The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  “Why?”

  “Because you need to do something other than sneak around town every night with your neighbors’ dog.”

  She loved that he lived in the upstairs bedroom, that when she returned from her nightly roving, she could slink up the stairs and kiss his cheek with her cold lips to tell him that she was back safely. That night he pulled her into the bed and under the covers, since she was shaking from chill. Under his heavy arm and so pinned that she was unable to wriggle out even if she’d wanted, she slept peacefully. In the morning they leaned against the headboard and watched Sombra C News online together. It was two stamped reporters in a home studio unloading every new event involving the virus the world over. The channel ran all day and all night, reporters changing every six hours.

  Right now they were encouraging anyone with Sombra C living in Mississippi to get out. There was no safe place anywhere in the state, and the National Guard had been unable to quell the legions of Shepherds going from county to county to murder carriers of the virus. Also on the watchlist of most dangerous states were Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Georgia. The female reporter listened to her headpiece for a moment while the man spoke, and then she interrupted him to say urgently, “If you live in Lanberry, South Carolina, evacuate now! We’re getting word from our eyes and ears undercover that Shepherds are planning to strike today. Lanberry, South Carolina, if you know somebody who lives there, call that person this instant!”

  The man swiveled in his chair and yanked maps off the wall to find a big one of South Carolina. He pressed a pointer to the upper region of the state as the woman went on. “All right, we’re getting calls offering help. Jamie, find the city of Tarbrine. Everyone listening out there, a Shepherd purge of Sombra Cs is planned . . . it’s already begun. Get out of Lanberry! Don’t pack, not even your Zyllevir; just flee! Shepherds have your names, your addresses and places of work, and they’re coming! Head for the library in Tarbrine and a bus will be there every half hour to take you to a hotel run by a stamped couple. Medication and rooms will be offered there if you have need. Go now!”

  Micah pulled Austin’s hands from the keyboard, as he was throttling it in the agitation he absorbed from the reporter. The topic changed to the little town of Mirror Lake in Texas, grievously hit with Sombra C and far more residents infected than not. A wall was being erected around the town’s boundary to keep out Shepherds from surrounding communities. Incoming traffic was stopped and searched for weapons by the police force, all of who were stamped themselves. The population had almost doubled in weeks, people fleeing there for refuge from elsewhere in Texas and the government sending disaster housing and supplies. Pictures were displayed of a wall going up, of blocked roadways and confiscated guns and grenades on a table.

  “Nice job, President Pitch,” Jamie grumbled.

  The other reporter snapped, “This can’t be staunched by anyone! Do you understand that surveys show more than one out of every ten people in this country is a Shepherd or a sympathizer? Over thirty million people! Jails and prisons are overflowing. There are Armed Forces now in every state of the union doing their best to maintain civil order, yet some of them are sympathizers as well. The incident in Highland showed that-”

  A call came in, a man complaining about the lack of distinction in the reports. Shepherds were cullers and cullers were Shepherds, the reporters answered in unity, and hung up on him. Those noble intentions of the first Shepherds had disintegrated into this madness, and the only topic for debate was what should be done about it. Mass curfews and a cessation of weapons sales were discussed until a call came in from a woman fleeing Lanberry with her family. The Shepherds had blocked off all outgoing roads to prevent escapes, but a van full of stamped and armed teenagers attacked the blockade at northbound Quartertop Road, many losing their own lives in the process. The road was clear for now, the surviving teens standing guard for more Shepherds. The reporter repeated the information while her compatriot made makeshift ticker tapes to flash. Quartertop Road free in Lanberry. Siege ended with arrests at Inigo. Mirror Lake approaching capacity.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Austin whispered in terror. The call was interrupted for another immediate evacuation taking place in Brandywine, California. Micah was riveted to the reports, and annoyed when her mothers called about school. First she searched Brandywine to see where it was, finding it tucked up at the border to Oregon.

  Go to school while people were peeling out of Lanberry; sit in class while cops hauled away the latest dickheads to attack Inigo. Hang out in a club talking about zombie portrayals in the media while guns chattered and bodies piled up. She wanted to be one of those reporters getting the calls, shoving up ticker tape, rattling through maps to guide people to safety. Actually, she’d start with updating their tech so they could post real ticker tape messages. This was a real bargain basement operation they had going, but it was crucial that it existed.

  During passing periods, she kept up on her cell phone in the hallways. A pharmacist had been arrested for charging for Zyllevir, pocketing thousands of dollars from a gullible, elderly community in Iowa. Some stopped taking other medications for heart problems to afford their anti-virals. Micah watched in disgust, wishing she knew what had happened to those teens holding Quartertop Road open in South Carolina. Jealousy curdled in her stomach, that they were doing something that mattered when she wasn’t. If she were in Lanberry, she’d careen around those streets in a van picking up people while gunfire chattered at them. Blast through a roadblock and race away, drop them off at the library and go back for more.

  The reporters spent a minute thanking their sponsors who kept Sombra C News running, most of who chose to be anonymous for safety reasons. One of the named sponsors was Abrigo in San Francisco, which Micah looked up. It was a stamped-only nightclub. The minute bell rang and she put away her phone to walk to class.

  “I’m praying for you, Micah,” Dale called.

  “I’m praying for you, Dale,” Micah said. She’d make sure the next dildo was covered in her fluids, hoping against hope that something survived the night and infected him the next morning. So then he’d be a zombie like her, but he’d undoubtedly be a homophobic zombie who still thought his family was better than hers.

  Darkness fell early that evening. She pretended to have an overnight at Elania’s, her mothers believing her and Austin shaking his head subtly over dinner. But she could not bear the tension building to a head, demanding release and that wasn’t going to come from watching television and going to bed. Fuck school tomorrow. She could go to the nurse and claim Zyllevir was making her nauseous, sleep on the cot with the red bars. Who cared about perfect attendance any more? Why had she ever played these games? Micah, the true Micah, was the girl who threw the brick and called her teacher an asshole, turned off cheaters’ sprinklers and liberated a neglected dog for a walk. She thought of herself as a great equalizer, or as a goddess here to mete out justice.

  Harbo had already gotten his requisite dinner-and-pat, and she collected him with the lights still on in the neighbors’ house. The man was bent over a laptop upstairs, the woman reading a book downstairs. Micah held her breath, daring one of them to look outside and see their dog being liberated from his forgotten existence.

  Harbo still thought Micah was the greatest friend he’d ever made. She walked him to the V-6 and loaded him up on the nest of blankets and a heated mudpack on the passenger side. This was a new adventure and very exciting to the pathetic creature, who kicked around his makeshift bed and thrilled to find a hidden treat. Crunching it happily, he looked out the window as she drove away. The cashier at Pet-Pet had been desperate not to touch Micah’s money, asking if she happened to have a card. Micah did, but she said no. Finally, the cashier put on gloves and slipped the cash into a sandwich bag to put in the register.

  First they put a brick by Dale Summit’s car, since the dildo was not due to arrive for another week. Harbo lifted his leg on Dale’s tire and she cheered him on. Then they cruised past
Cornie’s to check on the Feemer, which was not yet there. Micah looped back to the apartments’ parking lot, where it was parked unevenly. Didn’t he get tired of the monotony in his life? Did her mothers? It was impossible to think of herself getting up next to some man every morning, asking if he wanted coffee, thanking him for breakfast, dressing for work, driving away to an office and coming back to make dinner, thanking him for doing the dishes, undressing and climbing back into bed.

  When they arrived at the block where Jeffrey Parro lived with his mother, she pulled over several houses down and parked along the curb. They watched the place for a long time, Harbo taking deep sniffs out the crack in his window and curling up with his head on Micah’s thigh for a nap. She petted him absentmindedly and watched that house where a killer had grown up. He’d left this house to go to the junior high, to the same high school she was at right now, to one piddling job after another, and one day he’d left it to kill people.

  The blue and green hybrids were in the driveway, side-by-side. Lights were on in both floors of the house, like Denise Parro could not bear darkness. Even the holiday lights display was still up and turned on in January, including the wire reindeer bending to the lawn to nibble grass, the giant snow globe full of waving children and presents. Maybe she stopped there, a few days before Christmas when her son had killed people. If she left up those decorations, then she could pretend it never happened. She did not have to face the starkness of the bare grass and roof. Jeffrey’s mother was a less environmentally conscious version of Uma. Someone who insisted on the beauty in the crag of her son’s skull and ignored the misshapen mind forming within, someone who clung to a day in the amorphous future when her son would get a real education and job, a house and a spouse. Now that was gone, to Sombra C and the anklet monitoring his whereabouts, so she lit up her house every conceivable way to drive off that darkness pressing in from the basement. It was the only route left to her, save facing the starkness.

  I know what you’re doing, Austin wrote in a text.

  I want to understand why he did this.

  Because he’s crazy, that’s why. There’s nothing to understand.

  She startled to hear a door slam shut. A figure emerged from the stairs to the basement. It was Jeffrey, who got into his green car and drove out without a glance to the V-6. Off to get his Tic-Tac-Taco. His mommy must give him money.

  Don’t you dare go in there!

  She hadn’t considered it until that text. Harbo lifted his head as she reached for her backpack. Giving him a bone to gnaw, she let herself out of the car to cross the street and walk boldly onto the lawn. Rain had pushed up green all over Cloudy Valley, but occasional freezes at night were killing off the flower buds in the potted plants sitting under the light from a window.

  The stairs were concrete, not wood, so nothing squeaked as she descended to the door. Her phone vibrated, but she knew it was Austin and ignored it. When she reached out to the doorknob, she hesitated briefly and then pushed on.

  It was unlocked.

  She went inside. As bright as the house was, it was dark in the basement. The only light came from the small television, which showed a game on pause. Micah ran her hand over the wall and flipped the switch. This man had intruded on her life, and now she intruded on his.

  It was a dreary space of gray walls and stained carpet, fast food bags spilled over the floor and a mini-fridge humming under more. The sofa had a pillow and blanket on it, since there was no bed down here. No. It was a convertible sofa, but he was too lazy to make it into a bed. There was a mountain of clothes at the end of the sofa, a musty smell in the air, and a small bookshelf that had no books. Just video games tipped over on each other, a bong, and an unlit candle. The ceiling was strung with cobwebs. Her phone vibrated. Where are you?

  In his place. Want pictures? She didn’t have to see Austin’s face to know what expression it was wearing this instant. He was so easy to shock.

  The bathroom was disgusting, black rot in the grout of the shower and a stained sink with hair all over it. The toilet was streaked with shit and full of unflushed piss, with clumps of vomit dried on the sticky yellow back. It stank. The mirror was spotted with tiny white dots of pus, from him leaning in to squeeze some new formation on his homely face.

  The wooden vanity had three drawers. They caught and screeched when she opened them. The middle one was full of old porn magazines, issues of Jub-Jubs and Playtime from years ago. The top had a comb with broken teeth, a bottle of Zyllevir, an open tube of cream for irritated skin, bottles of painkillers with his mother’s name on the label, a razor and cream. The bottom drawer was nearly impossible to open, but she yanked until it gave. Inside was an ancient fire detector, dismantled and sliding around with an equally old tube of lipstick. Micah took out the lipstick to examine it, and realized if he had actually gone to Tic-Tac-Taco, he was going to be back soon since it was only a few blocks away. Her phone vibrated furiously.

  What if he did come in right this moment? She would attack him again. Let him know what she thought about a man who killed a woman on the phone. He had made Nan Hormel’s life into a game, so Micah would make Jeffrey Parro’s life into a game in return. At least until the cops informed her mothers, and then the long, slow, painful processing would get underway. Micah would rather her mothers just slap her across the cheek than go through all the talking.

  Hearing the horrified exclamations and the lectures in her head, Micah decided to go. She dropped the damaged comb in the toilet and lifted out all of the porn. Tucking the magazines under her arm, she uncapped the lipstick and wrote MURDERER across his mirror. He should see that every day, a reminder of what he was.

  Turning off the lights, she exited the basement and hurried up the stairs. Past those lit windows to a kitchen and dining room, to the mailbox on the porch where she silently stuffed the porn magazines inside for his mother to find. One issue of Jub-Jubs she kept back, as proof that she had been here, and unwelcome. Just like her Sombra C was proof at how he had been in her life uninvited.

  Barely two minutes had passed with her in the car when the green hybrid tootled by. Micah pulled away from the curb and drove defiantly past his house as he got out of his car. A text with an infuriated emoticon came from Austin. You stole his porn?

  She spoke a message into the phone. I’m with you, gay boy. I flipped all through this magazine and I still don’t get the fixation on boobs.

  Sweetie, come home. We’ll find a movie.

  Later. She was going to San Francisco. Even now, the guy might be discovering what was in his bathroom. Fuck you, Jeffrey Parro. She didn’t know what she’d gained from breaking in, but her curiosity was quelled. He was too ugly for a girlfriend, too incompetent to hold a job, too poor to buy his own car. Unable to get into the Army for whatever reason and reduced to lame war games on his crappy television. If his mom lived in a house like that, there was certainly money for college. He had been handed everything and done nothing with it. Though Micah had called him a loser many times since the night of the party, now she felt it. She had to feel it to know it, to be convinced it was real. Jeffrey Alexander Parro was a loser in every category of life. Being a culler must have thrilled him, some distinction, some purpose, some cachet in his psychopathic community, and now he had Sombra C. Now he couldn’t even be a culler, so he lost yet again. He was everything he hated. She had destroyed him.

  Harbo had a wonderful time on the drive, looking out the windows and breathing in deeply all the new scents. Abrigo was in a neighborhood nearly all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a two-story red building on a corner. Was it red because it had to be? Or to take back the color from the shame? Harbo received a pee break, a bowl of water, and another treat to munch on in his bed. She changed in the car from her jeans and T-shirt to a dress. It was black on the back and sides, green lace up the front, and knee-length. Brushing out her hair and refreshing her makeup, she put on black heels and presented herself at the door. Music throbbed out as
she let herself in, to be stopped at once by an armed and stamped guard and a metal detector. Black curtains hid the room beyond, but did nothing to muffle the chatter of hundreds of voices.

  Once through the metal detector, a second guard said, “How old are you?”

  Micah smiled at the short butch woman with 11% on her stamp, and flicked her hair over her shoulder to show her own. “Old enough to have Sombra C.”

  The guard let her in. Through the curtains was an enormous room, a bar on one side and a dance floor on the other. A generous balcony on the second floor was crowded with people holding drinks and talking. She got a soda at the bar, not needing to try for alcohol when she was still so high on the mirror. A guy with pink hair bounced in front of her and said, “So, are you red, yellow, or green?”

  With no idea what he was talking about, she said gamely, “Yellow.”

  Pulling a yellow bracelet from his arm, which was packed with them in all three colors, he wrapped it around her wrist. Everyone was wearing them. When her soda was gone, she joined the dancing. It was good house music, the arpeggios pulling at her blood. People danced with her, men and women, a drag queen in full regalia, and when she bored of them, she found others. A college-aged guy at 22% pulled her back and whispered about how beautiful she was. She laughed and pulled away, not looking for sex.

  “Okay?” a 9% woman with tons of earrings asked Micah about the guy.

  “Okay,” Micah said. She had had some martial arts training in junior high. If he got grabby, he was going to hit the floor. But he had already found someone else more interested in his attentions.

  “Allll riiiiiight,” the DJ growled. “Hug a red, people, they need it.”

  Fists punched up into the air with red bands and the wearers were swarmed in giant group hugs. “What’s that about?” Micah asked the woman, who had a green band.