He wiped the sweat off his nose, then drained the last drop of whiskey and chucked the bottle. It was nine in the morning. Of course, Charlie had no clue of the time or even what day it was, and it didn’t matter. His schedule was wide open. The end of the world had that effect on one’s itinerary.
The constant deluge of alcohol and self-loathing had muddled his mind so much that life before Armageddon was but a hazy memory. This was Charlie’s new existence, miserable as it was. At least on the roof he could ignore everyone, zone out and listen to the wind whistling down the deserted streets.
Sometimes it wasn’t quiet at all. Every so often the wandering mouths would find prey and the solitude of the dead city would evaporate into frenzied cries of terror. After a few minutes it was back to the peaceful quiet of the grave. But that hadn’t happened in a while now.
However, that morning had been anything but peaceful as the trapped child kept screaming his little head off. He’d been there three days, stuck twenty feet up a tree while the zombies milled about below. Drawn by his pitiful wails, they’d smeared the bark crimson with blood and skin as they pawed upwards, grasping for a meal just out of reach.
While Charlie tuned the tragedy out and focused on catching a meal of his own, Smokey came outside for some fresh air. “Dude, what’s with the Porky Pig outfit? You’re gonna give Mike a heart attack.”
Charlie hadn’t realized he was naked from the waist down and starting to sunburn. He shrugged and went back to fishing. Skin cancer was the least of his concerns.
“That kid has a set of lungs on him.” Smokey picked up the binoculars. “It’s a shame he won’t shut up, it’s only drawing more attention.”
“A damned shame,” Charlie replied without emotion.
“Okay…” The kind-hearted hippy frowned. “You’re kind of being a dick lately.” He got no response but continued anyway. “A person can’t go much longer than three days without water, and in this heat, even less. I wish there was something we could do.”
“I suppose we could shoot him.” Charlie began reeling in his line.
The door swung open again and a shit-faced Russ came stumbling out with Left-Nut, Rob and Mike following close behind. “You need bigger bait,” Left-Nut said and pointed at Charlie’s naked waist. Nobody else laughed. “What’re you doing anyways?”
Charlie took his tattered shirt off and wrapped it around his waist. “I’m trying to catch one of those little bastards running around everywhere.” Indeed, the bodies littering the streets had led to a regular rat bonanza.
“Corpse-eating, carrion-crawlers sizzling off the George Foremen? Sign me up,” Left-Nut said.
Mike plopped down in one of the dilapidated lounge chairs. “They’ll take over after we’re all gone. Sometimes we euthanized pet rats at the clinic and they’d wake back up in the dumpster. You could hear them shaking around inside the bags. Creepy.” He thought about their present situation. “I guess we’ve seen stranger things…”
Charlie kept reeling in the line. “I can’t eat any more cat food.” He’d switched to a strictly liquid diet of expired Old Milwaukee’s Best and various types of liquor for the last several days, and the hunger was sapping what was left of his will to live.
Already annoyed by his present company, another fit from the screaming child set Charlie off. He walked to the edge of the building and pumped his fist in the air. “SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DIE! GO AHEAD AND JUMP! NO ONE’S COMING TO SAVE YOU! YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD, YOUR PARENTS ARE DEAD, EVEN YOUR DOG IS DEAD!”
Tears in his eyes, he swore for another minute before quieting to a mumble. Whether from exhaustion or taking a cue from Charlie, the child’s screams stopped. Everyone stood in silence.
“I guess he got the message,” Left-Nut said.
With the outburst over, the men went back to their normal routines. Alcohol was consumed in mass quantities, dumb jokes were told and laps were swam in the kiddie pool. It was the orgy of stupid they’d become accustomed to. But with food and alcohol supplies dwindling rapidly, the party would be over soon — as in days, not weeks.
Things wound down by mid-afternoon with everyone seriously drunk or passed out. Charlie himself dozed off, fishing pole in hand, when a nightmare took root in his mind. Random images assaulted him including flickering strobe lights, chomping teeth, crawling insects and O.J. Simpson in drag. It was almost bland considering their new reality. Still, Charlie snapped awake and blinked as he tried to remember where he was. The fishing pole wrapped around his wrist started dragging him from the chair. “Holy shit, I got one,” he said and roused his friends from their inebriated slumber.
Left-Nut looked over the edge and slapped him on the back. “Looks like a keeper.”
Charlie began reeling the wriggling beast in and was careful not to break the line. His friends peered down, anxious to spy the catch of the day.
Mike’s smile disappeared as his attention shifted from the dangling rat to something across the street. “That’s not good.” He pointed to a familiar figure next to the vacant school bus.
The attractive brunette was tall and slender, tanned and toned. But something was off as she stood staring into the sun without a care in the world. A sudden gust of wind rustled her hair and revealed a deep gash creeping from the nape of her supple neck to her collarbone.
Charlie dropped his fishing pole off the roof as his mouth fell open, recognizing the woman he’d known for a decade. Her name was Cindy, and she was Jim’s wife.
“I don’t remember her tits being so big. Man I’d like to—” Left-Nut’s sentence was cut short as Big Rob grabbed him by the throat and applied serious pressure.
“Not another word,” Mike said with a glare, and Rob released his death grip on the cretin’s windpipe.
“What are you gawking at?” As if on cue, Jim emerged from downstairs. He’d skipped the day’s festivities to sleep and was now looking to blow off steam.
Charlie searched for a cover story as the others acted nonchalant. “Oh nothing, I’m heading inside to try a new recipe I’ve been thinking of. How do you think the Friskies Sea Captain’s Choice would taste with hot sauce?”
Jim could tell something was amiss and wondered if he was about to get punked. It wouldn’t have been the first time. “Did you guys sneak food out here or something? You better not be holding out on me.” He tried to pass by his friends but they formed a line and stopped him. Now it was obvious something was up. “All right, what’s the deal?”
Rob and Mike looked at their feet as Left-Nut started chuckling nervously. Charlie stepped forward, his palms facing upwards. “Jim, the thing is… shit, I don’t know how to say this. The thing is…”
Confusion crossed Jim’s face. “Come on, spit it out.”
There was no sugarcoating the situation. “I guess there’s something you need to see.” Charlie turned towards the street. “But try to stay calm…”
Jim walked to the edge of the roof and looked around, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. Some bodies, some zombies, a lot of trash. Then he noticed the woman and his heart nearly leapt from his chest.
There was his wife, looking beautiful as ever. Denial kicked in and he panicked. “We gotta get her. She won’t last a minute if those bastards see her!”
Charlie realized this wasn’t going to end well as hysteria took hold of his best friend. He’d have to talk some sense into Jim, and he’d have to do it fast. “There’s nothing we can do man. She’s—”
Wild eyed and furious, Jim shoved Charlie hard into the wall. “You talked me out of getting her in the first place, not again.” He grabbed the thirty-foot ladder but struggled to move it.
Rob put him in a bear hug as Mike spoke calmly. “Put it down and take another look.”
He tried to resist, but Rob increased the pressure. After struggling fruitlessly, Jim threw the ladder down with a clang. Reality slowly and painfully clawed its way back.
Mike repeated himself. “Take another look.”
&nb
sp; Jim saw his lovely wife, the mother of his unborn child, standing in the same spot. But this time he noticed her gaping neck wound. He saw her stiff body swaying slightly with the wind. Finally, he noticed her vacant stare and empty eyes, gazing into nothingness. Jim took one last look at the love of his life, closed his eyes and plunged head first over the side of the building.
Chapter 23
Man Overboard
Big Rob stared in horror at the lone shoe in his hand. Jim had slipped out of his grasp and now lay below, broken and battered on the sidewalk. His arms and legs were bent at awkward angles and a trickle of blood began to pool next to him on the ground.
Other than a gentle rustling of leaves, it was completely silent. Until Left-Nut opened his big mouth. “I always said she’d drive him to suicide.”
Charlie briefly entertained the idea of heaving Left-Nut over the side as well, but a faint groan coming from Jim stopped his murderous thoughts. The group sprung into action as Mike whispered out orders. “Lower the ladder, and do it quietly. Jim’s a goner if one of these shit-heads hears us.” He looked at Rob. “Can you carry him up?”
“I’m on it,” Rob said with confidence then lowered the cumbersome ladder. It came to rest on the ground with a scrape, but none of the nearby cannibals noticed.
“Be careful,” Mike said. “If his neck’s injured and you jostle him, it can cause permanent damage.”
Rob nodded, swung his large frame onto the ladder and began the descent. He was halfway down when Jim came to and screamed in agony, unmindful of the danger lurking mere yards away.
“He needs to hurry,” Trent said as a pizza delivery boy, a mailman and a naked office worker made a beeline for Jim. Seeing the urgency, Rob plummeted the rest of the way down and crashed into a heap. He rolled to his feet and gingerly scooped Jim up like a baby.
Meanwhile, Trent haphazardly unloaded his clip, missing several times before taking the pizza boy out with a lucky shot to the chest. The pimple-faced teenager’s heart exploded into a spray of scarlet that hung briefly in the air like a macabre firework. “Eat it, fuck-nut,” Trent said and chose his next target.
The rest of the guys hurled anything within reach to slow down the charging pack, including bricks, a rubber football, a cactus and an empty propane tank. With no time to spare, Rob tossed Jim over his back and sprinted up the ladder. Bouncing like a ragdoll, Jim passed out again as his shattered bones cracked and splintered into surrounding tissue. Warm blood from multiple compound fractures streamed down Rob’s chest and onto the aluminum steps, causing him to lose his footing.
Cindy latched onto one of Rob’s feet, yet the giant advanced anyways, lifting her into the air as he climbed. He tried to shake her off, but the ravenous woman held tight and Rob now supported an extra two hundred and fifty pounds of husband and wife.
As if things weren’t bad enough, the nude office worker crashed into the base of the ladder with a bang, tipping it to the side. Charlie and Blake dove in unison and grabbed hold of the ladder right before it could slide out of reach. Nowhere near as strong as he’d once been, Rob started to lose his grip.
Trent reloaded and drew a bead on the spastically shaking Cindy. He squeezed off a single round, and it grazed Rob’s shoulder, ricocheting off the pavement.
“Ow!” Rob bellowed.
“Sorry.” Trent aimed again and fired. Head shot.
She’d wanted to be a mom for years, and after several rounds of fertility treatments, she was finally going to be. But all the organic food, child-rearing books and classical music had been for naught. Cindy’s lifeless body twitched as her diseased brain shut down. A childhood memory of apple picking flickered briefly in her mind, and then she lay still.
The hungry mailman took no notice as he tread roughly on the fresh corpse, his arms reaching skyward, uncaring and oblivious to the tragedy underfoot.
Rob finally struggled to the top and then slumped to the ground, puking. A little more strain and the big man’s heart would have burst. Mike and Charlie gently eased Jim down on a wool blanket while the others yanked the ladder up.
“Ugh, he shit himself,” Left-Nut remarked as the smell became too obvious to ignore.
Mike did a quick triage. “That’s the least of his problems. He’s hemorrhaging badly and has broken bones too.”
“What can we do?” Charlie asked with desperation creeping into his voice.
“There’s only one thing I know of that might stop the bleeding…” Mike paused to take a deep breath. “Plug in the iron.”
* * *
Charlie still had the noxious odor of singed human flesh in his nose two days later. Stopping the bleeding hadn’t solved all of Jim’s problems though, and he’d fluttered in and out of consciousness ever since, ranting and raving in between. At one point, he repeatedly said phonebook for six hours straight, alternating between saying it slowly and spitting it out. Whispers, shouts, English accents, it didn’t matter; Jim was stuck in a loop. His friends had passed the pity stage and moved right on to annoyance. Of course, some were more annoyed than others.
“Let’s end it,” Trent said while pissing off the roof and aiming for Zombie Cliff. For his part, Cliff was oblivious to the daily golden shower and meandered around the alley.
“Yeah, I haven’t slept in days,” Left-Nut added.
Charlie didn’t like the harsh tone of the conversation and turned to Mike for answers. “You’ve been pretty mum, what’s the deal?”
“Listen, I’m only a vet, and a pretty crappy one at that. Still, it’s obvious we’re not talking about a happy ending.”
“He said happy ending—”
“Shut the fuck up Left-Nut,” Mike said. “Anyways, Jim has serious issues to contend with. Even in a hospital with all modern medicine had to offer, he’d be struggling.”
“There’s nothing you can do?” Charlie said.
“Look, I have Band-Aids and half a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and Jim has a broken neck. What the hell do you want from me?” Mike regained his composure. “He’s going to get sepsis any day.”
“Sepsis? Sounds like a heavy metal band,” Russ said.
“It’s blood poisoning. And I don’t picture him regaining consciousness again. I’m sorry.” As if to add emphasis to Mike’s diagnosis, Jim started shouting again.
“Sounds like the great communicator’s up,” Russ said. “Between him and the damned kid, we might as well have a battle of the bands up here.”
“Yeah, and more noise means more of these idiots keep showing up,” Bruce added.
Charlie paced back and forth. “What do we do?”
“We help Jim find peace. That’s what he was trying to do anyways, and—”
“Why didn’t we let him die then?” Left-Nut said.
“We did the right thing by trying to save him, now we need to let him go,” Mike said. “Bruce is right. If he keeps yelling, we’ll have half the city here.”
“Do we draw straws or something?” Rob asked.
“How about Trent? He did the wife and kid, might as well finish what he started,” Left-Nut said without a hint of remorse.
“One shot, two kills,” Trent replied proudly and gave his obnoxious friend a triumphant fist-bump.
Charlie fixed them both with an icy glare. “I used to think Vidu was socially-retarded, but you two make him look like a prom king. Anyways, he’s my best friend, so I should do it.” Nobody argued.
Trent held out his pistol, but Mike gently pushed it away. “There’s no need for that. I’ll grind up the last of the sleeping pills and make a drink. He’ll just drift off.”
Smokey briskly emerged through the door with an odd look on his face. “Guys, Phonebook Jimmy is awake, and he’s talking.”
Chapter 24
Grocery List
Richard Daley Prison was running smoothly after the initial bloodletting, mostly because everyone was scared shitless of what Marquell would do next. They had ample reason to be.
“Fore!” Th
e new dictator drove a golf ball two hundred yards off his homemade tee, an inmate buried to his neck. “You’re lucky you got an afro, brother,” he said to the man who’d carelessly stepped on Marquell’s shoes. The previous tee, a food hoarder, hadn’t been so lucky in the fluffy hair department, and Marquell had broken two drivers off the bald man’s head.
A few swings later and Marquell had ruined another driver, made a mess of those same white shoes and run out of balls. He’d made his point, though, and left the yard for the daily boardroom meeting.
Various lieutenants and lackeys packed the room while hoping to melt into the background. Marquell did a roll call then spent an hour going over various administrative tasks, including food preparation, burial detail and setting up a basketball league complete with lady-boy cheerleaders and a playoff system. After stacking his own team with two former NBA players, he dismissed the bulk of the group and waved those remaining to come forward.
The pack of scoundrels glanced around nervously while Marquell whispered to his new second in command, a Columbian hitman by the name of Fausto. The Medellin Cartel sicario sported a chest tattoo that had often been confused for the Virgin Mary, but actually depicted Maria Anuxilatra, Virgin of the Assassins and patron saint of murderers. He’d earned the ink a hundred times over.
Marquell addressed his men with a deep baritone voice. “All right, y’all, I’m gonna keep it one-hundred with you, and I ain’t gonna play. Shit’s gonna be dangerous. You’re gonna smash and grab and bring me back what I want. And think — no cops to worry about.”
“Yeah, we have to worry about the devils instead,” a prisoner said quietly.
Marquell pointed to the swarthy-looking Fausto. “I’d be more worried about the loco hombre right here if you screw up. You feel me? There’s a Costco warehouse five miles out where you’ll load up one of the buses with supplies. Canned goods, batteries, medicine… and I can’t motherfuckin’ stress this enough, dog food.” He winked at his newfound love interest. “What kind you need again, girl?”
Dead Drunk: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse... One Beer at a Time Page 12
