Those Who Remain

by Priscila Santa Rosa

  Inside, the smell of rot fills my nostrils. This is the first time I’m truly grateful for being exposed to animal carcasses since childhood. The floors are tainted with dry blood and brown with pieces of exposed muscles and half-eaten organs. About one hundred people stumble around, some even eating the fallen bodies and chopped parts. I gulp, heart pounding.

  One loud mistake here and we’re dead.

  Crouched, our steps are calculated. We take our time and wait for the right moment to maneuver between the lines of machinery. We reach the middle of the warehouse without drawing any attention. Years of training to be stealthy paid off after all, and I silently wonder what Mom would think of that.

  Father leaves another bomb between the machinery in the center of the room. With a nod between us, we keep moving deeper into the building.

  A group of five people blocks our way, knelt over a mass of bones and muscle. We stay outside view behind a large metal container, but to reach the back entrance we need to pass them. I turn around to see if we could go back the way we came, but Father acts faster, grabbing a metal pipe and tossing it far away, on the opposite side of our position.

  The metallic sound rings around the warehouse. In a matter of seconds, not only the five in front of us, but more, run after the pipe, cracking and tripping over themselves to reach it. Taking advantage of the distraction, we reach the back gate and leave the last bomb behind.

  Outside, there’s another parking lot with delivery trucks stationed. One of them is long enough to cover the gate’s gap. Father breaks the lock on its container's door, revealing stacks of pork, gone bad from the lack of refrigeration. A wave of spoiled meat smell hits us. While he works, I keep close watch for any sign of movements.

  He rips the plastic off some of them, and then passes the spoils to me. We repeat this three times, taking the putrid meat out and placing inside the gym bag I still carry. After, Father throws the body of the driver on the pavement, starts the engine and parks the vehicle in a way that blocks the gate. I hear growling and footsteps on the other side. The trap is set. We don’t explode the bombs yet, not before dealing with the other building.

  Next on our list is the office. It’s big and we’re out of bombs. And there are no locks left to help avoid frontal attacks and keep them from forming big groups.

  “Do we clean each floor?”

  My question is barely a whisper, but I know he hears me fine.

  “We can come back tomorrow with more locks,” I try when he offers no answer.

  “No. I want this over today.”

  Up close it is. The reception is an empty open space, doors on each side and an elevator at the back. We decide to move left, so I open the nearest door while Father checks the perimeter. To avoid any noises, we use hand signals to communicate. I take out one pack of meat and throw it with a dull thud onto the floor. Both sound and smell work like magic and they come like starved animals. One, two, three, and they’re dead.

  We clean each room methodically. By the time we backtrack to the reception again, my knife is as bloody as my gloves. The right side is more of the same. Open the door, check the perimeter, throw the bait, grab them by the neck, destroy their skulls, and move to the next room.

  Not surprising the elevator isn’t working, so we take a brief rest on the receptionist's chairs, before moving to the next floor. My lungs burn from the lack of air. I feel my shoulder, sore from the action.

  “Your shoulder is hurting because you’re not watching your grip on the knife.”

  He shows me the proper way with his own weapon. I just nod. I’m too tired to ask for tips on penetrating skulls with knives.

  We get up. Never have a couple flights of stairs seemed so arduous. The second floor is filled with meeting rooms, bigger than the offices, and thus making it harder to control the enemy’s movements. It takes us a few tries to adapt, but we manage to clean most of the rooms.

  The last office is bright thanks to the glass windows looking outside, so when I peek inside it’s easy to spot five executives, all infected with fresh blood still dripping from their open mouths; their neat ties and suits ruined forever by slimy brown guts. They are busy eating a body on the right corner of the room. Four mangled forms are scattered below the meeting table, already eaten beyond recognition. Between my sore limbs and the smell, I feel dizzy for the first time.

  I throw the meat on the table, and then close the door, leaving only a gap to observe. Their heads turn sharply to middle of the table. One after the other, they climb like monkeys supporting themselves with their arms, kicking the chairs behind them. There’s not enough meat for all of them, and soon, they are fighting for it, reminding me of hyenas in the African savanna. Father’s eyes meet mine.

  Slowly, so very slowly, I open the door all the way in. They don’t even register the sound, being too worried about the food. Father takes the lead, grabbing a skinny one by the foot and throwing him onto the floor. The thing reacts by kicking and screaming. Father buries his knife inside the back of its skull.

  Now we have their attention.

  A former executive lady jumps on the floor. She tries to grab me, her mouth open wide, dark teeth exposed, but my eyes are drawn to her red high heels. I marvel at her ability to move on those things, and then take her balance out with a low spin kick. She goes flying, hitting her head against the table. I make sure she’s dead by stabbing her in the eye.

  A third jumps on me, but lands on the wall just as I roll to the side. The office is not exactly an ideal fighting arena, so my head bangs against a steel chair. It hurts like hell.

  Father wastes no time in covering me, burying his knife squarely on the thing’s forehead. A bald ex-employee lurks behind him. I get up and throw my own knife at him in attempt of stopping him before he attacks Father. I miss the face; instead my knife ends in his shoulder. That’s not going to stop him.

  Damn.

  My feet are quicker than my mind. Before the guy can grab Father I jump at him, hitting his stomach, and forcing the monster to the floor.

  Shit. Mouth, mouth, mouth.

  His teeth are black as night, yellowish tongue out, saliva dripping from his mouth onto the floor. He grabs my neck, almost choking me. I head-butt him before he can do more damage. My free hand takes the knife out of his shoulder, feeling it tear muscle on its way out.

  It goes back inside quickly enough: inside his right eye.

  I’m back on my feet, just in time to watch Father finish off the fifth and last infected. My heart rate slows down. Father turns to me, his face reminding me of all those times he gave me a zero. Zero survival skills. Zero aim. Zero excuses. I look down to the floor.

  He grabs me by the chin and lifts my head to inspect the damage on my neck. After a few seconds, he releases my head, apparently satisfied.

  “Father, I had to—”

  “Not now. Let’s move.”

  I nod. The lecture on body contact with the infected can wait until we are safe. Always from behind, never face to face. Maintain control of your emotions. Easy enough to preach, but I wasn’t about to let that thing bite him.

  We leave the offices behind, going back towards the parking lot, a good distance away from blast radius of the bombs. Father takes out a modified TV remote control. I cover my ears. As soon as he pushes the button, the ground shakes and the entire warehouse blows up. Smoke, wood and glass explodes in all directions. The roof caves in and fire eats away everything else left standing. Fireworks have their charms, but nothing beats a huge explosion. We hide behind a car to shield ourselves from the worst of it, as the whole thing burns and melts.

  The whole thing includes the padlocks and the doors—the ones standing between us and the hungry things inside.

  Our brief moment of triumph quickly turns into a realization that shit just happened. Pain doesn’t matter to them, so unless their brain is toast, everything else insists on moving. When Father and I stand from our position, we are already too late. The ones who “survived
” the initial explosion run toward us, coming out of the smoke, bodies burning, but legs still working all too well. Father and I start shooting, but there are too many and we are out of bullets after a few shots. He grabs me by the wrist.

  We race across the parking lot, leaving behind the billboard with the pig to reach our parked truck. They’re right on our heels. Their screams fill my ears, pounding against my skull and watering my eyes, but then I realize I’m the one screaming. Shocks travel through my whole body. Turning, my blurry vision shows me something I can’t understand.

  My arm is on fire. A woman with a face marked by lumps smiles at me, her rotten teeth still full of meat and her flesh burning brightly. Her fingers hold my arm tight, spreading the flames like hungry snakes. The plastic glove I’m wearing melts and mixes with my skin. I scream again.

  Blood splatters all over me. Her face disintegrates and the fingers holding me turn to ash. Nothing keeps me standing anymore.

  My body won’t obey me. I’m falling.

  “Stay with me, Lily. Just hold on.”

  The Geek III

  November 23rd, Monday, 10 pm

  Roger’s quick reaction saved Frank from an early demise, and now our first zombie, his former son, lies unmoving against the bars, blood and brain matter decorating the floor. I think there are also some pieces of his skull too, but I’m not exactly anxious to stare at it to be sure.

  I gulp, feeling nauseous. Roger holsters his weapon while Ma takes Frank outside. I can still hear him crying his heart out from here.

  “We should…I think we should clean this up.” I have to clear my throat to sound less high-pitched. “Nice aim, by the way.”

  Roger doesn’t smile at my poor attempt of lightening the mood. I can’t blame him. Gutierrez comes in running, gun drawn and breathing heavily from the strenuous exercise—more than he ever did since giving up football, I’m sure.

  “A little too late, pal,” I say to the chubby cop.

  “It’s okay, Hector.” Roger doesn’t take his eyes off the body. “Everything is fine now.”

  O’Neil also appears, still holding his belt from falling off, a piece of toilet paper glued to his left shoe. “What the hell happened?”

  “We killed our first zombie,” I answer him, perhaps a little too proud of myself.

  Of course, Roger’s the one that saved Frank, I know that, but without me nobody would’ve suspected a thing and let Louis roam free to bite people and ruin everything. I think it’s okay to congratulate myself here.

  “Louis attacked his father,” Roger adds to his subordinates. “He was infected and turned. We… I shot him.”

  To their credit, the wonder team offers to clean the scene immediately. I was expecting complaints and vomit. “What should we do with the body?”

  “That’s for Frank—”

  “Burn it.” I interrupt Roger. “The faster the better. We can’t take any chances. And use gloves and masks to handle the body.”

  My friend’s stare surprises me a little. Roger looks disgusted at my words.

  “Just move the body to the morgue for now, O’Neil,” he says, taking me by the arm. “Come with me, Danny.”

  We leave the pair to their work, going to the Sheriff's office and passing by Frank and Ma, as they sit in the waiting room. Frank looks like a ghost, staring at nothing while Ma consoles him with quiet words. At his office, Roger turns to me, leaving his gun on the table.

  “I don’t think we should treat Louis’s body like he was a rabid dog we put down. It doesn’t feel right. Frank deserves closure, Danny.”

  While I appreciate the fact he didn’t question me in front of the others, it doesn’t change anything. Also, I would never treat a rabid dog that bad.

  “Well, tough luck. We don’t have the luxury for that type of stuff anymore.”

  There’s that frown and pressed lips again.

  “What? I’m serious. I’m sorry for Frank, but we can’t take any chances.”

  Roger paces around the room, a hand on the back of his neck. I’ve never seen him so agitated. Not ever since the night he almost confessed to Lily.

  “The man just lost his son. I…” Roger stops mid-sentence for air. “Zombie or not, if we do this without respecting Frank’s wishes…”

  “What? People will complain and call us heartless bastards? So what? It’s not like I’m popular to being with.”

  He keeps walking, hands on his sides. I say nothing else, letting him take his time to figure out I’m right. My hopes are crushed when he doesn’t calm down.

  “You think this is about being popular, Danny? What’s the matter with you? A man just died in front of you. How can you be so…”

  I take a step back, crossing my arms. “How can I be what? He was a zombie, he wasn’t a person anymore.”

  “That makes it okay?”

  I stare at him, mouth agape. “Well, yeah. Yes.”

  First lesson of the Zombie Apocalypse: zombies aren’t people. Your loved one gets bitten? Say goodbye then press the trigger. I can’t believe we're not on the same page about this. Somehow, something was lost in translation here. Logic wasn’t going to persuade him anymore. I have to change my approach.

  “Hey, I’m sorry. I know this is hard for everyone, but we need to focus on saving lives, not respecting the dead. If we don’t, then we risk having to shoot another person.”

  He takes his time to come around, shaking his head and letting a sigh escape, but eventually Roger sits down on a chair.

  “You knew this wasn’t going to be easy.” I point to the door behind me. “Nothing will ever be easy now.”

  “Seems this is very easy to you.”

  The right thing to do is to deny it, pretend I’m not dealing with so well, but apart from the grossness of the whole scene, I’m okay with Louis dying. He offered nothing to the town anyway. I’m leaning toward approaching the whole incident as being a great stress test for everyone.

  “You don’t even pretend to care.” Roger’s voice is bitter.

  “No, I don’t. Because that would be lying. I’m an honest guy. So you can trust me when I say burning the body is the right thing to do.”

  “I hope you’re right, Danny. I really do. Otherwise this is going to ruin people.”

  “People will bitch about it, sure. But we expected this; we knew things would be difficult.”

  “I was thinking about fights over rations and who gets the hot water, not…” He sighs. “Not this.”

  Only after hearing the sadness in his voice I realize this wasn’t about Frank’s wishes, or at least, it wasn’t the whole issue.

  “You did the right thing, Roger. You saved Frank. There was no other way. He will understand.”

  He says nothing, head downcast. I hear a knock on the door and let Ma in. It better not be more bad news.

  “The Millers are asking to see you, Roger.”

  Roger nods and leaves with no sign of feeling better about our conversation. The lack of a polite response from him makes Ma’s conflict alarm ring, because she turns to me, an index finger against my chest.

  “What happened? What did you do, Danny?”

  “Why do you think it’s my fault, Ma?”

  She rolls her eyes, treating me like a ten year old again. “Roger just took a life, he must be feeling terrible. And I know you. You probably said something wrong.”

  I throw my hands up in the air, returning her roll of eyes with one of my own. “Whatever, Ma. This is all my fault, and has nothing to do with the dead coming back to bite us in the ass. Literally.”

  “Stop avoiding the question. What happened?”

  The story comes out because I know nothing will stop Ma from discovering it sooner or later. She has this almost superpower of finding the very things I want to hide: the expensive Transformer’s figurines I bought instead of the suit she wanted me to get to attend Cousin Ernie’s wedding, the weird Japanese hentai I watched once and tried to forget, or even my crush on the English teache
r, Miss Anderson. Somehow, someway, Ma knew everything.

  “You need to give Frank a choice, Danny.”

  “Ma, no way. He’s going to want a funeral, pretty flowers, a nice old priest to say how Louis was such a great young man.” My fingers go between my eyes, feeling my nose. “People will mourn, cry, then question the brutality, doubt our decision to shoot the poor guy in the face. Next thing they are demanding we stop ordering them around. No. That can’t happen.”

  She shakes her head at me. “You don’t give people enough credit. Never did.”

  “Well, people keep proving me right. They don’t deserve credits. I don’t do loans anyway.”

  Ma and her disappointed face are very familiar to me, yet they still make me angry and frustrated. It is easy for her to trust people and be optimistic, nobody thinks she’s a weirdo with bad hygiene and a creepy fascination with children’s games. She didn’t spend her life hearing laughs behind her back, hiding in the bathroom just to avoid the looks full of disgust for the pimply fatty.

  Rule number two of the Zombie Apocalypse: people, who are indeed people, suck.

  “What if the body contaminates the groundwater? Or people touch him in the open casket and get infected? How about that for reasons to burn the guy?”

  “Oh fine. I’ll convince Frank. But you’re coming with me.”

  I open my mouth, feeling like I was just sent to bed without TV. “Why?”

  “Because is time for you to learn how to be diplomatic.”

  “You mean I need to learn to lie and pretend I like people.”

  “If you call it that way, then you already missed the point, dear. There is time for harsh truths, but there are also times for giving people comforting words.”

  Frank sits at the same chair with the same expression since Roger and I passed him by. He’s not crying anymore, I suppose that means he’s past the sadness stage and hopefully into the acceptance part of grieving.

  Ma sits next to him, a hand on his slumped shoulders. She gives me a look and tilts her head to tell me to sit too. I don’t, not yet, anyway. I need my space, in case the man decides to try to punch me.