rotten fruit, only a thousand times worse, and then maybe you’ll start to comprehend what these bastards stink like. At any rate, I was slapped out of my thoughts as he flew at me.

  This guy was just stumbling and crawling like a retard, now he’s lunging at me like a fucking cougar or something. Somehow I lucked out and slammed the door shut quickly enough, his head making a wet noise like a melon against it. I wondered if I’d lucked out and cracked his skull, though I didn’t dare open the door to check. I locked both the bolts on my door, started away from it, and on second thought threw my armchair in front of it.

  Through all this, I realized, the automaton voice on the television was wearily repeating, “This is not a test, this is an emergency broadcast. Turn to Channel Three for more information.”

  My hands were shaking as I punched the button, sitting down to the news for probably the first time in years. For a second I wondered if there was still a DVD in there, surely I’d hit the on button or something because there was no fucking way zombies were on the goddamned news. But there it was plain as day, Dan Rathers trying to keep up his long-practiced composure while repeating, “Stay indoors, be as quiet as possible, do NOT go near them for any reason. We are in a state of emergency.”

  I almost had to laugh. I knew I’d wake up soon, knew without a shadow of a fucking doubt that any second now my alarm would go off and I’d be in my bed, probably some stupid zombie movie still playing on my TV. I blamed it on everything: on drinking too much the night before, on pounding down Valium like I’d get paid for it, for sticking as many things in my system as I possibly could. This was a hallucination, it had to be, I simply refused to believe that there were fucking zombies wandering down my street.

  As if to cue how wrong I was, my phone rang. “GET THE FUCK OVER HERE!” my brother screamed at me, the background noise a cacophony of screams and crashing. “NICK, THEY’RE INSIDE GODDAMMIT GET—”

  I was down the stairs before I could even think of that fucker I’d slammed the door on earlier, not giving a shit if he got in the apartment. I had no illusions of safety. The place was a hellhole, and I knew that the locks on the door were little more than shiny placebos to placate the naive. I threw my car into fourth gear and flew out of the parking lot, nearly hitting another one of them—I couldn’t bring myself to call them ‘zombies’ yet. I figured they were some kind of fucked up protesters or something...I don’t know what, I just didn’t think they were goddamn zombies.

  Downtown was like a fucking Romero movie, broken glass everywhere like little razor-edged crystals, everything covered in blood or other body matter, and hundreds of those things. Shambling, stumbling, wandering around like senile lunatics, in business suits and jeans and jogging suits. Regular fucking people, chewing on other regular fucking people. I drove past one, she looked like she was five or six, half of her face was gone. Torn right off. Little shreds of muscle and skin were hanging off her cheekbone, one eye completely gone. I think she was chewing on an arm. I’ve seen a lot of shit since then, but thinking about that still makes me a little sick.

  When I got to his house, I knew things wouldn’t end well; the fact that his door was completely gone was a good hint for starters. But, he was my brother, and I wasn’t thinking; I screeched to a stop and ran into the house. I heard noise coming from the kitchen—scuffling and grunts—so I ran there. Reality still hadn’t bitch-slapped me.

  When I got into the kitchen and saw his wife, or part of her, in the middle of the tile floor, it took me a second. I squeezed my eyes shut. Prayed to wake up. But she was still there when I opened them, green eyes muddy in death, ginger hair gone dark crimson with gore. Her fingers were all busted to shit, twisted at all sorts of fucked up angles, white knuckles poking
out here and there. Still in a once-white wife-beater that just ended where the rest of her did, right about the midsection.

  From there on it turned into a mess of blood and body parts I’d only seen in anatomy books, her intestines shredded like fucking sausage. I puked right onto my brother’s nice black marble counter top, splattering the tiled walls behind his sink. I felt my knees turn to rubber and tried to fight it, the last thing I wanted was an up-close and personal look at what was left of the late Mrs. Gage. In vain, I wished again to wake up, my fingers clenching the countertop so tight it hurt. I heard footsteps behind me and thought Thank God, my brother’s alive. He’s probably fucked up and shit, his lady’s dead, but at least Ed’s alive...

  I’ll tell you now, there’s no God. Maybe there was, but there sure as hell isn’t now. Ed’s face was shot through with light blue veins, what I could see through the blood matted in his hair, his goatee. His fucking eyebrows were covered in blood. His eyes, staring at me but not seeing me, not recognizing words like brother or family.

  For the first time since my dog Poots died when I was eighteen, I cried. I sobbed and reached out to him, ignoring things like the visible part of his brain or the way his eyes were cloudier than any cataract known to man. I reached out to hug my brother and this monster in his place snapped at me, red-stained jaws gnashing at me like a rabid fucking animal.

  I shoved him away, stumbled back, and managed to get against the counter, vaguely aware of my own vomit soaking into my shirt. For the first time, I realized I was still in my sweats. Our minds bring up the dumbest things when we’re staring death in the face. And what a familiar face it was, this Death, one I’d grown up with and loved, my best friend and protector, the guy who’d kicked so many asses in high school for me. The guy who’d bailed my ass out of countless things was staring at me like lunch.

  As if to drive that thought home, he lunged at me again, fingers curled into claw hands, hissing at me. I didn’t think, just reacted when I grabbed the first thing near me and swung, hard. The shattering glass of the blender brought me back to reality, adrenaline blessedly kicking in as I ceased to see my brother and just looked in front of me.

  I fumbled with the drawer behind me and pulled out the battery-powered saw he’d bought, prayed it was charged, and rammed it at him as I switched it on. Grinding it across his throat, I thought of every homework assignment he fudged for me, how many times he’d played my alibi. Twenty-five years of Christmas mornings and Thanksgiving dinners. Hot blood shot at me. I squeezed my eyes and mouth shut, hoping that whatever godawful fucking plague had done this wouldn’t suddenly be transferred to me and I shoved. I pulled my shirt off and wiped my face as I backed up, ready to jam the saw at him again if I had to. Ed didn’t move though, just twitched on the floor, his dead eyes fixing on nothing as he made weird little gurgling noises.

  I kicked the kitchen door shut and ran to his room, not knowing or caring if he was dead, I didn’t even know if he could die. I pulled open his side drawer—glad that, this last time at least, he was still predictable Ed—grabbed his .45 out, and a box of bullets.

  I ran back to my car just in time to watch a woman I would’ve been checking out under any other circumstance being dragged down by two of those things—a teenage boy and an elderly woman—her screams mixing in with everyone else’s. I turned the key and drove. Fast.

  I didn’t stick around town long enough to find out just exactly how fucked we all were, I just drove. My parents were halfway across the country, and besides Ed, I didn’t have much anyone to worry about. And now, to be honest, I think I’m glad for it. I can’t imagine the fear of having a girlfriend right now, worrying if she was alive; or worse…seeing her as one of those fucking things. No...for once, being a lonely, sad fuck is the upper hand. Funny what the apocalypse can teach you, isn’t it?

  Like I said, my plan was always the same, and for once it seems I’d had the right idea. The parking lot was predictably crammed with cars and bodies, surprisingly few of them upright and standing. I had a split-second terror that the reason for that was they’d all migrated inside of the building, just waiting to shit on my last shred of hope and tear me to pissed-off, miserable bits.

  Once again I wondered why I was trying, what the fuck was there to live for now? My closest friend was either a monster or dead, and I didn’t know which was worse. I hadn’t yet seen a living person who wasn’t being mauled today. So I wondered again, why?

  When I couldn’t find a reason, I took to getting pissed again. Better to be angry than dead, so I reloaded my .45 and picked off the few I saw outside of the building, half hoping my gun would jam and they’d do me the favor now.

  As if to answer my fears, more of them began steadily cropping up around the peripheries of the building, shambling my direction in no great hurry. And why not, it’s not like they were going anywhere anytime soon. They had all the time in the goddamned world.

  When the other shots rang out, I thought I was going crazy. Or worse, that the zombies had somehow figured out how to use guns. It wasn’t until he was pulling me towards the doors and throwing me inside that I realized that I’d found another breathing, intact human being. I almost cried again for the second time that day.

  “How the HELL’D you make it out here? We haven’t seen another person since this all started!”

  I took another generous mouthful of the bottled water he’d given me and finally asked, “And when was that?”

  He looked over at the older man with him and shrugged. “Day? Two days ago? The fucking government hasn’t done a damn thing. Probably too busy with the important cities, fuckin’ pigs.”

  I decided I liked this man, if only for sharing my hate of the government. We talked for a bit, mostly about what brought us here, Don apparently had said “Fuck it” when his girlfriend tried to take a bite out of his face. The man with him, his father Brian, said he just went because Don, his only son, was all he had left. I both envied and pitied them, recounting my impromptu goodbye to Ed and the rest of my normal life.

  We talked for a while longer, talking about the people we were in that other world, the one where the dead stayed dead. Don had been a tattoo artist, arms covered in ink, some recent and nearly-photorealistic, others faded to little more than gray-blue whorls and smudges.

  Brian had long since retired. At sixty-five he looked healthier than some people my age, but carried the trademark ruddiness of the alcoholic. All the better, I figured, something we can bond over. I could just picture it, the three of us passing a bottle of something, shooting off corpses as they popped up. It almost seemed fun…until I remembered again that it wasn’t a movie. I wasn’t some overpaid asshole in a “Normal Guy-A” costume that some twittering assistant had picked out for me, measured me for, and mended to fit my specific body. There was no self-absorbed director calling for cuts and re-takes every time a shot missed its target. And the guns, thankfully, were not loaded with blanks. The bullets in there would shatter skulls, pierce brains and, if need be, save us from being mindless fucking bastards.

  I know what you’re thinking, I’m being incredibly redundant here, repeating the same thing in the same vein for a couple pages now, but you’ve lived through it (if you haven’t congratu-fucking-lations) and you should know.

  Think back. How the hell did you feel watching your loved ones turn into monsters? Maybe you were lucky and didn’t have anyone to lose, but then you realize...if not for family, for friends, then for what? Why live when there’ll never be someone to come home to, no one to run to, no one to lay next to ever again?

  It turned out that Don and Brian had been some of the few people to hit Wal-Mart, surprisingly. It was a small town and all, but still…didn’t anyone else think about this shit? From the sounds of it, Brian said most people vacated the town pretty quick, either high-tailing their asses to bigger cities or trying to round up family. Of course, there’d been a few of them in and out of the Wal-Mart, but Don said most of them either got picked
off quick, took themselves out, or left after getting what they wanted. There was a hint that Don and Brian might’ve had something to do with it, but it didn’t bother me. If I died, I died. Whether it was from two angry guys, a bunch of zombies, or my own cowardice, I figured at this point it didn’t much matter.

  And it was nice, for a while at least, while it lasted. Don and Brian never offed me, just shared stories and food with me. A few times we ventured out further into the store and grabbed a few six-packs, but we couldn’t decide who’d be the designated shooter. Sometimes it was awful. The smell of three sweaty guys in a basement, the ever-present undertone of rot and decay wafting, even down here. Sometimes, I thought we’d kill each other. We’d get so mad at nothing and look for something or someone to take it out on. Sometimes, it was almost fun. When you forgot that the whole fucking world had gone to hell, it was almost enjoyable. Pretend it’s camping.

  I don’t know how long it lasted. When you’re hiding in a basement, all time seems to blend together into some non-descript combination of boredom and anxiety. Eventually though, one of them found their way down here and caught us off guard. Me and Don were having a friendly debate over whether it was better to shoot ‘em in the head or cut the head off when Brian stumbled in, his fingers slicked red and clamped over his neck. “Time’s come, boy. Off yer ass.”

  Don gaped, his hands twitching as he shook his head. I just sat in awe, remembering that in real life, no one was safe. I think back and realize how many times I’ve thought Well, it won’t happen to me. It can’t. And how completely that mindset has been shot to a thousand pieces. I realized that one of the two people that I’d come to think of as friends was going to die. Or worse, turn into one of those things and kill us both. I dropped my head, knowing that Don wouldn’t want me to watch him crying, sobbing like a child, his father’s blood spurting against him in little gouts.