“NO!!!” he screamed, as the ceiling began to close and he lost sight of her. “WE HAD A DEAL!!!”
Just as quickly as it started it was over. A loud whooshing sound signaled their departure. The pain in his head vanished and Chad fell to his knees again. The light in the back of his hand turned bright red once more before going out.
“This isn't over,” Chad screamed in futility, balling up his fists and punching the linoleum floor. “I know where you are taking her! I will fight with every last breath in my body until we're together again! I will never stop fighting until I am reunited with them! You hear me, you lying motherfuckers?! It's going to take more than a zombie invasion to keep me away from the woman I love… and from my baby girl!”
A surge of dark anger washed over him as he rose to his feet. An impossible and insane plan was forming in his head.
I know what I have to do, he thought as he took the butcher knife from the wood block and headed back towards the apartment's front door. He unlocked the door and put his free hand on the knob, psyching himself up for the task at hand.
“Hang on, baby,” Chad said, steeling his resolve. “I'm coming for you.”
He threw the door open, sidestepping the first knot of undead monsters that had piled up in the crook of the building as they came tumbling in. Working as quickly as he could, he began stabbing those closest to him in the eyes. One by one they fell, all resistance and struggle leaving them as if someone had removed their batteries. The ease with which he dispatched them gave Chad hope.
“I've got this,” he said, wiping the blood from his face with the back of his hand. He turned to the front door and punched the next zombie that was rushing towards him square in the face, sending him flying back into the others. The blow had crushed the monster's forehead. For an instant, the deceased man looked like he was going to his own funeral, the others around him buoying him up. Then he came crashing down to the hallway floor as they streamed past him, mouths open, eyes filled with bloody tears, faces torn apart. Chad began swinging and stabbing as fast as he could.
“WHO WANTS SOME?! COME AND GET ME, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!”
The line of monsters stretched down the hallway on both sides, but Chad didn't care anymore. He felt more alive than he had in years. In his heart of hearts, he knew that he would see her again, that he was going to make it, even if he had to kill every single last zombie between here and there.
I can't die yet, he thought, enjoying the way his fist felt as it connected with the back of a zombie's head that had been turned around by the crowd of undead all forcing their way in at once. At least not until I see my daughter's perfect little face.
Outside a fresh wave of explosions went off, signaling the battle had only just begun.
***
Beverly Hills was a city in Los Angeles County, California, surrounded by the cities of Los Angeles and West Hollywood.
Originally a Spanish lima bean ranch, Beverly Hills was incorporated in 1914 by a group of investors searching for oil, who found water instead and eventually decided to develop it into a town.
By the end of the planet Earth the population of Beverly Hills had grown to almost 35,000.
Los Angeles produced one quarter of the world’s oil owing to the little publicized fact that it sat atop the third-largest oil field in the United States.
An oil derrick on the property of Beverly Hills High School produced over 400 barrels a day, earning the school roughly $300,000 annually in royalties.
Sometimes referred to as "90210", its postal code designation as well as a popular television program, it was considered a coveted place to live, in part because of the extreme wealth of its citizens and the lifestyle fantasies affluence provided them.
It was also home to many of the planet’s most famous actors and celebrities for many generations.
***
GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE
Jeremy sat up in bed and stretched. He'd slept deeper than he could recall in years; the dreamless kind of sleep that ebbs away all the cares of the world, but leaves you feeling a little on the hollow side when you wake up. A snippet from T.S. Eliot's, The Hollow Men, raced unbidden through his mind in almost the same way an overplayed hit pop song might—'ear worms,' as his ex used to call them.
“Between the conception
And the creation,
Between the emotion
And the response,
Falls the Shadow.
Life is very long.”
I am like the shadow, he thought, a copy of a copy of a copy. The idea effervesced through him like a trickle of newly released gas in a fresh spring before evaporating into the dark rushing waters of consciousness, as ephemeral and impossible to hold on to as a handful of starlight.
He sat up and looked at the digital clock that displayed the time and date as a shimmering hologram that hovered over the black matte box. He remembered the joy he'd felt upon discovering that peculiar device in a copy of SkyMall that his new assistant, Jessica, had taken with her on the flight over from Boston. It was the kind of thing they used to sell at the malls in stores like Sharper Image, before the economic crash of the late 2000's demolished the familiar landscape of consumerism, taking down an endless string of small businesses like a billionaire's game of dominoes. You could blame Wall Street or the bankers or George Soros or baby Bush, but that wasn't gonna change the outcome. The world he'd grown up in had been swept away once more, but he was still here.
8:05 AM. September 21st.
He'd grown into the habit of sleeping in since his retirement from television. For years he'd kept a strict schedule that had shaved his sleeping hours to somewhere between three and six hours a night—at best. As the ruling King-with-a-capital-K of late night television, it was important that he kept up with a myriad of random trivia coming down the information superhighway, like shit leaking down a broken pipe.
More like a busted water main on Sunset, he scoffed, remembering the year it broke twice and flooded the UCLA campus west of his exclusive residence, sending unwanted traffic snarling into the canyons until they echoed with a grand concerto of honking horns on most afternoons, the cacophony of acrimonious vibrations being carried to his windows like rolling thunder claps across desolate mountains in a terrible winter storm. The city used to be too full of people. It's how it's always been since the first day I arrived. So where the hell did they all suddenly go?
He had staff writers and a full research team at his disposal, but preferred to do the dirty work himself, digging in up to his elbows every morning to scour the headlines of every major newspaper in the country, while enjoying a simple breakfast.
A tradition handed down by great men who made it their daily habit as well, Jeremy thought. Not the least of which was William Randolph Hearst. Then a quick after thought; it worked out pretty well for him, too. An unexpected tingle of pleasure shot through him at the unlikely comparison.
But Jeremy didn't stop at papers. Not by a long shot. He had a tape house in North Hollywood deliver an edited version to him that removed time-sucking annoyances like commercials and repetitive coming up next clips. It arrived like clockwork every morning at six. Jess laid it on the center island in his kitchen, at the end of the rows of papers, next to the current issues of several magazines. Time. Economist. Forbes. Motor Trend. Entertainment Weekly. Sports Illustrated. Fast Company. Rolling Stone. The Atlantic. Esquire. Classic Car. More often than not he spent the first part of his morning sipping coffee while pouring over the hard news of the day, before idly flipping through celebrity gossip and diving into his true passion: the car magazines. His love for automobiles had only grown over the years as his wealth increased, and suddenly beauties once out of his reach became his proud possessions. He went weak in the knees for cars, like a candy addict with a throbbing sweet tooth left unsupervised behind the golden gates of Wonka's mythical chocolate factory.
He'd abandoned his routine the minute he announced his retirement, in part relieved to be u
nshackled from the constant stream of information overload, and in part because of the bile-inducing bitterness he choked down every time he was reminded in the slightest that his departure from the spotlight was not his own decision, but rather the result of network executives deciding it was time for someone younger, someone more in touch with thirty-somethings to take the helm. The unctuous pricks cloaked their obvious ratings grab in the brain-numbing matrix of marketing terms, an overflowing ocean of statistics and surveys, but the end result was the same. The tide was already long turned against him. He could either save face by gracefully ending his career on his own terms, or he could be publicly humiliated.
The former came with a gracious six-figure bonus and a farewell tour that would make former New York Yankee, Derek Jeter, blush. The latter held only shame, tabloid scandals, and trumped up sexual assault charges from very young female interns, and none had to exaggerate in the slightest about their less than appropriate exchanges in order to torpedo his pristine image. The truth was he'd had it very good for a very long time, but like all men who'd grown accustomed to wealth and power he felt not the slightest inclination to ever relinquish a single second of it.
I earned it, he thought bitterly to himself. Nobody knows how hard I worked to get it. All they know is the scrubbed version of my story from my electronic press kit, the one they told me to keep light and fun. Fuck that. I climbed over broken glass to get here, suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for years, worked low paying comedy club gigs all over America, and lived in those cheap hotels—the kind people check in to before committing suicide, but end up being too depressed by their final residence to go through with it, and wake up hung over with an empty plastic bottle of cheap gin and a fully loaded gun still heavy in their hand.
The mental tirade did little to ease his sense of dread at facing another new day. Jeremy dragged himself out of bed, his limbs feeling numb and unresponsive—almost rubbery. His physical state mirrored his mental one, lugubriously bordering on a full bout of melancholy. It took more effort now than before, this being only one of an uncountable number of days in a row that he'd woken up on September 21st at exactly 8:05 AM.
How long? How long, he fervently asked himself. He'd lost track somewhere after the first month.
Jeremy looked out the window at his magnificent view of downtown Los Angeles. Not much had changed. The sky was clouded over with dark smoke. Fires still raged visibly in the tallest of the towers. They'd blazed brightly through the night while reports of chaos and looting downtown took over every station. Sometime past ten the cable went out, then the phones and the Internet. Since then nothing had changed. It was the same every night. No one came to see him. If his neighbors were still alive they stayed huddled in their homes. Jeremy half expected to see burning satellites come raining down across the city like angels fallen to damnation during the great war of heaven. The image made him smirk, realizing the words weren't his own, that they had percolated up from his subconscious as well; his long dead father still speaking to him from the deeply buried folds of his excruciating childhood.
No freethinking soul would choose to be born the son of a traveling pastor, his thoughts rambled. Just like no sane woman would stick by his side. That's why she left him, as well. Things were so much better before she up and vanished, too. At least back then we had a real home for a while.
Dirt poor, but determined to save the souls of those willing to hear the word of God, Jeremy's father had spent the better part of his childhood roaming between congregations that had accepted him across the Great Lakes region preaching his firebrand sermons and bearing his shockingly honest testimony to any who would listen. He'd grown fond of the attention that came with announcing loudly to a room full of strangers that he was a sinner who relished the taste of hard liquor and the company of loose women, a fornicator who had turned away from the Lord his God to a life filled with ignoble pleasures and defilement, and that it was through the salvation offered to him by Christ his Savior that he was redeemed again and made whole. He claimed he was a living testament of the Bible's promise, a humble servant whose only ambitions were to spread the Good Word. He was welcomed into their homes and hearts from Peoria to Utica, taking occasional breaks to visit the family along the way in frosty Buffalo, before slipping over the border into Canada to continue his crusade to save souls.
Jeremy hadn't understood why things often grew tense when his father was home from church visits, not until he was older, at which point it became clear that the border wasn't the only thing his father had been slipping into as far as his mother was concerned. He would later learn that there were many fair young women in his father’s ministry, both in the United States and the Great White North, who needed special guidance in spiritual matters. These counseling sessions were done in the early afternoon while husbands and fathers were off at work, and children were napping. One such prayer session was interrupted by the unexpected return of a church member’s husband, who was so enraged that he laid hands on the good preacher and gave him a glossy black shiner to wear around like a scarlet letter for a few weeks. The woman followed him home and interrupted dinner causing Jeremy's mother to go into a kind of hysterics he'd never seen before. Father insisted the girl and her family were suffering at the hands of a peculiarly stubborn demon that revealed itself only through lewd behavior and false witness. He assured her that while many young men had taken advantage of the particularly stunning young woman sporting green eyes and fiery ringlets he had never laid a finger on her.
When my mother came down with a case of the clap a few weeks later the fate of our family was permanently sealed. The self-righteous prick never even bothered trying to make an excuse. It was too late. Things had simply gone on too long and everyone knew it. He could dress himself in the garments of a holy man and quote scripture to serve his purpose, but he'd simply traded booze for religion in the end. Underneath all the pretty speeches about redemption from the fiery pits of damnation he was the same old lech he'd always been, unable to help himself around pretty girls.
Guess the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree after all.
When Jeremy turned twelve he woke to find the house empty, a note outlining his mother’s departure on the kitchen table along with enough cash for groceries to last until his father returned. After that, his father had taken him to a woman's house in Madison, Wisconsin, and left him there. He'd never bothered to offer an explanation for his actions to Jeremy.
It was a different time, Jeremy mused, back before parents thought they had an obligation to explain themselves to their children.
There was a newborn child in the house that wailed endlessly, sounding like an air raid siren, disturbing the otherwise tense silence that had settled over the house like an invisible fog. Jeremy thought he saw a resemblance in the infant’s face, as well as in its fervent screams, which seemed to naturally take on a pattern that matched his fathers most heated sermons on sin and redemption. He wondered if they were related, but never got a chance to ask.
Six days later, his father was caught in bed with a construction worker’s wife in Muncie, and was shot—a merciful fate considering the man then beat his wife to death with his bare fists before using the gun to take his own life. They told Jeremy his father had been hit by a drunk driver while crossing the road, a story that never settled right with him. Years later he found the truth while searching through microfiche in a public library after cross referencing his old man's name, learning about the tragedy from an abbreviated account in the local Muncie paper. Unsatisfied, he began to dig in, contacting both the paper and the authorities to learn what had been omitted. He'd been sent everything available on his father’s untimely passing.
The police report suggested the man who killed his father took his own life to avoid being tried for his crimes of passion, but Jeremy always suspected it had more to do with not being able to face his family and friends after being cuckolded by his pretty young wife. The man had b
een stuck in a rut, trapped in a down cycle, and the undertow had pulled him into darkness.
I know what it feels like to be stuck, Jeremy thought, remembering how he was sent to live with his grandfather in Florida after the funeral. For a long time I thought I'd never escape the oppressively white confines of Juno Ridge, the endless chores, and worst of all, the insufferable silence.
His grandfather was a serious man. Laconic and stern, his thrift extended well past money into the full range of human emotions—or lack thereof. He was, Jeremy mused, what others might call a closed book. His code for living was simple and straightforward. In the old man's philosophy, comfort was found in hard work. Austerity was next to godliness, by his estimation. Praise and affection were instruments of the devil intended to weaken the soul's hardy resolve to resist sin and spoil otherwise properly reared Christian children. He wore a dour expression as he went about his day, traveling back and forth between his barbershop and his church meetings. He wrote lists of duties he expected to be accomplished by his return each day, and left them on the kitchen table next to Jeremy's breakfast—a single hardboiled egg.
Jeremy flew the coop on his sixteenth birthday, working kitchen jobs for cash in West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, saving up until he eventually made his way to Miami. It was there he got his start in comedy, working the club scene, networking with other comedians, and being invited to hit the road with a few of them heading to New York City.
My press kit makes it look like it was a straight shot to fame, Jeremy silently deliberated. Guess no one cares that I spent years and years eating ramen noodles and drinking myself to sleep alone each night. I know all about being stuck. You'd think by now I'd be used to it, but it makes my skin crawl just to remember those days.
Undead L.A. 2 Page 20
