Mort: Deluxe Illustrated Edition (The Fearlanders)

by Joseph Duncan

  Mort took another step back, thinking they should maybe head toward the stockroom and go out the back before one of the gargling dead people on the sidewalk out front decided to hit the glass a little harder.

  He saw the zombies look his direction.

  They looked back to Fred, then Mort, and then almost as one, the ghoulish revenants shifted their attention to the much heavier man.

  No fair! Mort thought. Why does everyone pick on the fat guy…?

  “Umm... I think maybe we should sneak out the back door,” Mort said softly. “We can cut through the alley to my place and call the police.”

  Fred looked at him, still a little out of breath, and nodded eagerly. “Yeah! Yeah! That sounds like a good idea!”

  One of the deadheads-- a titanic weightlifter-- raised a veiny Arnold Schwarzenegger arm and smacked the flat of his palm against the window. Creatine-fortified protein drink mixed with bile and blood dribbled from his mouth, running down his neck and chest. The impact cracked the glass and left a big greasy handprint.

  Mort and Fred wheeled around in a tight one-eighty and raced down separate aisles toward the back room.

  Fred took the lead early on, of course, and was the first one through the cluttered stockroom and out the back door.

  “Come on, man! Hurry!” he called over his shoulder. He hit the door lever with a loud clunk and vanished from sight!

  Mort was right behind him.

  Heart hammering, Mort whooshed past the white cardboard boxes filled with back issues, moving pretty fast for a fat guy. The shiny covers of last week’s new releases fluttered on their shelves as he thundered by. Mort hit the rear door before it could swing all the way back and stumbled into the alley-- just in time to see a filthy harridan leap upon his part-time employee.

  Fred yelled in horror as the female zombie bore him to the ground.

  The dead chick was short and slim, a petite brunette in a gore-streaked pink Hello Kitty tee shirt and jean shorts, but her Phage-induced rage and hunger had granted her superhuman strength. When Fred tried to push her off, she sank her teeth into his forearm and wrenched her head back and forth, tearing a plug of skin and muscle from the limb.

  As Mort recovered from his shock enough to run to the aid of his friend, the zombie sank her thumbs into Fred’s eye sockets, popping his eyeballs out like grapes, then lifted his head and bashed it down on the filthy pavement of the alley.

  “Oh my God!” Mort gasped, reaching out to his friend.

  The heels of Fred’s red sneakers rattled a quick beat on the concrete as he let out an ear-piercing shriek. The zombie echoed his cry, a howl of exultation. She turned her bloody face to the sky, shaking her head in triumph, then bashed Fred’s head against the pavement again, driving it down so hard his skull split open like a melon.

  Oh, hell, no!

  Mort retreated as she sank her fingers into the crevasse and prized Fred’s skull further apart. Fred’s brain fell halfway out with a gush of clear fluid, almost like a baby being born, and she began to stuff hunks of brain matter between her lips. Mort looked to the mouth of the alley as several more zombies came running hungrily around the corner. Responding to her cries.

  They were all more physically fit than him.

  I. Am. So. SCREWED! Mort thought as he stumbled away.

  He knocked over some trashcans and almost fell, skidding loudly on an aluminum trashcan lid. His heart was pounding so hard in his chest he was afraid he was going to have a coronary. Pain lanced down his left arm. Did pain in the left arm mean you were having a heart attack? Or was it the right arm?

  Then he remembered: the alley going this way was a dead end.

  He huffed to the wire fence which blocked the alley. The gate was chained and padlocked, of course, just like in the movies. Why would someone put a fence in an alley? he wondered angrily, eyeing the top of the barrier. What use could it possibly have, apart from serving as a suspense device in some crappy Hollywood chase scene?

  If he was a prettyboy movie star, there’d be no problem. He’d be up and over the fence, no sweat, but he was a real person, and that was a real gut jiggling beneath his matching pair of authentic man breasts. The fence was only twelve feet high, but it might as well have been twelve hundred feet. He thought he could get over it, but not before the other three zombies who’d entered the alley came to drag him down and rip him apart.

  Mort cast a panicked glance toward the mouth of the alley.

  Two of the zombies had stopped to help the brunette eat his friend. They worried at Fred’s corpse like wolves, snarling and snapping at one another. The third had spotted Mort, of course, and was running right for him!

  And it was the Arnold Schwarzenegger wannabe.

  Of course…!

  His breath coming in ragged whoops, Mort turned back to the fence and started climbing. He curled his plump fingers into the diamond shaped metal links and began to haul his two-fifty plus upwards. He heard a loud crash and looked over his shoulder. The Arnold zombie had slipped on the same trashcan lid he had and collided headfirst into the side of the dumpster.

  Ha!

  Mort climbed. It felt like his bodyweight was going to tear his fingers right off his hands, and he was having trouble getting any kind of purchase with the tips of his sneakers, but the Arnold zombie had really rattled its marbles against the side of the dumpster. Thank God! It bought Mort the precious time he needed to get up the fence and out of reach before the hungry deadhead got to its feet and lurched after him.

  Mort carefully swung one thick thigh over the metal tubing at the top and sat astride the barrier. The sharp tips of the chain link fence jabbed into his ass and palms.

  Zarnold snarled and hopped, lunging for Mort’s foot.

  “Frack you!” Mort spat, flipping the zombie the bird.

  Frustrated, the massive zombie began to howl. It was a high-pitched, plaintive cry. A moment later, Mort heard groans coming from the other end of the alley. He turned on his perch to see two more zombies stumbling up the other side of the passage. Big ones.

  Great Zeus, why do you do these things to me? Mort mused.

  He pulled his feet up as far as he could. He was surrounded! Zombies were swiping at him from both sides of the fence now, and there were probably more on the way.

  He craned his neck and examined the walls to either side of the alley. There were electricity pipes running up the wall from a cluster of meters on one side. The roof was only a few feet higher than the fence there. The other side of the alley was a flat expanse of brick going up at least three more stories. No conundrum there.

  Mort began to scoot carefully across the fence toward the electric conduits. On the ground below, the trio of zombies lunged and swung at his sneakers. Mort paused with a hiss. The chain link fence was beginning to cut his palms and rip into the crotch of his khakis. Oh please oh please oh please! he thought as he resumed his creeping progress across the top of the fence. He eased forward bit by bit, trying to ignore the pain, sweat dripping off his pudgy face. He almost lost his balance twice as the zombies jumped for him, battering the fence. Grinding his teeth, he persevered.

  He made it to the end of the fence and reached out for the electricity pipes. They were almost out of reach. He strained, stretched his arm out as far as he could without overbalancing and caught ahold of one of them. Using the gray pipes as a handhold, he rose carefully until he was standing on top of the chain link fence.

  Just a little bit further, Mort thought.

  Mort wavered, hanging onto the electric pipe with one hand and holding his other arm out for balance. The top of the fence swung back and forth. Zarnold bashed his whole body into the fence then, snarling angrily, and almost sent Mort tumbling to the ground-- but with a big sweaty grunt, Mort managed to throw the upper portion of his body onto the roof of the comic shop.

  Safe!

  I’m alive! No freaking way! Mort thought, grinning in disbelief.

  He was still hanging over the edge of
the roof, pedaling an invisible bike, but he’d actually managed to climb the fence and get to the roof. He’d survived!

  A cool breeze tickled his backside. The sharp tips of the chain links, Mort realized, had completely ripped out the seat of his khaki shorts.

  Of course.

  Laughing, Mort clawed his way completely onto the roof, his abraded hands leaving bloody smears on the tarry surface. Bits of gravel were stuck to his face and neck and legs, but he didn’t care. He was alive!

  He rolled onto his back and blinked up at the firmament. Wispy white clouds hung motionless in the autumn sky. That one looked like a turtle if you squinted your eyes just so. That one looked like a rabbit. And that one looked like a flying saucer. Or maybe a cheeseburger.

  Alive…!

  Mort laughed. He listened to his laughter echo across the preternaturally quiet city. He didn’t care that he sounded like a lunatic, or that tears were running down his pudgy cheeks even as he lay there cackling.

  Alive! Me!

  He sobered finally, struggled to his feet. The tarry surface of the roof made a sticky shirring sound as he peeled his body from it. His legs were wobbly and weak.

  Fred, he thought. Oh God, poor Fred...!

  Mort shuffled to the edge of the roof and peered over the side. He was afraid of heights and the view made him a little lightheaded, but he needed to see.

  In the alley below, zombies were still gnawing on his buddy. In just the few minutes that it had taken Mort to climb to the roof, Mort’s employee and friend had been reduced to little more than a skeleton. Several more zombies sidled up to the Fred buffet and began to play tug-of-war with something grayish and slick. Mort realized their rope was some of Fred’s intestines. Tasting vomit in the back of his throat, Mort looked away.

  He crossed the roof to the other side of the building, the breeze chilling his sweaty clothes. Sounds of violence and pandemonium rode on that wind, faint with distance: the popping of firearms, the wailing of sirens. Mort stood there near the edge of the roof for several minutes, listening to tires squeal and people scream. Finally he turned away. Sitting in the shade of the roof access, Mort put his face in his arms and sobbed.

  He sobbed for his friend Fred, and for himself just a little, too. For having come so close to such a terrible end. His tears chilled on his forearms, and he got kind of snotty, blubbering like a wuss, but he couldn’t stop himself. He had to vent the horror and sadness and disbelief, and felt that if he didn’t do it now, his head would explode.

  When he finally finished crying and dried his eyes on the bottom hem of his Flash T-shirt, he rose to take stock of his situation. As crazy as it all was, he knew his survival depended on him being as rational and cautious as possible. He couldn’t afford to be careless, or deny what was going on. His sane, unremarkable life had been invaded by zombies.

  He almost laughed, thinking it like that, so matter-of-factly. Not a good laughter either. It felt like a terrible, black, crazy laughter. The glee of some unshaven lunatic in a padded cell, laced into a straightjacket with a diaper full of cold shit.

  Mort stuffed his fist in his mouth to stave off the giggles, which were threatening to bubble up out of him any second now. He was certain if he let even one of those giggles escape, he would just keep laughing and laughing and laughing.

  No. He had to be calm. He had to be rational.

  Zombies were on the loose.

  Maybe they weren’t zombies like in the horror flicks, but whatever the citizens of DuChamp had been infected with, their appearance and behavior was one hundred percent B-movie zombie.

  First, Mort assessed his surroundings.

  The street in front of his shop was mostly empty. A couple people who looked kind of dead were shuffling down the center of the avenue. They were either zombies or deeply shocked living human beings-- who were going to be zombie chow really soon if they didn’t shake it off and find some cover. Mort didn’t yell to them to see which it was. He didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention.

  Mort walked to an air conditioning console and sat. He thought for a long time. While he pondered his predicament, he heard the distant, echoing rumble of a jet. He looked up and saw the contrail of the distant aircraft. It should have been an encouraging sight, but for some reason it made him feel sad. It seemed to him, at that moment, that the jet was fleeing. Abandoning his hometown. Abandoning him.

  I want to go home, Mort thought.

  He rested for a little while longer, and then he rose.

  Mort made his way across the rooftops to the end of the block. The buildings here were all main street type constructions with false facades, their roofs at varying heights. He had to climb a service ladder to get to the top of the curving Gym-boree roof, then lower himself about twelve feet to the roof of the art frame shop. He tried to roll his body to absorb some of the impact as he dropped down, but he had never been famous for his grace, and he landed with a meaty thud, skinning both knees and palms. From there he climbed another ladder onto the roof of a small deli, took a running leap across a four foot gap (scared half out of his wits he would not make it) and then he was at the end of the block. He could go no further without crossing the broad back alley that Fred had died in, or the open street, and there were dozens of zombies shuffling around in the street here. Cars zipped past back and forth, weaving in and out of the milling monsters, honking, running over a couple, and the zombies gave chase until the vehicles were out of sight. Breathing heavily, Mort hunkered down to wait for nightfall.

  Throughout the day, cars sped past on the street below, some chased by mobs of zombies, some roaring by unaccosted. Jets flew back and forth across the sky, stitching the clouds together with their exhaust. The pop-pop-pop of gunfire resounded constantly all through the afternoon, some of it distant, some just blocks away. It sounded like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

  As the sun rolled further down the slope of the heavens, headed on toward nightfall, Mort heard a distant, echoing explosion. He felt the bass concussion of the blast in the masonry of the building he was crouched upon. At the same time, car alarms began to tweet and honk and wail across several city blocks. A few minutes later, an oily black cloud billowed into the sky. He heard fire crackling, screams.

  I think that was the Golden Gallon, Mort thought, squinting in the direction of the explosion. It’s where the blast sounded like it came from. He usually filled his car there. More often, though, it was his belly he filled, not his gas tank—on Krispy Kreme donuts, Starbucks cold mocha coffees, chips, and the hot deli food the women who ran the place fried up in the back. They knew him by name.

  The dark stain of smoke hung in the air until night.

  More than a dozen times throughout that day, Mort heard screams and saw living people running through the streets. They never survived long. Mort felt terribly guilty but he knew he couldn’t help them. He shut his eyes and stuffed his fingers in his ears until his fellow citizens had been thoroughly murdered and devoured. Once or twice, he saw other people watching from the rooftops like him. One of them pointed what looked like a handgun in Mort’s direction. Mort dropped to the ground, but the guy never shot. The gunman was gone when Mort finally rose, cautiously, to peek over the ledge of the roof.

  Eventually he came to the realization that he needed to study his foes. So far he had only been observing the chaos. If he wanted to survive this terrible bloodbath, he needed to know how these things behaved. What could and couldn’t they do? What stimuli did they responded to? What needs motivated them?

  Mort watched the zombies the rest of the evening, and by nightfall, could predict how they would behave in different situations. He felt confident of their physical and mental capabilities, and had also figured out what emotions and desires motivated them.

  The zombies were fast and strong, but not supernaturally so. They seemed to have no higher brain functions. They did not reason or remember and displayed only two emotions: rage and hunger. The hunger, of course, was for
living human flesh, particularly internal organs and brain tissue. They wandered around like sleepwalkers until something attracted their attention. If it was a loud noise, they began to drift toward it, moaning. If it was gunfire, the sound of an engine, human voices or screams—anything which suggested a living human being nearby—they zeroed in on it with a single-minded and rapacious focus. The zombies had no mercy. If they got their hands on any living creature, they ate it.

  Usually while it was still kicking and screaming.

  Sometime late that night, when the streets were empty and the gunfire and screams had died off, Mort snuck to the fire escape and eased down the rungs to the alley below. Heart pounding, he crept toward his apartment, hugging the walls of the businesses and apartment buildings standing between him and his home.

  The street lights had come on. He felt terribly exposed in the brilliant arc sodium lighting, but he couldn’t stay on the roof. He’d die of dehydration and exposure. It was a terrible risk to come down from his refuge, to put himself in reach of those horrible, violent things, but he had to get home. Home was shelter and food and water. Home was a barrier he could put between himself and this nightmarish chaos until the authorities could get this plague-- this crazy zombie plague-- under control.

  It didn’t occur to him (not then, anyway) that the authorities might never get the pestilence under control. That control had already been lost, and that it would remain lost. It wouldn’t occur to him until several days later that his old familiar life, his comfortable life, might be gone forever. Not until the TV stations quit broadcasting. Not until the lights went out for good.

  He heard an echoing clang! and froze, his heart jumping into his throat.

  A zombie moaned. It was a low, hoarse, mournful sound. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up. Somewhere close, but where?

  Mort tried to locate the monster in the shadows. He checked the recessed doorways of all the businesses that lined the street, the lightless throats of the alleys, but he couldn’t see it.