Mort

by Rod Redux

  To be more precise, he dreamed that he was visiting the plant when it blew up.

  In his dream, he was a teenager again. This was the grade school version of Mort: chubby, unpopular, face like a pepperoni pizza, with b-cup titties and a belly that hung out over the waist band of his blue jeans. A living, breathing KICK ME sign. He was in junior high and his school had driven all the seventh and eighth graders to the nuclear power plant on the north side of town as part of Ronald Reagan’s “Nuclear Power is Your Friend” public service program, the nuclear power industry’s pithy attempt to reach out to the U.S.’s nuclear power communities and allay their fears following the Chernobyl disaster.

  His dad, who was still fifteen years away from dying during a triple bypass operation, had scrawled his name on the permission form. Mort remembered because his dad was monging on a banana when he did it and got banana goo on the paper, which for some reason, bothered Mort tremendously.

  So they toured the facility, approximately sixty giggling, grabassing, know-it-all teenagers, paying little attention to the tour guide’s canned speech and secretly rolling their eyes and cutting jokes at the expense of all the goofy, grinning, uncool adults who ran the power plant.

  When the tour had come to an end, the perky tour guide—a petite brunette with a ponytail—asked the DuChamp junior high schoolers if anyone had any questions. Before he could stop himself, Mort spoke up: “Yeah. So could this place blow up like Chernobyl?”

  The entire group fell silent. About half of the seventh and eighth graders looked at Mort. The other half, including the teachers, looked at the tour guide. Mort felt his cheeks heat up at all the stares. The tour guide’s grin grew just slightly brittle before she answered.

  “Like Chernobyl? Um, no. The Chernobyl disaster is something that just isn’t going to happen here in the United States. For one thing, the incident at Chernobyl was triggered by a very unlikely set of circumstances. An unauthorized experiment was being conducted and, unlike nuclear power plants in the United States, the Soviet power plant did not have any form of hard containment vessel should some type of accident occur.”

  “But what would happen if, say, all the people disappeared and there was nobody left to run the plant?” Mort continued. “Would it blow up then?”

  The tour guide laughed, relieved that her questioner had veered so quickly into the realm of make-believe. “Well, if everybody in the world just disappeared”—she said, making quotation marks with her fingers—“The emergency diesel generators would kick in and continue to cool the reactor core for about a week. After that, the cooling system would eventually fail, and the plant might melt down, but the energy would still be contained within the power plant’s nuclear containment shielding.”

  “Even in a worse case scenario,” the tour guide continued. “The reactor core would melt down through the floor and continue to burrow through the earth’s mantle until it cooled or struck some type of water table. In any event, the core would be safely shielded, by the plant’s structure, or by the planetary crust.”

  Everyone seemed very impressed and reassured by her answer. Both the teens and adults nodded and smiled at one another, but Mort was not so comforted. He’d overheard his mother and father discussing the Three-Mile Island incident, which had taken place in the US in the late seventies. His parents had protested this very plant’s construction in DuChamp when Mort was in pre-school, and failing to halt its construction, maintained a simmering paranoia regarding the nuclear power plant that ran their appliances and cooled their home in the summer. Mort’s dad, who had grown up in Pennsylvania, sometimes joked when he was in his cups that the radiation he’d been exposed to when he was in high school was the reason he had such a gigantic schlong, but it was one of those jokes that sprang from a person’s subconscious anxiety more than any real humor.

  As they were being escorted out of the plant in his dream, Mort noticed that a pipe was leaking and brought it to the tour leader’s attention. The pipe had a chink in it and hot, bubbling water was splattering out with a rattling raspberry sound. “If it’s so safe, lady, then what about this?” he had asked.

  The tour guide looked horrified. “Oh no!” she cried. “Everybody run!”

  But it was too late. In his dream, the plant exploded. Hot steam enveloped his class mates, broiling the skin on their bones. Flying debris chopped his teachers and the perky tour guide into bloody chunks. Ms. Hancock, his pre-algebra teacher, was skewered by a flying piece of piping with such force that she was affixed to the wall behind her, legs quivering. Then the radiation blossomed out of the shuddering walls, red and hot like the light that comes from an electric heater. Mort felt the fluid in his eyeballs boiling. He looked down at his hands and saw his skin bubbling, great blisters welling up and bursting.

  Mort jerked awake with a snort. He found himself bolt upright in his bed.

  He recalled that long ago tour guide answering his hypothetical long ago question: “Well, if everybody in the world just disappeared, the emergency diesel generators would kick in and continue to cool the reactor core for about a week.”

  For about a week…

  Mort packed a bag and departed the next day. He figured it would take three or four days to get out of the city on foot. Maybe a day to wind his way through the pileups and abandoned vehicles if he found a ride. The city’s power was still on, which was a good sign. It meant someone was still manning the power plant… but how long could they hold out?

  He didn’t want to stick around and find out.

  Maybe he was being overly cautious. He was probably just being ol’ Paranoid Mort once again. Order might be restored, the zombies dealt with, and the power plant’s safety features never put to the test, but Mort was a firm believer in Murphy’s Law. His father always said, “Shit happens… and shit stinks.” Mort suspected that things in DuChamp—things all over the world, actually—were just going to keep sliding deeper into the tar pit. The lights would go out, and a week after that, give or take a few days, the plant would melt down.

  So he watched the street from his apartment window, and when it looked like it was staying pretty clear, he left his home and crept out to the sidewalk and made his way like a cautious little mouse down the block, headed south. He slipped from doorway to alley, hunkering down behind wrecked cars, taking whatever cover he could find. Along the way, he checked the abandoned vehicles for keys, and barring that, anything that might be useful as a weapon. He got lucky pretty quick.

  A couple blocks from his apartment, he found a crowbar in the open trunk of a gray Ford Taurus that had crashed into the brick wall of a dollar store. The driver of the car had been flung partially through the windshield. He’d also been eaten from the waist up.

  Mort hefted the crowbar. He liked the weight of it in his hands and continued on.

  A few blocks past that, he chanced upon a Frito-Lay truck with keys in the ignition. The delivery truck was parked neatly at the curb. The driver, a woman with curly bottle blonde hair, sat slumped back in her seat. She hadn’t been killed by zombies, Mort found. She’d slit her own throat with a box cutter.

  Mort was getting ready to haul her out of her seat so he could take her place when he heard soft, bubbly breathing behind him.

  The hairs standing up on the back of his neck, Mort turned to see where the phlegmatic exhalations were coming from.

  A few yards away, a very large and very zombified Rottweiler was creeping toward him. Its black and tan fur had fallen out in clumps. Its milky eyes marked Mort for death. Foam drooled from its thick, ugly muzzle as it padded slowly toward him. If it hadn’t been in such an advanced state of putrefaction, it would probably have been quick enough to take Mort down before he could do anything, but the beast had died days ago, and death had ravaged its soft tissues, making it slow and stiff and clumsy.

  As Mort clambered into the Frito-Lay truck, moaning a little in horror, the Rottweiler leapt.

  Mort swung the crowbar down with panicky strength
, striking the huge dog in the head. He managed to get his feet in the delivery truck and slam the door shut before the animal could attack again.

  The Rottweiler drove its head against the side of the truck. A moment later, it began to bark: hoarse, loud. Its baying was answered a second later by the howl of a human zombie.

  Mort was sitting in the dead blonde’s lap. The smell of her corpse was atrocious. He tried to shove her out of the seat, but he couldn’t budge her. He thought for a second that she had adhered to the seat in the dried glaze of her own blood, then realized she was still buckled.

  Mort yelped as a zombie ran full tilt at the truck and slapped its hands against the window. It was a male, still fresh and strong, with coppery curls and a big hunk of skin missing from his cheek. A bite. He must have survived a zombie attack, only to become infected himself. The curly-headed zombie slapped his palms against the glass twice more, howling madly.

  Trembling, Mort scooted around in the blonde’s lap and keyed the ignition. The engine caught, then died with a shudder an instant later. He tried again with the same result. He finally thought to check the instruments and saw with horror that the needle of the fuel gauge was pointing toward E.

  Empty!

  “No!” Mort cried. “No! No! No! Oh you stupid fat idiot!”

  The howls of the curly headed zombie had attracted more deadheads to the stalled truck. Two, three, four came pelting around the corner. The Rottweiler continued to bark. The zombies howled and snarled and shrieked. They scratched at the sides of the truck. They pawed the windows, trying to scratch their way in. Mort locked the door just in case one of them accidentally hooked the door handle with their flailing fingers, then slid from the dead driver’s lap into the floorboard and put his face in his hands.

  “You’re dead, Mort,” he said to himself in disbelief. “You just killed yourself.”

  One mistake. He’d made one mistake…

  But in Zombie World, one mistake is all you got.

  Mort blinked up at the driver as he sat in the floorboard. She had once been a pretty, middle-aged woman. Mid-forties, thin, her face a little too wrinkled from tanning, with a narrow nose and a sharp prow of a chin. She looked like one of those bittersweet blondes that life always seemed to cure into female beef jerky. The kind of woman who drank too much or smoked too much and couldn’t help but fall for bad boys, no matter how many times they’d burned her.

  She’d cut her throat from ear to ear. Her final grimace of pain was stamped forever now on her lipsticked lips. The front of her uniform was pitchy with dried blood. The boxcutter was still in her hand.

  She had nice fingernails, Mort noted. French manicure, like his mother always got.

  He thought about taking that boxcutter from her bony, stiff fingers and doing himself a similar favor.

  She’d probably made just the one mistake, too, he thought. She’d forgot to fill up the delivery truck whatever morning she’d died. He wondered how long she’d sat in the truck, trapped by the hungry dead, before she decided to off herself.

  It hadn’t been long ago, because she was not too bloated or smelly.

  Mort jumped as more zombies drummed the side of the truck.

  “Shut up!” he screeched at the howling revenants.

  Within an hour, there was something like fifty zombies surrounding the van, banging the doors, scraping at the windows with their ragged, bony fingers. Mort got some chips from the back and opened them, eating the salty snack glumly. He looked out at the zombies as he munched.

  When he was full, he took the boxcutter from the blonde’s stiff fingers and put the blade to his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut and screamed.

  He couldn’t do it!

  He threw the boxcutter down, tears beading on his eyelashes.

  Coward!

  A second later, two gunshots.

  Mort jerked as the gunshots echoed in the air. The zombies quit howling and pummeling the delivery truck for a moment. Mort raised up. Peeking out the driver’s side window and over the heads of the surrounding zombies, Mort spotted the newcomer. It was man. The guy stood on the corner across the street, legs slightly spread, holding a shotgun in his hands. He was a lanky fellow, with shoulder-length feathered blonde hair and broad shoulders. Dressed in tight, straight-leg jeans, a blue Chambray shirt and cowboy boots, Mort’s rescuer grinned and fired another shot in the air. He looked every inch the hero. The sun flashed off expensive aviator sunglasses.

  “Come on, you goddam zombies!” the man yelled. “Why don’t you pick on someone yer own size!”

  Mort heard the words clearly, for the zombies had fallen silent. Perhaps, in their own dim way, the deadheads were just as impressed as Mort at the man’s reckless bravery.

  As the zombies began to drift toward him, Mort’s rescuer backed away, pumping another round into the sky. The zombies began to howl then and, in a group, gave chase. The blonde man fired one last shot, this one aimed dead center in the approaching mob. It must have been some kind of buckshot, because the round took down several of the stumbling deadheads. A couple of the zombies were knocked right off their feet.

  With a half-mad whoop of excitement, Mort’s rescuer turned tail and fled.

  Fast as the zombies could be in their desperate hunger, Mort’s hero was faster. A veritable Mercury, the lanky fellow shagged ass to the end of the block, then turned and waited for the deadheads to come closer. Mort watched in stunned disbelief as almost the entirety of the revenants surrounding the delivery truck abandoned their trapped quarry to give chase to the newcomer. Even the Rottweiler took after the blonde with the shotgun, trotting away from the van with a ragged, limping gate.

  The guy in the cowboy boots fired into the mob and sprinted around the corner of a building, vanishing from sight.

  Mort would have fled then if all the zombies had departed, but there were still three left clawing at the windows of the Frito-Lay truck. Gripping his crowbar anxiously, he tried to convince himself to get out of the vehicle and make a break for it.

  Just as Mort was screwing up his courage to reach for the door handle, to make his bid for escape, the lanky blonde came around the far corner of the building and pelted toward the delivery truck.

  One of the zombies that had stayed behind finally noticed Mort’s rescuer. It was a humped and desiccated woman with a great mane of permed black hair. The deadhead took three tottering steps toward the blonde in the aviator sunglasses, fingers reaching out to grab hold of him, but before she could come close, Mort’s deliverer leveled the shotgun at her and blew her out of her Crocs.

  “Hurry and come out, honey!” Mort’s rescuer called. “We gotta git while the gittin’s good!”

  Mort fumbled the door open and spilled out onto the street.

  “Wha?” the blonde gawped, recoiling in surprise. He looked past Mort into the cab of the delivery truck. “Where’s the chick?” he asked, his upper lip curled.

  “Dead,” Mort said.

  “Dead? Shit! It’s just you in there?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Shit!”

  The blonde in the cowboy boots swung a kick at the sidewalk, looking disgusted. Up close, his handsomeness was astounding. He had high cheekbones, squinty blue-gray eyes and full, sensuous lips. Mort wasn’t attracted to other men sexually, but he was momentarily stunned by his rescuer’s good looks. The man was a movie star. The kind teenage girls swooned over. The kind their mom’s fantasized about while their dads sweated and bounced up above. In comparison, Mort felt like the fattest, ugliest man in the world.

  Another zombie shuffled toward them from the far side of the delivery truck. A geriatric in a hospital gown. Mort turned and clubbed him down with his crowbar. The old man fell, growling and foaming at the mouth. Mort clubbed him again and again until he fell still.

  His rescuer, meanwhile, was walking in a circle with his hands on his hips, disgusted and angry that Mort was Mort and not the buxom blonde he’d been hoping for. He cursed some more, k
icked the front wheel of the truck. Finally, he forced himself to calm down. Closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  The mob of zombies that had chased Mort’s rescuer around the block were beginning to clear the far side of the building. Zombies weren’t very bright though. About half of them seemed to have forgotten what they were chasing and were trotting off in random directions, still howling and waving their arms.

  “Damn it all,” Mort’s rescuer muttered. “Well, come on, fatso. If you don’t want to die, follow me. And try to keep up. I ain’t waiting on you.”

  With that, the blonde in the cowboy boots and aviator sunglasses took off in a sprint. Mort followed.

  The farther down the street they ran, the further Mort fell behind. He could feel his gut and his man-tits bouncing up and down with each footfall. His lungs burned. Sweat poured down his face and neck and torso. He could hear the howls of the pursuing mob growing louder and louder.

  Despite his threat to leave Mort behind, the blonde had paused at the mouth of a narrow alley. He waited impatiently for Mort to catch up, tapping a foot and waving him on.

  “Come on, lardbutt! Move!” he yelled.

  Mort called him every foul name he could think of… in his head. Aloud, he gusted, “I’m trying!”

  He caught up with Cowboy Boots. Midway down the alley was a descending flight of steps that led to a sub ground steel door. The blonde pelted down the steps and whisked through the entrance. Mort panted right behind him. As soon as Mort plodded through the entrance, the blonde slammed the door and barred it with a two-by-four. They both crouched down and waited.

  Mort was wheezing and huffing. He coughed.

  “Quiet!” the blonde hissed.

  Mort tried to slow his breathing but he was too winded. He’d never really been—by even the most creative stretch of the imagination—a fit person, and he’d spent the last week hiding in his apartment, getting zero exercise and living off his stock of potato chips, Little Debbie cakes and canned meats. Mort’s face was red and splotchy, and his clothes bore large rings of sweat. He backed away from the steel door, mouth working like a fish out of water, trying to catch his breath. He propped his butt against a bare cinderblock wall, chest heaving, and put his hands on his knees.