by James Dean
Judith backed away from a zombie getting too close. The man in a blue uniform opened his jaw, eager to bite into fresh meat. A kick sent the zombie backward, falling onto the ground, like a turtle on its back. Two more fell, catching their sluggish feet on their fallen brethren.
Leslie reached Judith, holding her hand, the majority of her skin soaked in blood. Zombies closed in, getting closer each passing moment. Leslie was doomed, but at least in the next few hours Judith could console her ex-girlfriend.
Judith cried out as Leslie shouldered her, stomping down on her foot. The pain in her ankle vanished as pain coursed from her butt through her hips.
The pain in her body didn't compare to the pain stabbing her in the heart as Leslie bolted to the museum. Leslie made it to the door, and with a yank, her ex had vanished inside the building.
A zombie dragged itself along the ground, trying desperately to get Judith close enough to eat. She rolled away, putting several feet between them before trying to get to her feet. From the ground, to her knees, and then to her feet, she hobbled on her injured leg. She hoped the bitch hadn't broken her ankle.
"Fuck," she yelled as she stepped on her injured ankle. They closed in, crawling, shambling, reaching for her. Hobbling, she made it to door, twenty feet from her to the closest zombie. The door creaked as it opened. At least Leslie hadn't locked her out. Small favors.
Hell had broken loose, zombies ate the living for nourishment. Her attention on the outside world began to wane. Closing the door behind her, she eyed the blood spread across the wall. Zombies, mindless killing machines were not so different than her ex-girlfriend.
Judith was pissed.
*****
Zombies don't growl. They don't beg for brains to be served. They don't do much other than walk toward moving objects. Thankfully the bodies on the ground didn't move. Whoever had been in the museum during the initial outbreak had done a good job of cleaning house. It had been her mistake that left a single zombie roaming the halls of the museum.
Most of the bodies had been bludgeoned. It was not an easy task beating in somebody's skull, but at least one survivor had managed it. One of the zombies, a museum docent, lie riddled with bullet holes. Somebody had shot the poor bastard, but didn't know how to stop him. A stray shot landed in the right eye. The scene repeated as the rooms transitioned from European art into sculpture and then to Greek statues.
The white alabaster chiseled physiques dominated the space. On a pedestal in the middle of the room an oracle watched all who entered. Each of the marble artifacts exhibited chipped corners and missing limbs. It didn't escape her, standing among relics from fallen civilization. If mankind survived, there would be a future generation dissecting the existence of a global tragedy.
"Leslie."
The woman turned like she recognized her name. Judith hadn't seen her in days. If she squinted and blurred her vision, the ex almost appeared human. Feet shuffled as Leslie moved toward the sound. With each step, Judith recognized Leslie's desaturated color and her awkward movements. She didn't raise her hands demanding to be fed, she didn't do much of anything other than walk.
Her fingers tightened around the hilt of the officer's sword. It wouldn't be the first zombie she killed. It would be the first one she killed that she slept with when it was alive. It would be the first one that broke her heart. It would be the first one she had loved. Still loved.
Leslie approached. The sword's fine silver blade reflected the ceiling lights as she raised it high overhead. The weight of the blade forced her to grip it with two hands, steadying herself for when Leslie stepped close enough. At a certain distance, the ex-girlfriend still held that ethereal beauty Judith had been fond of.
With another couple of steps, the beauty faded. Judith saw a chunk of her neck missing and the collarbone exposed. There was a bit of satisfaction knowing more zombies somewhere in the museum snacked before she died. It’d serve the bitch right for ditching her outside the museum.
It didn’t go to plan. First mistake, she closed her eyes. Second, she swung overhead. Third, she thought the first two were smart ideas. The sword slammed down just right of the zombie's head. The silver sliced through bone, wedging itself into one of its ribs. The only thing protecting her now was a firm grip on the sword keeping the zombie just out of reach. Leslie's animated corpse reached out, determined to claw at air in hopes of grabbing flesh.
"Jesus." Judith held her back, none too concerned with the opened mouth and dry tongue trying to reach its meal. Judith directed the zombie backward, keeping as much space between them as possible. Other than a few grunts, the scene remained eerily silent.
The zombie leaned forward, knocking her backward. She landed with a thump on the tiled floor. Leslie bent down, determined to feast on its subdued meal. The zombie stopped short, the sword preventing the its mouth from getting close to Judith's face. The art student held the zombie's arms, using them to balance the zombie above her. Even in its near victory, the dead woman lacked enthusiasm, simply baring her teeth, hoping for food.
Judith stared into Leslie's milky eyes, the vacant expression making her more sinister than her need to eat flesh. Where lush lips had once been an attractive feature, now only cracked dried withering flesh stretched to widen her mouth. Judith struggled, trying to bring up her knee to push away the woman.
Leslie's body slid an inch down the blade, the sword pushing through the zombie woman. Judith screamed, thinking the snapping jaw was about to chew through her face. No, she refused to let her bitch of an ex-girlfriend eat her alive. Letting go of one arm, she reached into her pocket, and fished around for anything that might save her. She wished she had a gun, or a knife, or that she had spent more time at the gym.
Another wiggling inch vanished between them. Her fingertips brushed against something stiff in her pocket. Judith grappled with the zombie, her hand wrapping around Leslie's pale neck. The weight of the zombie descended slowly, sliding down the blade, its maw getting closer and closer. Judith screamed at Leslie, pulling a knife from her overalls.
Her indifference faded. Rage. Her heart raced as she acknowledged how angry Leslie made her. It wasn’t enough to break her heart, she actually tried to kill her. She yanked the knife free, sludge running from the wound. She slid the tip of the knife into the zombie's left ear. She finally got payback as it scraped along bone and sunk into Leslie’s skull.
With a palette knife buried deep in the zombie's ear it died. Again.
Judith pulled herself free, climbing to her feet staring down at her twice dead ex-girlfriend. She grabbed the sword and pulled until it freed itself from the zombie. The adrenaline faded and she found her legs difficult to operate, her stomach threatening to empty. She staggered from the room full of statues into the room of European paintings. Her legs gave out and she collapsed, skidding along the ground.
If there had been any real food in her stomach, she may have vomited it as she fell to her knees. In the middle of the room, staring back at her was Artemisia's painting, the rage-filled Judith glaring. She tried to fathom how long she had before she became trapped, or hurt herself. How long before she died only to come back like Leslie. She wondered how many more close calls she'd have before one of them got too close.
Turning her gaze to the blood-smeared sword, she pondered if she had the ability to stop it. Dragging her wrists across the blade would let her painlessly slip off to sleep. If she wanted it to end badly enough, she could fall on the blade like the zombie and die in seconds. The image of Judith severing the man's head hung in the room, taunting her. It'd be easy to let the darkness swallow her, consume her entire being like it did Artemisia's character in the famous painting.
She found herself standing in front of the artwork, steadying herself. Before she realized what she was doing, she shoved the sword through the painting, piercing the torso of the dying man. She stepped backward, the priceless work of art destroyed by her hand.
"No," she yelled. "The darkness won't t
ake me today."
ABOUT JEREMY FLAGG
It started with single comic book. Shunning literature at a young age, X-Men Classic #69 got placed in his lap and for the first time he was exposed to the phrases, “Mutants,” “BAMF,” and “SNIKT.” From that moment on, Jeremy imagined his enrollment at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters at 1407 Graymalkin Lane.
A fan of horror satire, he wrote "Suburban Zombie High," and "Suburban Zombie High: The Reunion," and is expecting "Suburban Zombie High: Final Graduation" to debut in 2017. Early in 2016 Jeremy released his dark dystopian superhero series, "Nighthawks: Children of Nostradamus." He has also been published in "Wicked Witches: An Anthology of New England Horror Writers" and "Northern Frights” by the Horror Writers of Maine.
Jeremy Flagg can be reached at www.remyflagg.com on Facebook at www.facebook.com/writeremyflagg or via twitter at twitter.com/writeremyflagg.
Voices
Brian Parker
Jeremy got eaten.
My colleague and best friend for the past twenty-five years was gone and I was stuck on a power line pole—straddling a dead transformer—like a jackass.
“I guess you're not really gone are ya, you bastard?” I shouted down to the pack of filthy creatures below. Jeremy stared at me with vacant eyes, his arms outstretched in mute hunger like the others.
Bloody. Angry. Hungry.
I laughed bitterly at the words. Those adjectives could be used to describe either the remaining humans or the zombies that pursued us. My students would have been proud of the duality of meaning.
Jeremy and I fled Auburn Lake Preparatory Academy on that terrible first day when the news broke that there really were zombies in the world. We waited as long as we could, shepherding our charges into the frantic hands of their parents, and then the fights between parents and faculty began. There was nothing that an aging creative writing professor and an assistant principal could do to stop the fights without getting ourselves killed. We hid like cowards when gunfire erupted in Erica Goodell's classroom.
Even as I thought about all the depraved, desperate activities that we'd partaken in over the past five months to stay alive, abandoning Erica and that big, overnight dorm supervisor fellow to that raving lunatic Haggerty would forever stand out as the most shameful moment in my miserable life.
Jeremy and I ran like scared children from Daniel Haggerty when he brandished his shotgun at us. We'd left Erica, a woman who'd been more concerned with her friends' astrological signs and finding ways to recycle cooking oil into fuel than harming others, to defend her classroom against that man.
The repeated blasts from Dan’s gun left no room to imagine a peaceful outcome. We hid in the cafeteria until the zombies became too numerous, then we fled over the bridge once that stupid big fellow got himself stuck up on the roof, drawing all the zombies away from the only exit off the island.
Once we were safe, we'd had a good laugh over a handle of Jack Daniels about morons who got stuck on roofs. Now look at me. Moron numero uno.
I placed my open hand under the magazine of my 9-millimeter and pressed the eject button below the slide to check my ammo situation. It hadn't changed. Three rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. I slammed it back into the pistol and went over my options.
I could shoot myself. No, I can't. I may not be a regular at Mass, but I was raised in the Church; suicides automatically get a one-way ticket to hell, no stopovers with the desk clerk to check for reservations at the pearly gates.
Okay, so the easy way out was off the table. Now it was time to actually think of a real solution to my predicament. I could shoot four of them. I had all the time in the world to line up a head shot and make sure each round counted. Unfortunately, it would only bring more of them.
That’s how you and Jeremy got surrounded in this damned field, a voice stated.
The voice sounded loud, like someone familiar stood beside me talking, but obviously no one was there. I shook my head to clear the haze and tried to focus on the problem at hand.
“Where do people in the movies get all of those silenced weapons?” I muttered angrily. Everything I'd thought I knew about zombies and how to survive an impossible situation came from the movies. Well, they did a shitty job of showing how relentless a pack of these things could be.
I could climb down to ten feet or so and try to jump beyond the ring of zombies. There were only nineteen of them, including Jeremy. It would be easy. I could climb down, leap, execute a perfect summersault and then roll to my feet. Outpacing them wasn't a problem once you actually got past them; they weren't fast.
You're forty-eight years old and not especially coordinated, the voice reminded me. It was right. I'd break a leg or throw out my back trying to do that crazy move.
I stuck my hand down my pants to scratch irritably at my testicles. Then, the inspiration for my escape plan hit me.
*****
“God, what a stupid idea, eh, Jeremy?” I asked my partner, trailing along thirty feet below me.
I had the brilliant idea to strap myself to a power line with my belt and pull my body along, hand-over-hand, resting at each pole. Surely, the lines would eventually lead to a building where I'd be able to hide on the roof until the creatures got distracted by something else and wandered off.
I refocused on the line, reaching out and gripping a spot about two feet in front of me. Pull. Reach. Grip. Pull.
It seemed to go on forever.
Each time my bare hand grasped the icy line, it was like I'd placed my hand on the old cast iron stove in my parents' house. The freezing line burned hideously.
I was exhausted. Reach. Grip. Pull.
I made it to another power line pole and spun my body around to bring my legs to the climbing spikes. The belt twisted my pants, biting into my skin until I hooked an arm over the line and used my legs to ease the pressure. Then I unclasped the buckle and eased my way onto the crossbeam.
“It's getting harder, Jeremy,” I called to my silent friend. “Can you imagine me trying to do something like this a few months ago? My fat ass wouldn't have made that first transition.”
I waited what seemed like a respectable time before replying for him. “Yeah, you're right. We've both lost a lot of weight.”
It was true. I'd lost forty-two pounds the last time I checked my weight, and that had been weeks ago. Although we'd been forced to eat pre-packaged and canned foods—all of it high in fat and calories—we'd been on the run constantly, trying to avoid the zombies and distrustful of other survivors we stumbled across. We were even afraid to light fires at night for fear of drawing the attention of something.
It's amazing how little you eat when every breath you manage to take in is tainted with the smell of rancid meat. Meat that used to be living, breathing, thinking people before this whole mess began.
“Of course I know it’s not real, Jeremy,” I called down to my friend. “I'm just lonely.” My conversations with Jeremy were in my head; I realized that. He was dead now, replaced by that thing below.
I looked up to ascertain my situation.
“Woo hoo!” I whooped. A break in the cedar trees ahead showed a two-story house only—I counted quickly. Four poles away!
I leaned out over the ground and flung my belt over the line, securing it around my body. I was excited. If I could make it to the house before dark, then I'd—
The belt broke and my lower body fell into the void.
“Ahh!” The skin on my hands ripped open, separated where the metal line bit into them. Blood oozed down the inside of my coat, tickling me as the warm liquid crept along my skin and soaked into the undershirt at my armpits.
Jeremy waited for me to come to him, to become a part of his little undead band of scavengers. It would be so easy to let your battered fingers slip off the wire, the voice teased. It’s a way to end it all without resorting to suicide.
“So easy,” I answered deliriously.
Both of my pinky fingers came loose, then on
e thumb… So easy to stop resisting and just let it happen.
I tried, Lord help me, I tried to let go.
“You're right, Jeremy,” I moaned in agony. “Not like this.” Something wouldn't let me give up. I willed my fingers to open, but they refused to listen.
I conjured up reserve strength from deep inside and flexed my abdominals to bring my legs up over the wire. Through a miracle of body contortions that would have made Amberle, my long-dead yoga instructor, proud, I wiggled one arm out of my leather coat and wrapped the coat over the line.
By wrapping the sleeve around the wrist of my arm still in the jacket, I was able to pull myself along with my exposed hand until the next pole.
I assessed the situation while I rested. My hands were shredded, I was twenty-five feet above the ground and my mode of travel was destroyed. The house, an old wooden two-story farmhouse was still three hundred feet away.
“Might as well be on the moon,” I sighed.
“Dammit. I'm a card-carrying, lifetime member of Mensa. Think of a solution, asshole,” I chided. The sun hung low in the west, sending long, zombie-shaped shadows across the field when I reopened my eyes.
I settled on making a sling out of my jeans. The legs went over the line and I tied them together before scooting my back into the opening along the seat of the jeans, testing the knot cautiously before putting all of my weight into the seat of the jeans.
I gritted my teeth against the pain in my hands and pulled myself toward the next pole.
My makeshift sling worked brilliantly and I lay on the roof of the farmhouse staring at the night sky within the hour. Without any lights, the stars were a gorgeous canopy overhead. It reminded me of when we used to go out to Big Bear Lake for backcountry camping as a child.
