by James, Guy
Javon would’ve taken up boxing and beat up Omari four more times. It was the older boy’s fault, really, he was three years Javon’s senior and was always egging him on. Javon was happy to oblige what seemed to be Omari’s masochistic desire to have the shit kicked out of him by a younger kid. He’d happily do the kicking with a shrug and a grin and a one-two combo that he was perfecting. He loved to fight.
After having his own nose broken in the boxing game twice, Javon veered onto a different course and became, to the shock and delight of his family, obsessed with the written word. He began to read and read and read, stopping only when his eyes were on fire or his vision blurred. The alcohol pixie that had been trying to get her Caribou Lou back, frustrated that Steve Reginald wouldn’t budge, was more than pleased to alight on his son’s shoulder, and after she landed there and dug in her claws, she guided his journey well.
Together with her assigned human at last, she gave him the gift of the quill or something like that and then he was a high-functioning alcoholic high school English teacher by day and high-flying writer by night. He wrote a book about a boy that was based loosely on his own life. It was called Apartment 429, and it became an American classic.
It would even be read by high school English students as part of the curriculum in some schools, where the teachers and students alike would ascribe all kinds of non-existent and unintended meanings to the straightforward events of his story. He was a visionary writer, an artist at the craft even, but after that first book, he found he had nothing left to write about.
The story he’d told was the only one he’d ever wanted to. He kept teaching English, the only thing he loved more than being alone with a book, and ended his life a bourbon-laced suicide at the age of fifty-three after some great years of teaching and contented bachelordom. Nothing if not a perfectionist in his later years, he took the belt and suspenders approach, throwing sleeping pills—the strongest he could convince his doctor to give him—into his bourbon filled belly, and then putting a pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger.
The shot made short work of his brain stem, so he needn’t have taken the extra pharmaceutical precaution, but, better safe than sorry. After his death, the book he’d written became a fly-off-the-shelf sensation, people’s renewed interest in it fueled by morbid curiosity, as if they thought they could read his words and understand why he’d killed himself and avoid the same fate, or perhaps end up the same way, or something. Maybe people just liked to stare at other people’s pain.
But, as you know, none of that ever happened, because the virus didn’t let it. The virus cut short Deja’s and Javon’s lives just like it did those of most of the people in the world, and with it was taken the pain and suffering that was yet to be lived, but also the joy and laughter, and the great art of those like Javon.
43
“Fuck Caribou Lou and his fucking bootstraps,” Yooooo Maurice would mutter when the speech was haunting him up in the still swanky but increasingly crusty brokerage house, unaware that Caribou Lou was dead but sure that the piece of big-talking filth in his eternal drunken stupor would never amount to anything, could never amount to anything. But, no matter how many times he said it, he usually couldn’t get the words of the homeless tosspot out of his head.
And those damn words of Lou’s came back to him now, and in response he was forced to mutter, by rote: “Fuck Caribou Lou and his fucking bootstraps.” Like he was a robot or something.
He’d been right not to listen. Of course he’d been right. He was already on his drug-dealing path at that point, what was he supposed to do differently? Why would one who was so set stray?
And what if he’d acted on Caribou Lou’s words of supposed wisdom, if the words of a homeless blotto could be called that, then what? What would Yooooo Maurice have done, saved enough drug and welfare money to buy presentable clothes, gotten a job making sandwiches or bussing tables somewhere, gotten off of welfare, and gone back to school?
What the fuck for, to rejoin society to be a broke nobody? Sure, he could’ve gotten away from his drug dealer friends and the treats they doled out for cold hard cash, and then he could’ve become the first in his immediate family—none of whom he knew, but he assumed their schooling was subpar by the standards of those who had any, schooling or standards—to graduate from high school, and then from college. But, again, what the fuck for pray tell?
He was a businessman at heart, always had been and always would be, and that didn’t require any schooling at all. All he needed was the right opportunity, and the outbreak was just that. Even after he’d risen high enough in the gang ranks and made enough money dealing, he wanted more, but he’d hit a glass ceiling. And what do you do when you hit a ceiling made of glass?
You put that shit in your pipe and smoke it and tweak until it’s all run out, and then there’s no more glass, and the ceiling is gone, and you’re above where it used to be.
And he didn’t even need to do that, because the virus did it for him. It put more than the glass in the Krok pipe, though, it put most of the world into it, along with the gang hierarchy and the customers too.
Even before the outbreak tore up the Bronx with its gnashing of teeth, he could sense that something was changing. The foul odor in the air that he was used to had changed. It was still foul, to be sure, it was the Bronx, which had the misfortune to be stuck to the rest of the island of Manhattan with its Wall Street banker and Midtown lawyer stench wafting north into the projects where brothas were just trying to make a living, you know wh’ I’m saying?
There was a new smell in it, not quite worse, but not an improvement either. It was just different.
It was the virus registering in the sweat of the bipedal things—bankers, lawyers, brothas, and sistas too, the virus didn’t discriminate—it took just before it turned them into life-sized, but very dead indeed, Xerox machines that would replicate it.
Replicate, replicate, replicate, ejaculate! And don’t rinse, but do repeat.
Except it was saliva and blood instead of semen. The white stuff probably would’ve worked too, just about any zombie part or bodily fluid did the trick, so long as it was put inside of an uninfected human, but the virus had ruled out sexual transmission as inefficient, too slow, no time for foreplay, no time. Go for the neck and belly and tear at the soft parts with your slobbering teeth.
Then the virus picked up. The replicators and saliva-spewing robots doubled, tripled, quadrupled, spread like domino wild fires eating up brown grass, and there was a damn lot of the brown stuff, limitless fields of it that had been popping up relentlessly out of itself until then.
Had the scratching in his brain shell become a whispering by then? Almost, but not quite yet. The scurrying in his skull was definitely louder, and more…purposeful. It was already showing him how to move, how to go unnoticed among those infected—or was the right term blessed?—by the virus.
It was as if he were the foreplay that was missing, going as he did between the zombies, stirring them slightly, but never taking their attention away from the task of finding uninfected humans, not counting him. He knew when to walk, when to stop, when to run, and most important of all, when to become deathly still.
And it had showed him how to make it into the brokerage rooms of Landry, Davis, and Pullman, who were undeniably great because their names were on something. In spite of that, the virus hadn’t spared them from their ultimate fate.
There were waves upon waves of zombies in the Bronx, and Manhattan, and all of New York, but he remained untouched, staying comfortably out of their reach. He could’ve stayed there up high, or anywhere in the City, really, and lived out the rest of his days like that. There was a ton of canned food in the grocery stores to eat, and that would last a while—it helped that the zombies didn’t eat anything—and there were plenty of places to stay if he got tired of the executive washrooms. That was just how it was, seeing as how all the former indoor dwellers now preferred to wander the great, though paved b
ut soon-to-be riddled with weeds, outdoors.
The walkers were searching for more prey, which was quickly running out, as if it were an evaporating drop of dew and each passing day were a fifteen minute interval of growing summer sunlight, and the sun was growing ever brighter, turning the world into a suffocating mire that served the virus, and the virus alone.
44
The words.
They’d come at last, soothing but also commanding like a guiding lover who didn’t know the word ‘no’ existed. He was told everything, and then he was no longer any of his former selves, but Brother Mardu, and perhaps, if the words were to be believed—and they had to be, there was no choice when it came to that—no longer a man at all.
In no uncertain terms, he was told the what, how, why, and when of what to do. The who—the who that would help him to do all of this, which was an insurmountable feat for Brother Mardu alone, was left to him. To do it, he needed a robust following, and the terms of putting that together were entirely his to decide.
Lie to them, tell them the truth, force them, persuade them, fuck them into submission, it didn’t make a difference to his master, so long as the job got done.
Mardu chose an attack on multiple fronts, but devoted most of his resources to the truth, as he’d been told it by the voice, singular, in his head. People who heard voices were crazy, confused. He heard one voice only, and it spoke of reality.
And so Brother Mardu had ordered the Order into existence, and thus it had followed, the obedient offspring of his mind, his new bitch who would help him execute on the words that were playing in his head. He needed one, too.
Now that he was the virus’s middleman, the constant listener to its wishes, he needed his own whore to turn out, and not just one, either. Every ho needs her own, and a hierarchy with only two levels did not an acceptable pecking order make.
He’d called it an ‘order,’ because Vera the Virus—he’d never have the mental courage to think of her that way, probably because giving it a human name was worse than insulting, but perhaps in another, braver, life he might have—had commanded it. He’d done everything at her request, and as close to the letter of her wishes as was possible given the whole apocalypse reality and all that shit.
The order he was calling forth would worship the virus—it was, after all, freeing them up to do whatever the fuck they pleased in the world—and eventually, according to the words…they’d have meat. They’d control resources like they’d never been able to before, said resources being human meat: the redefinition of ‘human resources.’
At first, they’d just prayed to the virus and hoarded the remaining…how to put it…standard consumable fare, what the Western World was used to, but he was made to see it as clear as the sunset that there would come a time when the Cheerios and Sprites and doggy biscuits ran out.
Not to mention the Little Debbie Fudge Rounds—he could really eat the fuck out of those things.
And it wasn’t like cannibalism was a new thing, the words had reminded him in those early days. On the contrary, it was a very old thing, ancient even. It would be the obvious next step when the cans of soup ran out, like a child putting one foot forward, then falling, righting herself, and doing it over until her muscles mastered the fine art of walking.
Cannibalism was just another logical step in the progression, and it would become commonplace. The idea of eating people never bothered him, either. Never had and never would.
But one thing was made abundantly clear. Some of the meat, a particular sort, was for the virus alone to enjoy.
And her voice in his head had changed him, like a parasite burrowing deeper into his soft matter and growing new feeder tentacles that rooted outward into all of that grey more-shapely-than-glop that made Brother Mardu who he was. The virus was not only the voice in his mind, but the lenses on his eyes, and the firmness of his bones, and the resilience in his muscles. It was all-knowing, all-consuming, all-encompassing, all.
45
He’d attracted followers, and quite a great number at first. He’d never imagined how many would come out of the woodwork once the viral dust settled, but of course the virus had. She’d known all along this would work, and that was why she was in charge.
At her direction, he spoon-fed them the idea of virus worship. The zombies had, after all, taken over the world, so it was fair to assume that whatever ruled them, was god of the world.
The first ones had been the easiest to win over. Eager converts came, their cheeks wet with tears, their hungry stomachs gnawing away at nothing but the tang of bile and stomach acid, and Brother Mardu took them in gladly, almost lovingly.
After a time the zombies and humans who’d survived settled into a sort of equilibrium, which had come by way of the obliteration of most of the latter. Those who survived were desperate for something, anything, and he gave them hope, and principles that explained why this had all happened.
And they’d eaten the spoon-fed bullshit gladly, and warmed themselves at his side, and helped him to maraud and steal from others who wouldn’t join them—from other gangs—and they’d killed together, and eaten their first human flesh together. It hadn’t been necessary then, there was still a lot of unspoiled animal meat they could gather, and the animals themselves weren’t infected at that point. They’d done it to display their power.
What better way to show your complete triumph over your enemy than to eat his still-warm heart? It was a very old custom indeed.
To those who followed him and joined the Order, Brother Mardu returned the world. So long as they stayed away from the zombies, or, perhaps, found a way to coexist with them, he and his followers could dominate what was left.
What the zombies had taken was gone, off the table, but there was still so much for the Order to enjoy. Plenty to go around.
And what did Brother Mardu ask of those who took in with him? Hardly anything at all. Loyalty, allegiance, fealty, deference, worship, unquestioning obedience, their eternal souls…all of the above with a helping of more please.
As a bonus, he’d strike awe in their hearts and lead them through the apocalypse in style. They’d have the best meat, the best slaves, the best quarters, the best drugs, the creamiest cream the ruined world had to offer, and everything really was for the taking now.
You’re my zombies, he’d thought. You belong to me. And at first, they had.
Of course that was when he’d begun to forget his place.
Now, as he was standing poised in front of his followers, many of whom only feigned allegiance at this point, now, when he was supposed to tell them what’s what, his mind again began to search for what he’d lost, like a man on all fours groping for a lost contact in the dark.
So where the fuck had it all gone wrong? his anguished synapses shrieked at him, threatening to rip themselves apart under the strain.
Again and again, it was the same relentless interrogation. He felt like he was trying to wriggle out of a Chinese trap, and he could see his way out of it but it was holding him too tightly, and the harder he squirmed the more firmly it held him in place, and the more his frustration built.
Why was he losing touch like this? He’d been over it all already, but his mind was like a broken record: over and over and over. At least rinse before you fucking repeat.
There would be giving tomorrow, and then they would go from there. Right now, that was all he could settle on.
The whippets of self-doubt and disappointment were still running their brainless circles in his headspace, their tails burned up almost to stubs now. But they ran faster, and the charred bones on the burnt parts of their tails stood out black and crispy.
Enough, Brother Mardu mouthed, finally gaining control of himself, and the whippets combusted in their entirety. Their howls grew louder, but that was a brief thing. Short-lived too was the ferocity of burning that was added to their flailing limbs as they ran.
Moments later they were smoldering and shuddering doggy corpses scattered ab
out the racetrack. He bulldozed them clear of his thoughts. The track needed some re-grading now, and some reseeding as well, because one of the dogs had veered off the path when its body ignited, and taken out some of the grass outside the track.
Fucking dogs.
That was supposed to be reserved for people, for spectators. He’d set new dogs to running later, after this ceremony, and the next, and the next, and after some culling. Perhaps after all that, he’d find the dogs no longer ran, whether he lit their tails on fire or not.
Then there would be peace.
46
He was feeling truly anxious, near panic even, for the first time since the virus had begun pulling his strings. They were all gathered in the altered truck that was quickly becoming a home to a colony of black mold, and where they read from Brother Mardu’s book—and he was Brother Mardu, a fact of which he nowadays needed reminding—and where they did their planning, and feasting, always under the Embodiment’s watchful, though eyeless gaze.
He’d used to call it the ‘Embodiment,’ had even coined the term himself, but now it made him sick. It was just a limbless zombie, a fucking cut-up and cauterized dead thing that belonged to the virus. Perhaps it was even a spy in his midst, as if he needed any more treachery around him.
They’d all prayed here together once, had taken their mission from Brother Mardu’s mouth to their ears, had pledged themselves to the virus and confirmed and reconfirmed their allegiance. They’d chanted here and sung as the Embodiment writhed approvingly, blessing them with the gifts of the virus, giving them power, its head straining toward them as it tried to wrench itself free from the metal bands that held it in place.
