The End in All Beginnings

by John F. D. Taff

  Durand sipped at his cooling coffee. “How come you stayed?”

  That brought the blush back to the young man’s face. “Well, when that all went down, I knew it wasn’t a hoax anymore. So, I…uhhh…called home. No one answered. My ma…well, she doesn’t work…and…she woulda answered the phone if she’d been…if she wasn’t….shit…”

  “Hey, man,” Durand said, seeing his eyes welling with tears. “I get it. Anyone else?”

  Scott sniffled, shook his head, self-consciously wiped his tears. “I locked the door after that, hid behind the counter. Until I heard your truck, then I came out to see. I figured, a truck, you know, they’re probably not driving.”

  Durand drained his coffee, turned his attention to the window. “Well, they don’t seem particularly interested in us. I’d feel a whole lot better, though, if we found a safer place. They could break right through this window, and we’d be fucked.”

  “Not my place,” Scott said, shaking his head at returning home and facing an undead mother.

  “Sure. Not my place either. We need to find somewhere secure that has water and food and toilets. Who knows how long we’re going to be on our own.” He turned back to Scott. “You sure you haven’t seen anyone else alive?”

  Scott shook his head.

  Durand thought he saw a blush return to his face.

  * * *

  By the end of the first week, they’d made their home in the cavernous Bargain Barn Super Center. It was on the outskirts of Millstadt’s small downtown, completely encircled by a 10-foot security fence that could be closed and locked. It was stocked, literally to the metal rafters, with food, drinks, toiletries, even guns and ammo. It had bathrooms, running water and plenty of televisions and radios, should these ever again prove useful.

  Moreover, since the store hadn’t been open when everything started, it was empty of people, living or dead. Even though locked up, they found a key still stuck in the employee entrance door at the back, an enormous ring of keys dangling from it. Whoever had left it there had long since gone.

  Best of all, its front entrances were two normal-size glass doors that were easily barricaded, and not an entire wall of glass like the places on Main Street.

  By this time, they’d learned a lot about their new neighbors. First, the shambling, shuffling way they moved was not an act. They were slow and awkward and seemingly without any motivation. Nothing seemed to get their attention, unless a living person got too close. About two or three feet seemed the limit of their perception.

  Within that zone, something seemed to click in their undead brains; they suddenly developed a strength, an almost reptile agility.

  But there was no intelligence behind their eyes. No hive mind or animal consciousness, as the movies sometimes showed. They were not smart or capable of figuring out even simple problems. There’s was a primitive, almost atavistic hunger. They meandered their way through town stupidly, placidly, until something was unlucky enough to get in their way.

  For the most part, you could walk right past one on the street, keeping your distance, with nothing to worry about. And even if one did notice you, came after you, turning a corner or closing a door or even hiding behind a tree was usually enough to throw them off.

  After that first week, as far as both men could tell, they were the only ones left alive in town.

  Everyone else was, as Scott put it, fled, dead or undead.

  * * *

  That morning, Durand told Scott he was leaving to do laundry. The Bargain Barn had an extensive selection of washers and dryers, but nowhere to hook them up. So, Durand had loaded a shopping cart with dirty clothes, pushed it to the Suds-N-Duds.

  Scott nodded noncommittally, continued playing his PS4 on the high-def, 60-inch plasma that he’d taken up residence near. Durand waited to see if Scott was going to come along, but he had cut off the rest of the world.

  The constant video game playing had begun to annoy Durand, but what aggravated him more than anything else was Scott’s seeming acceptance of what was happening. No, not just acceptance; it was Scott’s embrace of what was going on that bothered him.

  It was the end of the world as he knew it, and he felt fine.

  Did he want to go by his ma’s house, grab a few things? Maybe give her a Christian burial?

  Nah.

  Did he want to help scout for more supplies?

  Are you kidding?

  Scott would snort, looking around the expanse of the Bargain Barn from the recliner he’d dragged to Electronics from Home Furnishings. Exactly what are we missing?

  Did he want to come and help Durand with the laundry?

  I’ll just grab some new stuff from the clothing aisle.

  Durand laughed bitterly as he pushed the cart down the street, around the decaying bodies of zombies he’d killed days earlier. It was like having a big, stupid teenager of his own. Kids of any kind were something that Durand had avoided during his thirty-two years on this planet.

  It wasn’t as if he had been deprived of opportunities. He wasn’t bad looking. To the contrary, he had a lean, spare ranginess to him that most women found deeply attractive. His blond hair was still intact, his teeth were straight and white, his eyes were a deep, deep blue. It wasn’t that he hadn’t had girlfriends, because he’d had quite a few.

  What Durand never really had, though, was love. He’d never dated a girl he felt more strongly about—or even as strongly about—as himself. There’d been no girl he thought about all day while she was gone, fantasized about all night. He hadn’t met a girl who’d made him jealous or sad or depressed or mad.

  There’d never been a girl who made him feel as if he carried anything inside his chest other than a mess of squishy internal organs whose functions were less mysterious to him than that one singular emotion.

  Love.

  All that changed, though, when he met Beth McClary, but by then, she was already very, very dead.

  * * *

  The air was cool and fresh, the sun bright and benign. As Durand neared the front of the Suds-N-Duds, though, the wheel of his makeshift laundry cart dipped into a small pothole. The cart listed, fell over on its side like a stricken beast, scattering dirty clothes on the asphalt.

  “Shit,” he said, immediately looking in every direction to see how many of them were nearby, and if any of them showed any signs of coming closer.

  There were only about ten that he could see from where he stood. A few clustered around the front of the post office as if waiting to mail postcards to their relatives in St. Louis or Omaha.

  Having Fun! Wish You Were Dead Here!

  About a half block away, a single man zigzagged down the center of the street in his bathrobe, muttering in the strange, guttural grunts they all seemed to make. Two women slowly circled a fire hydrant in front of the Farm Bureau office, neither taking any notice of the other or the hydrant.

  A man, a woman and a young girl—who wrenched at Durand’s heart in her purple one-piece bathing suit, deflated floaties still circling her pale, blue arms—moved in a loose group on the edges of Millstone Park across the street. Their unlikely gathering made Durand think of a family leaving after an afternoon spent on the swing sets, the slides, the monkey bars.

  But they were not a family. They had not been playing in the park.

  Bending to collect the spilled laundry, he caught the unmistakable odor of burnt, bitter almonds from close by, looked up and saw her.

  For a moment, a fleeting, sun-drenched moment, he thought—hoped—that she was alive.

  She was wearing a simple, white sundress, large, almost abstract daisies patterned across it. One thin strap of the dress was missing; as was one flat, white shoe. Her hair was a pale yellow, and it came to her shoulders, straight and shimmering in the gentle sun. Her eyes were bright blue, like his own, and even though they seemed listless and unfocused, there was something about them that tugged at him.

  Her skin looked alabaster in the late morning light, pale as iv
ory, soft as angora. He didn’t know why her skin wasn’t the blue or green-tinged mess like the others. He knew only that it gave her face life, or at least a semblance of life that her blue eyes, vacant and dull, belied.

  A purse hung over her shoulder and around her neck, in the way that women wear purses when they’re afraid someone might snatch them.

  Blood marred her otherwise beautiful features; not much, just a thin trickle from one nostril that painted the corner of her mouth like a smudge of lipstick and a slightly thicker line that snaked from one ear, following the contours of her jaw.

  It took him a moment to notice the other blood, a large patch of it, faded a rusty brown now, hiding within the splotchy daisies of her dress near her stomach.

  Someone had shot her, killed her.

  Durand forgot about the laundry, about the 2,000 living dead lurching around a town that itself was more dead than alive, forgot about nearly everything that had been floating through his brain over the last two weeks.

  The sunlight, thick and syrupy, fell upon her from behind, lit her hair, cast a penumbra around her form, made her seem to glow from within.

  After a second, Durand found that his breathing had stopped.

  After another, he found that his heart had started.

  There was something about her that transcended her beauty; an essential sadness, as if somehow, on some level, she was aware of what had happened to her. That, her tattered dress, her missing shoe, made his heart ache for her, made him want to help her in some way.

  Help her. And the voice in his head was suddenly Scott’s. She’s dead.

  He took a deep, almost strangled breath, tore his eyes away, hurriedly began gathering the laundry, piling it into the cart. Suddenly, much to his chagrin, he was once again a nervous teenager, embarrassed in front of a girl. He felt heat slam into his face. The tips of his ears glowed with humiliation.

  The cart’s wheel was still caught in the rut, resisting his attempts to push it. Angrily, he shoved it forward over the curb at the front of the Suds-N-Duds.

  But the girl still stood there, still stared past him.

  Because, he sighed, she’s dead.

  He didn’t need to be embarrassed at how ridiculous he’d looked. He didn’t need to worry about impressing her or if she’d noticed him or what she thought of him.

  She’s dead.

  Pushing the cart past her, he muscled his way through the unlocked door of the laundromat.

  But he smiled as he passed her, smiled with both his eyes and his mouth before he let the door close behind him, the little bell ringing as if he’d won a prize.

  He was already in love with her, though he didn’t even know it yet, didn’t know her.

  Couldn’t know her.

  * * *

  “You saw a girl down by the laundromat?” Scott asked as Durand folded clothes and stacked them atop a ping-pong table. Durand had the CD player on the big stereo turned up, playing Linda Ronstadt’s Greatest Hits, which he knew irritated Scott, but he didn’t care. He was into irritating Scott these days, because Scott was irritating. And besides, he liked Linda Ronstadt. Her music reminded him of his mom, who had constantly played her albums on their old record player after his father had left.

  Scott neither looked up nor stopped playing his game. At his feet, lay empty bags of Doritos, empty cans of Red Bull taken from an enormous, shrink-wrapped cube of the stuff he had used a forklift to wheel over near his recliner.

  “Yep.”

  It took him a moment to realize that Scott’s fingers were no longer clicking the buttons of the controller he held.

  “Wait,” he said, turning in his chair. “You saw a girl. A girl?”

  “Yep.”

  “Not a zombie, but an actual, real girl…well…I mean…what the fuck, hombre? Why didn’t you bring her—“

  “She is a zombie. A zombie girl.”

  “A zombie girl? Well, fuck that.”

  Scott let out a petulant little puff of air. The beat of tapping fingers sounded again.

  * * *

  “Exactly what are you doing, bro?”

  Scott sidled up to Durand the following morning, a can of Red Bull in one hand and a package of Twinkies in the other. Durand was digging through a pile of women’s shoes arranged on a table. There were mules, slingbacks, moccasins, flats, all in different colors and styles.

  “I’m looking for a pair of shoes,” Durand muttered, studying Scott’s face as he took in this news. Durand saw Scott’s eyes narrow as he noticed the backpack on the floor, the green dress stuffed into it.

  Scott slurped down the rest of his Red Bull and cleared his throat. “You’re not…you know…a fuckin’ cross-dresser, are you? A tranny or something?”

  “No, they’re for…someone.”

  “Someone? Exactly who might that be?”

  Durand turned back to the table full of shoes, but got a mental picture of Scott, his t-shirt stained with orange hand-swipes from the Doritos and Cheetos that comprised his diet these days. He saw the week-old growth of beard, the greasy, matted hair, the bleary eyes. Mostly, though, he saw his arm cocked back, preparing to toss the empty Red Bull can into the depths of the store.

  Then he actually heard the clatter of the can.

  “I’m not picking that up,” Durand said, stepping back from the table and checking the clip in his gun, freshly loaded from the seemingly inexhaustible supply of ammo found in Sporting Goods. Satisfied, he thumbed the safety, tucked it into the waistband of his pants.

  It took Scott a minute. “Oh, hell no…her? You’re picking out shoes for a zombie?”

  “She’s missing a shoe…and I just…well, I want to make sure she doesn’t mess up her feet too much,” he said, realizing how stupid that sounded.

  “And the dress?”

  Durand made no attempt to answer for that.

  “Dude, she’s a fucking zombie, she’s not concerned with her clothes or her fucking footwear anymore. Or her feet, for that matter.”

  “Well, I’m doing this. Stay or come, it’s up to you,” Durand said, shouldering the pack.

  “Oh, no, I’m coming. I’ve got to fucking see this shit go down.”

  * * *

  The first time they had seen them eating, he and Scott had been staying in a house off Main Street, before taking residence in the Bargain Barn. Scott had somehow managed to cut himself opening a can of tuna, and they’d been unable to find even a Band-Aid in the house’s medicine cabinets, just an old Fleet enema bottle and a prescription for Darvocet from 2003.

  So, they’d hiked to Dover Pharmacy, dodging zombies along the way, shooting any that got too close. Corpses littered the streets now, just a few days after it had all gone down, and it made for grisly scenery. Bodies lay here and there, heads blown off, brains and blood and gore spattered everywhere.

  The men turned the corner from Sixth Avenue onto Main and saw vague shadows between two buildings in the wan light of the alley. Then, they heard the sounds: teeth tearing raw meat, scraping bone, cracking and grinding, and over it all, the wet, smacking lips, the grunts of pleasure.

  As their eyes adjusted, they saw four of them squatting around an indistinct mess of liquid darkness that sent rivulets of inky liquid across the uneven, trash-strewn concrete.

  The figures didn’t turn, didn’t rise to their feet; and it was difficult to see what they were doing.

  Even though, both men knew, both men knew exactly what they were doing.

  Durand raised the gun, stepped into the alley.

  Scott grabbed his arm, looked at him without saying anything. But his face said it all.

  Are you crazy, bro?

  Durand shrugged him off.

  Wished he hadn’t.

  The four zombies—because, oh yes, they were zombies now, there could be no doubt anymore—sat on their haunches, reaching their filthy, gore-encrusted hands into an undefined mess, grabbing whatever they found, stuffing it greedily into their bloodied mouths and chewing, s
wallowing.

  Gulping.

  Durand stood gape-jawed for a long while, the gun hanging in the air before him, until he saw a hand, an intact hand—pallid, pale, palm up—jutting from the pile. Then, it came into focus, its details leapt up at him, and he could see an arm, a burst chest, the remains of a thigh, a ruined, gnawed face, with one eye, one remaining bright, blue eye gazing balefully from its wreckage.

  As if yanked by unseen strings, the four zombies sprang to their feet, spun to Durand.

  Their faces were empty, vacuous. There was no fierceness in them, no hatred.

  Only hunger, deep, abiding hunger.

  Their mouths were open, wide open, filled with blood and a pulp of chewed meat, gristle, the pink, spongy marrow of bones. Gore and spilth dribbled down their faces, caked their cheeks, matted their hair.

  They bared their teeth in hunger, that was all, just hunger.

  But it was enough.

  Durand’s gun roared four times, deafening in the confines of the alley.

  It was enough.

  * * *

  They found her in the best of possible places, near the side of Millstadt Hardware, where its lumberyard lay behind a section of chain-link fence. She was trapped where the fence formed a corner, thumping against it repeatedly like a child’s windup toy that’s hit a wall. She would try to move forward, turn left or right, but found herself blocked. The thought of simply stepping backward seemed beyond her, whatever she was now.

  “That’s her,” Durand shouted, racing forward, then catching himself and skidding to a stop in a cloud of dust and gravel.

  Scott followed slowly, his face screwing into a mask of doubt and shock.

  “That’s her?” he squeaked in a weak echo. “Really?”