by Emma Shortt
Jackson understood the mindset, of course she did. When the zombies came, running through the streets at top speed and breaking through the windows, the main impulse of most people was to run, as quickly as possible. They gathered what they had and hit the road. Trouble was, thousands of others did the same, and in those days where there were people there were zombies…it had soon turned into an absolute bloodbath. Thousands of people dying only to awake moments or minutes later and eat anyone else still trying to escape. Like a fucking daisy chain.
Jackson would like to say she’d been smart back then, but in truth she’d just gone with the flow. Her brothers had decided early on that the only way to stay safe was to remain inside and barricade the windows and doors. So she had. It was only when her brothers were gone, the food had run out, and the water had started to turn brown that she’d struck out on her own. By that point all those thousands of fleeing people had pretty much been eaten or infected. All that remained were their smashed-up cars and their scattered belongings. All those stories and experiences held within each person lost forever. Consumed by the waking dead just like their flesh was.
In some ways, as they drove past wreck after wreck on the seventh day, Jackson almost felt like she was following paths set out by those people—and though she tried not to think of them, part of her couldn’t help it. The barriers swayed and undulated in her mind, wanting to be let down for just a little while. She looked around at the devastation surrounding them and the feeling was almost like she was late for the party—that she’d missed it, and was only now saying, Okay wait for me.
Maybe it was because they were driving rather than walking? It seemed to give everything a new perspective, removing some of the danger and allowing her to view it all from a distance.
“Look,” she said softly. “How quickly it changes.”
Luke followed her gaze to the row of tract houses on the left of them. They were wide open, doors ajar, windows smashed. Already nature was intruding on those homes. Jackson knew if she stepped inside, mildew would be growing anywhere that was moist. Plants creeping along the pathways and paving stones. Vines and branches twisting around the exterior structures. In a few years’ time, sooner perhaps, those plants would get inside the houses and start growing on people’s couches and inside their TVs. Jackson couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take until nature took back everything man had taken from it. Until the huge structures in the cities succumbed to rain and the beating of the sun.
“How quickly it’ll keep changing,” he said grimly, and she frowned.
“Not everything. Think about all those mansions that are closed up. They might last for decades in good condition.”
“That they might,” he agreed. “We should find some and break into them. I bet they’re full of stuff.”
“But then they’ll be open and ruined like everything else,” she said.
“We’d just be speeding the process up.”
Jackson sighed and looked back out the window, the truth of Luke’s words nudging her. It was odd how sometimes their positions shifted. She thought of herself as the bad-ass, the realist, but sometimes it was Luke who was the pragmatic one at heart.
“I’ll keep an eye out for rich-looking zombies,” she said after a moment. “They’ll lead us to the mansions.”
“And a rich zombie would look like...?”
She shrugged, the frown turning into a smile. “Rich.”
Only there were no zombies dressed in designer clothes and dripping in gold. Instead cars sat in long lines, snaking out across the lanes. Glass glinting on the floor, sometimes frosted, marked their route. The ever-present blood and pus splatters decorated the cars and buildings, splashed in arcs, puddles, even in crisscross patterns. The blood was the only sign of the humans that once were. The bones, as always, were gone.
As they passed billboard splattered with what looked like several pints of old dried blood, Jackson turned to Luke. Luke who had indeed found them food inside an abandoned apartment on the fourth day. A veritable feast of canned goods and dried pasta. Luke who insisted she sleep first, rest for longer, eat more, be careful, take her time… Luke who, day by day, macho bullshit aside, was becoming more important to her, healing the hole in her heart where the loss of Tye still ached…
His hand was resting on the side of his seat, just inches from hers, and it seemed perfectly natural for her to reach out and stroke the skin on the back of it. He turned and smiled the moment she did.
“You okay?”
She nodded, her heart thudding a little as his smile widened.
“I was just thinking.”
“About rich zombies?”
She shook her head and trailed her fingers away. “No I was wondering, what do you think they do with the bones?”
Luke pulled a face and maneuvered around a parked truck. “You ask some weird questions, Jack. The bones? Lemme think. Well, I guess they suck the marrow out and then discard them somewhere.”
“Okay, ew with the marrow.”
He grinned. “Makes sense.”
“But discard them where? I’ve never seen any bones anywhere. Do you think they eat the bones too?” It was a question she’d long considered and had been unable to find an answer to.
“It would be hard to see how,” Luke replied. “Bones are tough, and it’s not like they have much in them that would be worth the hassle of chomping them down that couldn’t be sucked out instead.”
Jackson pointed them through a passage that was fairly free of carts and cars, considering the possibilities as she did so. The zombie’s teeth were about the same as a normal person. They didn’t grow or anything once they turned—they were just dead people come back to life, after all. And although there were differences—their limbs were more elongated, more flexible, their skin thinner, and their bodies a little mushier—there were no other biological changes that Jackson had noticed. They still had all their limbs, their eyes, ears, and hair. Only the force they seemed to exude allowed them to rip through muscle and flesh. Luke was right. She couldn’t imagine those teeth, in essence the same as hers, eating through bone.
“Maybe they collect them as trophies or something?”
Luke gunned the accelerator as they hit a clean road, one that many of the other cars and vans hadn’t made it to. She tried not to think about why that was the case, pushing the barriers back up and thinking instead of what it would be like to have a bag of fries on her lap.
“No. They don’t think like that, Jack,” he said slowly. “Don’t give them qualities they don’t possess.”
Buildings flashed by and Jackson shifted slightly in her seat to watch the procession of smashed up windows and broken doors. It was weird but she could actually feel the emptiness of those buildings without even needing to check if anyone was inside—not that anyone was, of course. Her gaze moved from the doors all the way up to the roofs. Nothing looked out of the ordinary to her, well ordinary in this world.
“Qualities?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“Like deep thinking,” Luke said. “Trophy collection means they know on some level what’s happening around them, to them. They’d collect them for a reason and it suggests a humanness to them. Serial killers used to collect trophies didn’t they? They knew what they were doing and they knew why they shouldn’t be doing it. The zombies don’t even have that excuse. They don’t know what’s happening, not really, because they’re not human any more, Jack. They’re dead and somehow brought back to fucking life. They’re not us anymore.”
“I know that,” Jackson said. “I know they’re not us.”
“They don’t think the way we do,” Luke added as if she hadn’t spoken. “They can’t, else they wouldn’t be able to eat us would they?”
“Bits of them have to think something,” she said. “To open doors and smell us. So yeah, okay, they might not think exactly like us but they are thinking still. Something goes on in their brains.”
“But that so
mething is not like us.”
“Maybe not,” Jackson agreed. “But you don’t know how they think, not exactly. No one does and that’s why we’re in this mess.”
…
But Luke did know how they thought. He was sure of it. All that time alone in his bunker? He’d spent a significant part of it trying to work out the zombies. How they hunted, how they tracked people. If he hadn’t gotten some sort of understanding he’d be dead now. He knew he would.
“They think like animals,” he said. “Maybe that’s why they hunt in packs. Even so, this new intelligence of theirs changes nothing beyond our own goals. They’ve lost their compassion, their empathy, their very humanity.”
“Luke—”
“Serious, Jack,” he said. “You need to understand this.”
“I do,” she replied. “Two years and then some has been enough for me to get the whole I’m-gonna-eat-you thing. But what goes on in their minds is a mystery. I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about it, because what else is there to really think about, and I can’t even begin to imagine.”
“I can. Let me tell you about Mr. Jenkins.”
“And he was?”
“Hold on…” Luke slowed the Batmobile and pointed to the top of a four-story building. “Did you see something up there?”
“No, and if I did, I wouldn’t slow down, I’d speed up. Gas it and tell me about this Mr. Jenkins.”
Luke complied and took a left turn.
“He was my neighbor. I don’t know exactly how old he was, but sixties at least. He was a war veteran, though he never spoke about it. His favorite hobby was tending the garden, front and back. He grew these amazing flowers. I don’t remember what they were called, but in the summer they’d grow everywhere and they smelled great. I was going out on a date once and he gave me a bunch to take—she loved them.”
Luke swung a right and then regretted it. The buildings surrounding them were a good few stories high on both sides. He accelerated and took a quick left before returning to Mr. Jenkins.
“He’d chide me constantly that I left my garden in such a state.” Luke shook his head at the memory. “He mowed my lawn when I was at work and I’d tune his car when he was at his club—I knew his war pension would barely cover the cost of regular repairs. Neither of us mentioned it. He was too proud and it was just something we did.”
“He sounds like a nice guy,” Jackson said. “But, Luke, I should tell you here and now that while I’m happy to hear about Mr. Jenkins, I don’t like talking about the people I knew from before. Maybe you haven’t picked up on that yet, but it’s something I tend to avoid.”
“The people from before?” he said, baffled by her words. “Everyone we knew was from before.”
“Exactly.”
Luke shook his head and shot Jackson a quick look. She was stiff on her seat, eyes darting to the view outside. Her fingers were rubbing up and down her machete’s hilt in an almost compulsive fashion. He’d seen her do that many times and wondered if she was even aware of it.
“But if we don’t talk about them how will we remember them?” he asked.
“We won’t. That’s kind of the point,” she replied. “What’s the use in remembering them? They’re all gone.”
“The use is because they make us feel things and often they illuminate things, which is what Mr. Jenkins here does.” The image of his gray-haired neighbor entered his mind and Luke smiled as he paused to negotiate the car through a thin gap where two large sedans had smashed into one another, wondering as he did so, why he hadn’t picked up on the fact that Jackson actually had never mentioned a single person from before. Sure, she talked about the books she missed, the drinks she’d tried, but the people, no, never the people…
“So tell me, Jack,” he said now that they were through the wrecked cars, “apart from gardening and going to his club to play checkers or whatever he did there, do you know what the thing Mr. Jenkins most loved was?”
“No,” Jackson said, drawing the word out. “I have a suspicion this is not leading me to a nice place, though.”
“Well I’m going to tell you because it is important. So for once let me do that, please.”
“For once…”
“He loved his grandchildren,” Luke said, ignoring her words. “He had two. Two little girls. Bethann and Louise. They were six and eight. I know because every time they came to visit he would show them off like his most-prized possessions. Damn, he loved those children.”
“Luke…”
Ignoring the plea in Jackson’s voice, Luke continued. “The girls were visiting when the first zombies found their way to our neighborhood. Chicago was one of the epicenters of the outbreak, so it was bad luck all around, though I didn’t know this until later. I’m guessing we were one of the first bunches to even see a waking dead. What a wonderful thing to brag about, eh? Anyway they broke through Mr. Jenkins’s windows first, three of them—they hadn’t started forming their packs yet. I grabbed a mallet. It was all I had, and ran around, thinking they were burglars or something. It was one of those awful moments where you can’t actually believe what you’re seeing is real…”
Luke trailed off as he remembered the faces of those first snarling dead. It had been like something out of a horror movie, and even as he’d brought the mallet down to smash in one’s head he hadn’t really believed it was real. You’re going to get arrested…that was the thought that had ran through his mind.
“Together we killed them all, again, though we didn’t know that at the time. Me, Mr. Jenkins, and his son, well, me more than them, if I’m honest. I just sort of bashed away at them until they stopped moving,” he said giving himself an inward shake. “We barricaded ourselves upstairs in my house, put the news on, and kept guard against any others. The news told us nothing of course, wild rumors, talk of terrorists—absolute nonsense. So we thought we’d wait till daybreak and make a run for it until we could figure things out. I wanted to leave immediately, get to my parents. But Mr. Jenkins was in his sixties and his son was a complete wimp. I couldn’t just leave them.”
“Luke…”
“We discussed all sorts of scenarios,” he continued. “Could it be druggies? Could it be some sort of weird joke? But in the back of our minds I think we all had a suspicion.” He sighed and gripped the steering wheel, memories overwhelming him. “And I checked, kind of sneakily, to make sure no one had been bitten. I’d watched enough movies after all, and though I felt like a total dick doing it, I looked all the same. I didn’t see anything though, and as the hours passed and no more zombies came, Mr. Jenkins son took a turn to keep watch. I should never have let him…”
“I so don’t want to hear this.”
“So Mr. Jenkins son was taking a watch when I heard a scream,” he continued, ignoring Jackson’s mumblings. “I hadn’t been asleep, not really, just sort of dozing. When I opened my eyes it was to see Mr. Jenkins holding one of the girls in his arms, his son looking on just sort of horrified, almost in a stupor. I don’t know if it was Bethann or Louise. I’d never been able to tell who was who. But she had these lovely blond curls and when he looked up at me, noticing I was awake, he pulled away a chunk of her brain with his teeth. I could see the hairs sticking to his chin, his cheeks, everywhere. I think she was still alive when he broke her skull and started eating her. His little granddaughter. The one he’d been so proud of.”
“Luke, no…”
“He didn’t even stop eating her, just looked at me and kept chewing.”
If there was any memory stored in his brain that Luke would like to lose, it was this one. Of all the zombies and dead people and plain old carnage he had battled, the memory of little Bethann or Louise always pulled at something inside of him. It was the start of the nightmare that had begun his new life, and forever her blond hair would signify that.
“That’s horrific,” Jackson whispered. “And I believe we are being followed. Thank God. I think I’ve had more than enough reminiscing.”
<
br /> Luke almost laughed. “A pack? You’d prefer to battle a pack than talk about my neighbors?”
“Damn right, and it’s a megapack, on the rooftops.”
“Gun it or kill them?”
“I suspect we’re not gonna get a choice. They’re trying to round us up.”
“They won’t catch us.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you want to know what happened to Mr. Jenkins?” Luke asked, eyeing the rooftops.
“Not really. I wish you hadn’t mentioned him. Though now that you have, if I die before I find out, I’ll be mad. But then if you tell me, I’ll be mad because I so don’t need my head filled with any more of that kind of shit.”
Luke slowed the car and unclipped his guns. “The movies again. I used to watch plenty before they came. I loved Zombieland and I remembered exactly what they did to them. So I beheaded him and then I left to find my parents. The son spent the entire time sobbing with one little girl dead in front of him, and the other little girl in his arms. My point in telling you this story though, Jackson, is for you to realize something. I haven’t told you it for no reason. There is a point.”
“And that would be?”
“That there’s nothing left in them anymore. Nothing to even remember the love they’d once held so dear. They’re animals. Worse than that, even. Family members ate family members without compunction. Hell, they probably still do.”
Jackson wound down her window, took aim, and shot a waking dead straight through the head. It fell from the roof with a splat.
