by Jack Wallen
Since that moment, I haven’t loved. I haven’t even given myself the opportunity to love. I buried myself in my work with the sole intent of losing all trace of her memory. My past was going to disappear simply so I wouldn’t hurt.
And now, in the one and only moment I was vulnerable enough to actually allow it to bubble back up, I was faced with what could be my death.
I wasn’t sure if it was because the memory had been stirred, or if it was just the fear that had so tightly gripped my heart, which was pounding in my throat, but I suddenly realized I had been holding my breath.
I had to exhale. I wanted to gasp out and suck in a deep breath. I knew if I did that it would be all over. Like a trained monk, I ever so slowly blew out the stale air that had filled my lungs, and then sucked in fresh. I couldn’t tell if I had made a sound.
“Feet” turned so that he pointed toward the truck and took two steps forward. He was so close I could hear his ragged breathing, or reach out and grab an ankle. The tendons and muscles in his ankles were flexing as if they would snap. The thing roared again, and then, shocking me into near-paralysis, he pushed on the truck. It rocked back and forth but didn’t move out of its current position. Then he stopped and just breathed. An eerie silence filled the void.
Just when I thought my own personal hell couldn’t get any worse, a buzzing sound started emanating from my pants. It caused the thing standing just beyond my reach to let loose a horrific roar and violently rock the truck back and forth. Another howl came from above. When the rocking stopped and the howling echo ceased, there was only one sound to be heard―my phone.
Fuck.
The feet shifted as if they could hear the sound. I shot my hand to my pocket and fumbled around until I felt the volume button. I quickly silenced the phone. The feet stopped shifting. I was surely about to vomit up my quick-beating heart.
My hand came up for air with my phone attached. With one hand, I popped the cover off to make sure the mute was still on. Yep. My finger shakily slid across the touch screen to unlock the phone. The upper left corner indicated I had a signal. Thank God the falling ash wasn’t causing any interference with mobile signals. I was shocked the apocalypse hadn’t killed everything that lived and breathed. Thanks to the great God of electricity, I would hopefully connect with another living human being. There are miracles.
“Feet” was still standing within licking distance so I couldn’t make a call. All I could do was type. My finger nervously tapped the Twitter application icon. The application opened and asked if it could use my current location. Of course it could use my current location! Sometimes I felt the term “smart phone” was not even remotely fitting.
I tapped my answer and went directly to the options screen. I set the application to follow anyone within ten miles of my current location. I figured there was sure to be a fellow nerd out there still alive.
Instantly, users popped up!
Thomas> Sheize!
v@mpire>jedermann heraus dort?
Susan> need help!
Susan> dad? anyone?
Susan> what is happening? Im scared.
My fear made typing a challenge. I tapped on the user ‘Susan’ and replied:
Jacob> where r u?
After what seemed like eons, Susan replied:
Susan> hotel
Jacob> Which one?
Susan> amriot…Marriott
It never ceased to amaze me how Americanized the world really was. American culture had infected so many countries. The minute you thought you’d escaped from the rot that had eaten away at the fabric of the United States, you realized it was everywhere! Marriott. She could have been staying at some quaint German B&B, but instead the good ol’ American Way forced its hand.
But at the same time, there was a certain comfort in finding familiarity thousands of miles from home and inches away from what seems like the living dead.
Jacob> Don’t know where that is.
Susan> Going to kill us.
Jacob> Who?
Susan> dont know…plez hurry!!!!
Wasn’t that just grand? My heroics were requested by strangers on a micro-blogging app, and I wouldn’t be able to get to those actual living humans because the Grim Reaper was standing a few inches from my fucking face!
So, I did what any hero in my situation would do – I lied.
Jacob> On my way!
But, as soon as the owner of the feet took his leave, I would find that hotel and play said hero.
Susan> hurry!
Jacob> How many are there?
Susan took her time in replying. I wasn’t sure if she was a slow counter, typist, or what.
Susan> Alive or dead?
What an odd question. Why would I care how many were dead? The dead weren’t a threat to her life.
Jacob> what?
Susan> u want 2 know how many alive or how many attacking me?
I was really confused. Maybe it was the means by which we were communicating, but Susan wasn’t making much sense.
Jacob> What are you talking about?
Susan> Living or ZOMBIES?
Zombies. Surely she didn’t think―
I heard a woman screaming as the feet leaped away from the truck and landed by another pair of feet, only the new pair had shoes, high heels, to be exact. There it was, right in front of me, another living human. I fought down the urge to slip out from under the truck and either introduce myself or save the woman.
The two pair of feet started struggling. It wasn’t actually much of a struggle before the wearer of the heels came crashing to the ground. Her face landed so that she was looking right at me where I hid under the truck. There was, however, no life left in her green-apple eyes.
I finally got an all-too-close look at the face attached to the bare feet. Whoever it was came down on the now-dead woman and, to my shock, started tearing at the flesh on her neck with his teeth. I was witnessing a human being violently eating another human being.
This could not be real.
Whoever, or whatever, it was male, and one ugly-ass male at that. He looked like he had been yanked right out of a Nosferatu film with his nearly transparent skin stretched over his hairless skull. The blue veins peeking out proved one can look dead but still move and…eat.
Blood was seeping out of the woman from everywhere. Her heart had obviously stopped because the blood wasn’t pumping, just seeping. The blood oozed through her lifeless veins, the deep-red, life-giving liquid slowly pouring out.
The man-thing sat up, seemingly finished dining on the woman’s body. But then his hands grabbed the woman’s head and started cracking it on the ground. The sound was a thick, wet thunk. I thought maybe he would stop slamming her skull when he realized she was dead, but he didn’t. Soon, I could hear the skull bones begin to crack open. The cracking sound morphed into a wet thud as gray matter started spilling out. His fingers reached into a crack in the skull and pulled apart the bone.
And then something happened I will never forget. The fingers reached deeper into the skull and scooped out the woman’s brains as if they were poi. Slurping sounds… Oh, God! He was licking the brain-poi from his fingers! Next, the man pressed his death-blue lips against the hole in her brain-pan and started sucking. The poor woman was being devoured from the inside out.
I had to get away from this freak show, but I knew the instant I moved those lips would somehow find their way to my own skull. I was not about to become a slushy for the damned.
The slurping sounds continued. I just wanted to either hand this man a spoon or poke out my ear drums. Fortunately, the slurp-fest didn’t last long. The thing finished his meal and stood up. Gore rained down from above and splashed at his feet. The smell was caustic. I could have really used a good ol’ fashioned puke.
The beast let out a truck-shaking roar. I wasn’t sure if he was howling in triumph or if his meal failed to sate his appetite. It didn’t matter because the feet finally lumbered away from the truck. I was left staring
at the hollowed-out skull of the woman in the heels. A frightened, child-like part of me wanted to reach out and touch the woman, put my fingertip to her cerebral cortex. I wanted to confirm that what had just happened was real, and not some sick nightmare.
I didn’t reach out. Either fear or revulsion stopped my arm from stretching to meet the woman’s cold flesh. I was glad for that. That puke most certainly would have manifested had I done so. And in the puking, I would have certainly called the beast back to the truck for another course of brain.
I remained in silence, hidden (I hoped) under the truck. I closed my eyes and tried to get the image of the broken woman out of my mind. It didn’t work. That image would remain, most likely forever.
The buzz of my phone brought me out of my trance.
Susan> Jacob?
My damsel in distress. The horror show had momentarily blocked her cries for help from my mind.
Jacob> On my way!
My trembling finger pecked out the message before I pulled myself out from under the truck. The woman had been carrying a purse, and as much as it sickened me, I knew I had to check the confines of the handbag to see if there was anything that might save a life, or help me in any way to get out of this hell.
Bingo! The bag was holding a phone, not a smartphone, but it had a full charge. It also contained a can of pepper spray, a wallet with some cash, a compact mirror, a pair of nail trimmers, and a couple of tampons, which I figured would be good for bloody noses in a pinch. I left the various items that I deemed useless to my cause.
With a silent ‘thank you’ to the fallen lady, I quickly sped off in search of the Munich Marriott Hotel. It couldn’t be that difficult to find. Seriously, wasn’t one Marriott the same as another―even if spelled with an umlaut? The language barrier was nothing, and considering most of the city’s inhabitants were dead, or whatever state you could call it, I shouldn’t have a problem wending my way through the throngs.
But then there was the fact that I had no idea where I was. So truth be told, finding a particular Marriott that housed a perfect stranger who was communicating with me through a micro-blogging phone application made this mission seem more than impossible.
I looked around to see if there were any tell-tale signs of hotels. I saw nothing. The cloud of ash hanging in the air didn’t help my cause. I was in a city that resembled any other big city in the world―only the language was unfamiliar. I was sure that after some searching I could find the hotel, but would it be too late?
To expedite the process, I pulled my phone back out and launched the application I had used to communicate with Susan. Why not do a little testing to find out just how close the girl is? Within the application’s settings, I could configure it to only follow users within a certain radius. Initially, I had set the application for a ten-mile radius so I could see as many people as possible. I decided to change that to a smaller radius so I could narrow down just how close Susan was.
5 mile radius. Still there.
2 mile radius. Still there.
1 mile radius. Still there.
So somewhere within a mile radius was the Marriott in question. If I had the address, I could look it up with the Maps application. Before I could ask Susan to get me an address, she sent:
Susan> hurry plez!
Susan didn’t need to further describe her plight. If her nightmare was anything close to what I had just witnessed, there was probably little time to waste.
I chose a direction based on the layout of the city. One way led to a higher concentration of buildings. The probability of a corporate favorite like Marriott being located in the middle of a high-traffic zone made perfect sense. I followed my instincts and took off in that direction.
It should have been easy, but with the streets lined with stopped cars and the sidewalks covered with dead bodies, navigation, especially of the rushed kind, was no easy feat.
After about fifteen minutes I stopped and checked my phone. If I hadn’t seen the hotel, and Susan was still within a one-mile range, I would have narrowed my search down to two directions. There was no hotel in the immediate vicinity, and Susan was still within one mile. I knew I had to circle back to the left or to the right. Without pausing to think, I turned to the right.
After walking for about two minutes, I heard a crashing sound followed by a large cloud of dust just ahead of where I had stopped. The dust wasn’t so much a cloud as it was an artificial funnel of falling ash swirled about by something.
When the cloud finally dissipated, there were several of the sour-milk-skinned people swaying side-to-side in the street. They were all moaning in unison. It was surreal. Romero meets Alvin Ailey.
The things had to have seen me. I was standing alone in the middle of the sidewalk. Each of the moaners had an unobstructed view. But except for that strange, rhythmic swaying, they didn’t move. They just stood there, staring and gently rocking back and forth, the gray ash falling between us. The only sound was the cattle-like thrum of their moans. Time seemed to stand still. In polar opposition to my heartbeat, my breathing slowed to near stopping. My vision grew tunnel-like, focusing on the group.
With the help of my newly tunneled vision, I beheld my destination, just past the moaning chorus. The Marriott logo was like a beacon to a lost ship. Unfortunately, separating me and my goal was this group of things, far too similar to the one I had just seen dining on the brains of another human being. I could turn around and ignore the fact that Susan had contacted me and asked for my help. I could, but I wouldn’t.
Fuck!
All I had to do was sneak around the moaners without them seeing me. But the damn things were staring right at me! I waved at them. Nothing. I jumped up and down. Nothing.
“Hey! Over here!” I yelled as I waved my hands above my head.
“Shit, that did it.” They snapped out of their trance. Their moans seemed to call out to me, beckoning me toward them. Slowly and awkwardly, the group began stumbling my way.
As I briefly watched their progress, I realized these moaners weren’t exactly carbon copies of those in any given classic zombie film. They moved at normal speeds, but moved without purpose and seemingly without the full capacity of their senses, almost as if they were blind. But the bastards could hear. With that in mind, I was able to creep across to the other side of the street and watch as the moaners moved forward under the assumption I was still in my original spot. I wanted to laugh when they reached the mark and swung their arms out to grasp only air, but I held it in to keep from giving away my new location. Instead, I focused my attention toward the Marriott and headed in that direction while taking care to walk silently.
That silence was suddenly broken by my phone. It was Susan texting me again.
Susan> i hear them now.
Jacob> Who do you hear?
It was hard to text while trying to avoid stepping or tripping on something that might give away my location. The task was only made more challenging by the tiny keyboard on my phone.
Susan> them. NO NO NO NO!
She was panicking. I had to get to her before they did. Of course, by they, I was certain she had her own pack of moaners to deal with.
Shit, shit, shit!
Distracted by texting Susan, I was surprised by another moaner. The thing was in the middle of the sidewalk, facing me and moaning.
“Where in the fuck did you come from?” I spoke as if the thing might actually answer.
With another moan, the monster swung out its arm in an attempt to hit me. When the thing’s fist contacted with nothing but air, the moaner lurched forward and moaned again, this time louder. It seemed like the thing was trying to summon its buddies to help bring me down.
I started walking backward when something tripped up my legs and took me down.
“Goddamn it, who left the dead girl in the middle of the fucking sidewalk?” I screamed.
Another moaner joined the fray and tried to kick my skull in. The Handbook of the Damned had never said the first
thing about zombies kicking. Fortunately I was able to roll out of the way, get to my feet, and take off running. A quick glance over my shoulder informed me the moaners were trying to pursue, but they were quickly getting left behind.
When the distance was great enough to slow down, I let my lungs and heart catch up. That whole scene should not have happened. I had to start paying close attention to everything around me. If I am going to survive this zombie attack―
Wait…zombies? I didn’t mean that. These weren’t zombies. They couldn’t be zombies. The very word zombie is reserved for B-horror and motorcycle gangs, not reality. Zombies were for Goth girls to sex-kitten up and novelists to run into the ground. Zombies were simply not real.
But if they weren’t zombies, then what were they? The human mind has to categorize everything. If I didn’t classify these things, I would go mad even faster than I already was. But how did one fit what I was seeing into a box? How did I give whatever the fuck had become the de facto standard replacement for humans here in Munich a label?
Anyway, back to the task at hand.
Chapter 6: Susan
I managed to completely escape the moaners and finally reached the glorious Munich Marriott! It should have been no surprise that, just like everywhere else, dead was the overriding fashion. I sent Susan a message and waited for her reply. I refused to believe anything had happened to her. While waiting, I discovered I had developed a strange twitch over my eye. At first, I assumed it was nerves, but then I thought it might be the crater in my cheek healing. The wound was itching like a son of a bitch. I needed a doctor in the worst way.
My phone buzzed again.
Susan> still here.
Jacob> I’m here now. Where are you?
Susan> 10 floor rm 1011
Jacob> On my way.
Susan> floor full of em.
Well, that just rained on my heroic parade. How in the hell was I supposed to save the beautiful maiden when the castle was surrounded by the evil horde? That was a bad metaphor. The castle itself wasn’t actually surrounded by the evil horde. In fact, the front entrance was wide open, not a moaner in sight. I could easily waltz right in.
