Sex in the Time of Zombies

by William Todd Rose

  “Oh, shit… shit, shit, shit!”

  The person had turned slowly toward him, seeming to stagger like a drunkard as it fought for balance. At the same time, more figures appeared. They shuffled out of the forest, congregated from the other side of the hill, some seeming to simply appear out of nowhere. And, as a collective, they began to totter toward him, their limbs pitching like marionettes whose strings were savagely jerked at random intervals.

  Oh, you fucked up, you fucked up bad….

  Tanny’s focus was entirely on the rotters that floundered toward him. He wasn’t aware of Owen pouncing from the forest or the crunch of the man’s feet on gravel. He didn’t see the savage grin as the blond man hoisted the hatchet so that it was slightly behind his own ear. Nor did he witness the sharp flick of Owen’s wrist or the blur that spiraled through the air with a soft whistling sound.

  Tanny’s skull felt as if it had shattered into a thousand fragments and he collapsed to his knees as he pressed his hands against his temples. The hatchet lay on the ground beside him, the blunt end splotched with fresh blood from where it had hammered against his head. As the little man swooned, Owen scooped the weapon from the ground and grabbed a fistful of red hair with his free hand.

  “Steal my fuckin’ girl, will ya? Fuckin’ dirty her up like she was just some common piece of trash? Well, you’re about to join the fraternity of the dead, mother fucker. And you can consider this the hazing.”

  Owen yanked Tanny’s head back and drew the blade of the hatchet sharply across his brow. A furrow of blood added a new crease to the little man’s forehead and the sting of severed nerve endings cut through the fog that had overtaken Tanny’s mind as cleanly as the hatchet had his flesh.

  “Zombies….”, he gasped. “Owen… coming….”

  “Zombies? You’re about to embrace the darkness and that’s all you can think of to say, you fuckin’ turd? Now, you tell me where she is and I might make this quick.”

  “Zombies….”

  “Zombies, zombies, zombies! I fuckin’ get it… now where the hell is she, motherfucker?”

  Tanny nodded his head slightly to the side and Owen’s eyes followed the movement, thinking he’d see his beloved starlet lying on the road like a damsel tied to the train tracks in some old film. For a moment all of the rage drained from his face and his eyes grew large and round.

  The dead were close now. So close that the stench of decaying flesh wafted to the two men like a hot wind. Fifteen to twenty of the undead bastards staggered forward with outstretched hands, their skin blackened and bloated and seeming to rip with the force of escaping gasses.

  “Son of a bitch…”

  Owen pulled Tanny by the hair, dragging the man across the street as his small legs flailed and kicked.

  “Hurts! Ow… shit… let me go. Let me go!”

  “I ain’t done with you yet, fuckwad.”

  “You son of a bitch!”

  Tanny squirmed and writhed.

  “Let me go! Where the hell do you think you’re going anyway, you bastard?”

  “The red door.” Owen panted. “Get a bit of privacy. What d’ya say?”

  The rotters were closing ranks and formed a tight cluster of purification as they zeroed in on the living.

  “Damn it, Owen!”

  The rickety stairs leading to the porch jarred Tanny’s spine and the picture of Tiffany Shepis wedged in his back pocket raked the skin beneath his shirt with its crisp edges. Somehow, he had to make sure it remained hidden: it was the only card he had to play and his life, quite literally, could very well depend on what he chose to do with it.

  Tanny was pulled to his feet and roughly shoved through the doorway as Owen spun around and slammed the door behind them. The red door, however, had long since given up its locking mechanism and swung back open with a creak.

  Outside, the dead clamored across the lawn. They bumped into one another, tripped and stumbled over the tangle of feet, and teetered like players in some macabre slapstick. But, even still, they kept coming. Kept pursuing the warm flesh within the house with mindless, dogged devotion.

  Owen knew he could probably take out a few with a couple well placed blows of the hatchet. But not all. There was simply too many. He scanned the room quickly, taking in the dust motes that swirled lazily in shafts of light. Furniture so feeble and decrepit that it seemed to be held together by sheer willpower. Peeled wallpaper.

  Tanny was scooting across the floor and tears streamed down his pale face. He whimpered softly as Owen stormed toward him and threw his hands in front of his face.

  “Get the fuck up, maggot!”

  The larger man shook the hatchet at Tanny.

  “Where the hell are we going to go? We’re trapped, dumb ass!”

  It was more of a high pitched plea than any sort of defiance; in fact, Tanny looked as if he were struggling to come to terms with his impending death. If this maniac didn’t cleave his skull in half, then the rotters would soon be streaming through the door. Either way, he was fucked. Maybe if his ankle didn’t feel as if it were wrapped in barbed wire. Maybe if he had some sort of weapon of his own. But he hurt like hell, he was tired, and he just wanted it to be over. All of it.

  He pushed himself up off the floor slowly and wobbled back and forth, trying to support as much of his weight on his good leg as possible. Meanwhile, Owen was still searching the house with his eyes.

  “There! Through there!”

  “Where?”

  More like a sigh than a question.

  “The basement, jack. Get your scrawny ass down there!”

  Owen indicated a door just down the hall. Tanny could see a hint of stairs descending just on the other side. Without further complaint, he limped toward the opening like a death row inmate taking that final walk toward The Chair. His chin hung against his chest and Owen occasionally encouraged him with rough shoves in the back.

  “Move it!”

  The stairs creaked and popped as Tanny struggled down them. They seemed to shift with his weight as if the entire structure was about to come crashing down.

  “What the hell is with the locks in this damn place?”

  Owen gave up on trying to secure the door and took the steps two at a time, seemingly oblivious to the way they shook beneath him.

  “Look here, little man, this all ends now. You hand over that picture and we find a way out of this shit, all right? You go your way, I go mine. Deal?”

  The cellar smelled musty and greenish mold clung to the block walls. On the far side of the room, a small window was embedded just above ground level and it let in enough light to reveal the stack of boxes and cluttered junk below it.

  “You promise? I give you that damn picture and we call it even?”

  “What fuckin’ choice do I have? But I swear, if you don’t hand it over in the next three seconds I’m gonna peel the skin right off your body.”

  Dull thumps and thuds came from overhead and released a shower of dust in the air. They were in the house now and Tanny could track their position by the sound of their shuffling footsteps. Maybe one of them had seen Owen fighting with the door. Maybe they somehow just knew. But it was obvious that they were slowly making their way toward the entrance to the cellar.

  Pulling the rolled up photo from his pocket, Tanny thrust it toward his one-time friend. He jerked his hand back just as Owen snatched it away and edged backward.

  “Ok. There. You’ve got it.”

  “Tiffany… sweetie.” Owen’s voice was a soft whisper. “What did he do with… to you? It’s okay. I’m here now. Everything’s okay.”

  “So… what now, Owen?”

  Owen propped the picture against a can of paint that sat on top of a rusty chest freezer. He fiddled with it slightly, angling the photo as if he were trying to ensure that the brunette could see as much of the room as possible. When he was satisfied with his handiwork, he turned to Tanny with a cold smile.

  “Now? Now, you wish you’d never been bo
rn. Now this place becomes a fuckin’ death factory!”

  “B-but… we had a deal, man!”

  Owen threw back his head and cackled as he gave the hatchet a few practice swings. “It’s the rule of three, you little shit. What goes around, comes around? You really think I’m just gonna let you get away with the shit you did? You think I don’t know the disgusting things you were doing to her out there?”

  Owen walked calmly forward as he spat the words but his eyes twinkled with brutal amusement.

  “I didn’t do anything! I swear to God, I just wanted to….”

  “To what? To fuck her? To take her from me? To rub your filthy little parts…”

  “No, no, it wasn’t like that, I swear, Owen….”

  Tanny had backed into the shelving now and could retreat no further. And yet Owen still advanced, slapping the flat part of the blade against his palm with each step.

  “I fuckin’ trusted you, man. And now, you’re gonna pay. That’s my blood oath, little man.”

  At the top of the stairs the door swung open and the dead clamored over one another as they pushed their way through the opening. They swarmed down the steps and Tanny’s eyes darted from their tattered clothing to Owen’s hatchet.

  “See, I’m the violent kind, Tanny….”

  Behind Owen, the steps gave way with a crash. A cluster of rotters fell through the air with the remnants of the staircase and smacked flatly against the floor. Undaunted, they staggered to their feet and stepped through broken scraps of wood and railing while the companions overhead simply stepped into the void where stairs had once been and plummeted to the ground.

  Owen’s head had snapped around at the sudden cacophony and his promise of revenge seemed to be wiped from his mind. The initial crowd of zombies were between him and the picture with more closing in.

  “Get away from her, you fucks!”

  He charged forward with the hatchet raised above his head.

  “I’m coming, baby!”

  The undead surged forward and Tanny saw Owen’s weapon swing through the air. It’s edge bit into the skull of the zombie closest to him and the man shoved it’s body back with his free hand even as he prepared for another swing.

  “Tiffany!”

  Tanny, however, wasn’t sticking around for the massacre. He scrambled up the mountain of refuse below the window, kicked over boxes, and sent jars careening to the ground where they shattered and spilled their dark fluids over the floor. The pain is his ankle was like bolts of lightning, but he clenched his teeth and fought through it until he’d reached the very top of the pile.

  The window was now right before him and stealing a glance over his shoulder, he saw that the dead had formed a loose ring around Owen. Their hands snatched and grabbed as the man spun in circles, swinging the hatchet wildly at his attackers.

  “Tiff!”

  But then Tanny was pushing the window with both hands, forcing the rusted hinges to swing it outward. It was a tight fit, even for his diminutive body, but he was able to wiggle and squirm until he was crawling across the grass of the backyard. He picked himself up and took a deep breath.

  Maybe he’d head back into the woods for a while, see if he could find his way back to their campsite. With food and safety, he could rest for a few days, give his ankle a chance to heal before moving on. He took one final look at the window he’d just forced himself through before beginning to edge his way back toward the road.

  “So long, fanboy.”

  Tanny had barely reached reached the front of the house by the time the wordless screams of pain from the basement came to an abrupt end. He peeked around the corner to ensure the coast was clear and made for the line of trees on the other side of the road. A bitter smile broke through the grimace of pain that contorted his face.

  Owen and his starlet were together again.

  And they would be for a long, long time….

  Hips

  It was dark when she awoke. For a moment she laid in the sleeping bag with her eyes closed and listened to the shuffle of footsteps out in the hall. She could hear the heavy doors of the other cells being opened, one of the new girls sobbing softly, the murmur of conversation as her captors made their rounds… just like always. Every day the same sequence of events played out as if she were nothing more than a character in some macabre loop film. Judging by how muffled the sounds were, she knew she would hear seven other cell doors swing open before they made it to hers; and as the squeaking of hinges grew louder, so would the terse commands of their keepers. The same set of orders repeated in voices that sounded emotionless and bored. Day in. Day out.

  Her bladder felt as if a heavy stone had grown in it overnight. The stone had sharp edges that raked against the soft, unprotected lining of the organ, flaring with pain as she struggled to hold it in. A little wooden bucket sat in one corner of her cell but even with the sleeping bag pulled up over her face she could still smell it: the stench of stale piss and caked-on shit, so thick that it seemed to lodge itself in little chunks in the back of her throat. A steady stream of urine would only make matters worse, churning yesterday’s waste into a frothy, brown sludge and releasing even more of the noxious vapors. No, it was better to wait. Before they left her cell, they would empty it into the drum which sat across the hall. If not clean, at least it would be cleaner.

  All part of the routine.

  She finally opened her eyes and pulled the sleeping bag down to her shoulders. The view that greeted her was the usual brick walls that glistened with condensation, the concrete floor with its Rorschach stains of various bodily fluids; her cell was no larger than a broom closet and the only light came through the small, barred window on the wooden door… and even then only when torches had been lit in the hall. The wall opposite the door also had one of these windows, but beyond it was only a darkness so complete that she could only hear the things that shuffled on the other side..

  That would change soon, however. It was also part of the daily routine; the moment her door opened, they would be at the window, grasping through the bars with hands that looked shriveled and mummified in the dim light of the cell. With fingernails worn down to ragged splinters, they would reach through and claw at the air, scratching at the bricks as if they could somehow erode the rough mortar through persistence alone. The creatures had deteriorated to the point that they no longer had an odor but anytime a freshie was added to the group there would be weeks where the stench of decay overpowered even the toilet bucket. Somehow, that was the worst part of the ordeal: smelling the greasy, sweet reek of rotting meat and knowing that once it had been someone just like her. Someone who had learned to cope with life in the cells as best as she could. Someone whom she’d spoken with, perhaps, through the bars on their doors. Someone who was no longer useful….

  “Assume the position, Mole.”

  The voice was closer now. Maybe only four doors down or so.

  “I said, assume the position, Mole!”

  More annoyed than angry. But if the unseen woman continued to resist, things could turn bad quickly. She’d heard (and felt) the beatings before: the dull thud and smack of sawed-off broomsticks against thighs; the cries of pain, the tears and sobbing and pleading apologies.

  “Just do, it.” she muttered. “Make it easy on yourself, Mole.”

  She felt her face grow warm and her stomach churned in a nauseous mixture of disgust and shame. Mole. She’d actually called the woman that. Like their captors, she’d stripped away every fiber of personality from her fellow prisoner with a single word. A word that reduced a living, breathing, thinking person into nothing more than a single characteristic. A word that left her mouth feeling so dirty that she would rather drink her bucket of waste than utter it again.

  She, too, had a name once; but now she was simply Hips. Like her mother and boyfriend, it had disappeared into the mists of time and memory. Sometimes, while the darkened hallway beyond her cell echoed with snores, she would lay in the gloom and whisper that nam
e over and over. As if it were some sort of mantra that could magically teleport her from this dank dungeon to some distant place where she would feel the warmth of sun on her skin and hear birds chirping overhead. Without fail, though, it always took her mind back to that last day of freedom. To the day she lost everything….

  They were hunkered down in a burned out storefront, hidden behind the charred remains of the front counter; the sun had set several hours earlier and a darkness had fallen across the town that made it seem as if they had been plunged into the void of space. The days of street lamps and the soft glow of curtained windows were over; no headlights splayed across the soot stained walls, no winking neon or stop lights cycling through their array of colors. And on that particular night there wasn’t even the pale luminescence of moonlight to chase away the shadows.

  With the darkness came silence as well. She’d never realized how noisy society was until it had all been taken away. The humming of air conditioners, traffic four blocks over hissing through rain-slick streets, the muffled beat of music seeping through the walls of bars and clubs: all those things were missing now. The million other tiny sounds her ears had learned to take for granted had been replaced with a silence so complete that only a high pitched ringing filled her ears.

  And it was really the quiet that worried her most. They had ran their hands along the cinder-like edge of the counter and smeared the dark ash across their faces and arms commando style. They’d curled up beneath a black tarp Jeremy had found a few days back, had tried everything within their power to pass themselves off as just another cluster of shadows. So, in a sense, the darkness was their ally. Her boyfriend, however, had a tendency to talk in his sleep.

  In the bedroom of their apartment it had been nothing more than softly muttered gibberish, not even loud enough to wake her if she were sleeping. But out here that same sound would be like a loudspeaker broadcasting in the night: we’re here, we’re hiding over here, come get us, come quick….