Billions, Tales of the Zombie Chronicles

by Mark Clodi

  Joe thought about it, in a drunken haze and nodded again. "That is very wise. You'll need food and water."

  "We have the river. We will survive."

  Joe knew it was true. The locals were able to live at a subsistence level; they had been living that way for generations, anything extra bought luxuries like televisions, cell phones and radios. The upper middle class might have a pickup or a tractor.

  Severino had clambered over the wall. He was carrying a machete in one hand. The man approached the table and sat across from Joe. Joe eyed the machete and Severino caught his gaze and held it.

  "It's a shame Joe, that you have no family. No children to carry your name."

  "I hadn't thought about it."

  "You should have had a son or a little daughter by now."

  "I know. I should have married your daughter. I thought she was too young."

  Severino looked shocked, "She turned sixteen last year. She would have made you a good wife. Would have given me a grandchild."

  "I would have moved her away from here. Away from her family. When I left."

  "It would have been a better life. Your mother would have taken her in and made her feel welcome." Severino said.

  "Americans are not like that Severino, family is...not as important. I feel closer to you than I do my mother or father."

  Severino looked at Joe for a moment, his face an expression of wise sadness. "Well, then, I suppose you are right."

  "No, you are right. I should have married your daughter. I would have been happy here."

  Both of them sat in silence for a time. Joe reached out and poured another glass of guaro. He offered it to Severino, but the man deferred.

  "I shouldn't. The radio says it might be passed by sharing cups. They don't know. Hand me the bottle and I shall drink with you."

  Joe passed the older man the bottle and they saluted each other and drank.

  "So? Are you here to kill me?" Joe asked.

  "If you like. Ramon said he would do it. But Ramon doesn't like you, I didn't think such a job should be done with pleasure. It should be done with respect and sadness." The man looked like he was crying, but Joe couldn't tell by the starlight.

  "Will you miss me?" Joe asked, he tried to inflect his words with some form of humor, but failed.

  "You are a good man, Joe. You left all that you had to come here and work with us. I will miss you."

  "I learned more from you than you did from me."

  "Don't you understand, Joe? That is why they send you, the American government. That is why we take you. So some of you will understand and learn."

  "It didn't work out this time."

  "Not for you. But we still learned. You are a good man, not at all like we thought from the movies and news reporting. If anyone can solve this problem, you Americans can. I know you will."

  Joe nodded. "I hope you are right. So how do we do this?"

  "I can wait, until after, if you like. Do you think you are close to dying?"

  The sick feeling inside of Joe, the thumping of his heart and the aching of his muscles told him his time was near. To Severino he said, "I think I am close. I can hardly move. My body aches. I sweat, I smell foul. And the alcohol is barely keeping the pain away now."

  "I don't want you to suffer."

  "I don't want to die."

  "It's in God's hands now. I can only bring you to him sooner."

  "You make it sound good."

  "When you are in Heaven please forgive me to God for killing you."

  "I am not sure I will make it to Heaven."

  For the third time Severino said, "You are a good man, Joe. You will be in Heaven, I do not doubt." Severino climbed to his feet, poured a little more guaro into Joe's cup and said, "Drink. Then turn away from me."

  Joe raised his cup in a toast, "To love, life and peace."

  "Love, life and peace." echoed Severino.

  Joe turned and looked at the side wall of the house, the machete blade clove through his skull almost down to his nose.

  Thirteen in Billions

  Susan wants a fill up.

  Susan Walker pulled into the Circle V convenience store and stopped at the pump. The place was deserted for a Tuesday morning and she only stopped because her husband had borrowed her crossover SUV the night before and hadn't filled it up when he was done. Like most things in her life she a set schedule, Wednesdays were always 'fill up' days in her mind and always would be.

  Standing beside the pump she took out her debit card and thought to herself, 'Do I fill it up? Or put enough in to get me home and back again tomorrow?'

  For most people this would be an easy decision, but Susan, was a creature of habit and getting 'back on track' was far more important than the inconvenience of having to stop for fuel a second time in one week.

  Reaching out she swiped her card through the 'pay at the pump' reader and read the brief blurb about paying with her cell phone that the company had attached with a sticker to the machine.

  'Everything changes so fast!" she thought, remembering how much she had liked it when paying at the pump came along. Taking the nozzle off the machine she inserted it into her car and decided then and there that she would fill her tank. 'Then, if I want to fill up tomorrow I can. It gives me more options."

  Truth be told she knew she would be stopping to top off her tank tomorrow morning to get back into her routine. She turned back to the machine and selected the high octane fuel that the manufacturer recommended for her vehicle.

  Nothing happened. Susan pressed it again. Still, nothing happened, she looked up at the machine in confusion. There was no indication as to why the machine wasn't working, no error messages, no beeping. Nothing.

  This had never happened in the five years she had been buying fuel at the station. In those five years Susan had never once gone into the building. She was proud of the fact that she wasn't addicted to the sugars or caffeine like her co-workers. An indulgence for her was going through the nearby fast food joint and getting a coffee and a breakfast sandwich.

  With some irritation she looked towards the Circle V building, hoping to catch the eye of the clerk so he would turn on the pumps. The man was standing behind the counter staring at something and didn't see Susan when she waved at him. A moment later he ducked down out of sight.

  "Finally! He's going to turn them on now!" she muttered. However, when she pressed the button, nothing happened. Not fully irritated, Susan made one last attempt to avoid going into the store, she pressed the intercom button.

  Silence was her only answer. She thought she must have been doing it wrong so she pressed again and said, "Hello? Can you turn on pump 3 for me?"

  Pump three was her favorite, although she always kept pump 5 in reserve for when the station was busy. If both of those pumps were in use she typically just came back at lunch to fill up and, on one memorable occasion, she had to fill up after work.

  'I won't be doing that again!' Susan thought, shuddering. Getting out of the station in the after work rush hour had been a nightmare.

  After another few seconds of dead silence Susan decided she either had to wait and come back at lunch or go in and talk to the clerk so she could fill up now. It was her co-worker Kristi who decided that course of action. She and Kristi ate lunch every Tuesday at the N'Mariks, a noodle place. If she didn't get fuel now they would have to stop before going to eat.

  A fuel smell always made eating less desirable.

  "Fine!" She muttered in defeat, "I'll go in."

  Marching to the door, debit card in hand she played out in her mind exactly what she would say.

  All thought of language was driven out of her head after she pushed through the doors. Susan got as far as "Could you..." before stopping and staring at what she saw.

  It all made sense now. 'I've walked into a robbery.' The blood covered floor in front of the counter wasn't visible from the pumps, nor was the shotgun toting hoodlum back by the coffee machine.

  The man wa
s blood splattered and had an insane look in his eye as he shouted, "Get down!"

  Never one to get dirty if she could help it, Susan looked for a clean bit of floor to lie down on. She had momentarily thought of rushing out the door, but the man's shout startled her into compliance.

  "Damn it! Now, bitch! Get down now!"

  Susan froze. The man called her a bitch. 'I'm not the one holding up a gas station at six thirty in the morning, interrupting everyone's day and making messes.'

  "What? How dare you!" she said in shaky voice.

  "Get the fuck down! Watch out! Behind you!"

  "Now stop. You don't have to talk to me that way. I don't know what you've done, but I refuse to let you..." Susan stopped talking mid-sentence. 'What am I doing? The man has already shot someone and still has a gun!' She lowered her eyes and started to bend over in preparation of lying on the floor.

  A strong arm encircled her waist and kept her from attaining her goal. The man with the gun fired and Susan felt the rush of air as the bullet when by over her back. She was pulled backwards and felt her blouse get soaked, before falling onto someone else behind her. Susan sat down firmly on top of someone, her legs straddling a pair of faded blue jeans that ended in a pair of white tennis shoes.

  'Black socks. And tennis shoes. Not a good combination.' Looking up Susan saw the man with the gun cocked it, just like in the movies her husband liked.

  Susan stared at him, in her mind the desire to duck out of the way competed with pleading for her life and screaming at the inevitability of her fate. The man screamed something incoherent at her and Susan turned away from him, deciding not to watch as he pulled the trigger.

  The clerk was on his hands and knees inside the kiosk hovering over a body on the floor. Susan was at the break in the counter that allowed the clerks to get to the cash register and the clerk raised his head from body to stare at her.

  The clerks face was covered in blood.

  'Oh you poor man!' Susan thought, thinking he had been shot and was bleeding from a head wound.

  After a moment the clerk put his head back to the body and Susan couldn't believe it when she saw him tear into the other person's belly with his teeth.

  "No! Stop. What are you doing?" she yelled.

  The clerk looked up at her again and crawled over the body towards her while the man at the back of the store continued yelling. Susan's hearing seemed to catch up with her brain.

  "Get the fuck out of here! Lady! Don't just sit there you gotta move!"

  Looking back at the man, Susan only saw the round hole at the end of the gun, pointed right at her face. It looked huge. Heart beating rapidly, Susan tipped herself away from the checkout stand towards the door of the store. The clerk's hand got a grasp on her wrist and stopped her progress.

  "Lady! I can't see it! You have to move so I can see it. Get out of here before it gets you too!"

  Susan was a small woman, tipping the scales at less than her medically stated 'ideal' weight and against the burly clerk she had no chance in a tug of war match. He won and pulled her down with her upper body lying in the break in the counter top. Behind the man, the other body started to move.

  The clerk yanked Susan's hand to his blood smeared mouth with both of his hands and took a bite out of it, as if he were eating an apple. The crunching noise as he bit the ends off of two of her fingers was accompanied by pain the likes of which Susan had never felt in her life.

  Adrenaline surged through her and she struggled to pull her hand away from the man who was...eating it. Her arm was held like an anchor in his vise like grip and all she managed to do was pull her body around so she could start kicking him with her legs.

  The screaming in her ears was from her own mouth, it seemed to ebb and flow in a pattern that she realized mimicked her pulling in deep breaths of air. Closing her mouth cut the annoying screams off, until the clerk bit off two more of her fingers.

  'Mace. I have mace in my purse.' Her purse was in the car. She hadn't even brought her keys in. Long a creature of habit, Susan had only taken her debit card out of her wallet when she went to pay at the pump.

  A hand grabbed one of her legs and pulled it further back behind the cashier's kiosk. The man behind the clerk, another employee from the look of him, had her leg pulled straight out to one side. Susan saw in a moment that he meant to bite her as well and her energetic struggles only stopped him for a moment.

  Both zombies bit down at the same time, one taking off two of her knuckles with a snapping crunch, the other tearing into the side of her calf through her nylons.

  Thrashing around Susan screamed all the louder, but the undead didn't seem to mind the noise at all. The man with the shotgun approached her warily, pointing the gun at her as he advanced.

  "P-please!" Susan gasped reaching out her good arm towards him as he got closer. "Please!"

  "I told you! Lady, I told you to get out. Why'd you just stand there! I told you!" A pained look passed over his face, "They got you now. There's nothing I can do. You're infected."

  The gun barrel pointed down at her from three feet away and Susan screamed as the zombies fed, until the gun went off. Two more shots and the man with the shotgun pushed out of the store, heading to his truck, which was parked three bays away from Susan's at pump 6, his favorite.

  Billions 14

  Gina just wanted to walk

  "People always want something. Baldies want hair. Curly haired people want straight hair, tall people want to be shorter, short people want to be taller. You want to walk. Just deal with the cards you got and stop whining about things you can't change." Nadine told her friend as they walked, and wheeled, along a busy four lane street.

  "It's always easy for the people with legs to say that. I don't see why wishing you can walk is such a bad thing. You can't even try being me for a day; it's not the same because you would know you could just get up and walk whenever you wanted to." Responded Gina to her best friend's advice.

  "True dat. Still, what can you do?"

  "Nothing. This fucking sucks. I see all these rich people in their fancy cars driving by us and wonder why they have the money and a car and we are stuck going to the mall on foot."

  "Car-less people want cars..." Nadine intoned.

  Gina laughed at that and slowed down to get behind her friend as a jogger came towards them. After letting him by she muttered something Nadine didn't quite catch under her breath.

  "What's that girlfriend? It wasn't more whining was it?"

  "Maybe." Gina conceded, looking over her shoulder at the man who had run by. The jogger had reached the corner and was standing in place, but hopping up and down on his all too functional legs. Gina stopped and turned her chair slightly to watch the man for a moment. Nadine paused by her side.

  "Looking at the man candy? He's probably thirty five, with a wife, two point five kids and an earth killing sports utility vehicle. Dream another dream, Juliet."

  "I just wonder why they do that? Jump up and down like that while waiting for the lights to change."

  "It's called running in place. Us walkers do it to keep our legs from getting stiff when we work out."

  "You said 'we', you wouldn't run even if your ass was on fire." Gina said.

  "No, I'd stop, drop and roll, sister!"

  The man at the corner was approached by a homeless woman from behind. Gina watched intently and nudged her friend, "Think he'll give up a dollar to the old lady?"

  "No, he's too caught up in his...whoa! The old lady is mugging him!"

  The woman had tackled the guy at the corner, pushing him out into the street, as the two young women watched several cars zoomed by honking before one screeched to a stop just shy of the entwined bodies lying in the road. While the girls watched, a long, wailing siren started, causing them both to jump.

  "What's that?" Gina asked her friend.

  Nadine shrugged, "I dunno, sounds like an air raid siren. Should we go help that guy?"

  By way of an answer Gina
wheeled around and started rolling back towards the jogger. He was screaming and the soccer mom who had almost ran him and the old woman over was standing outside of her van with her hand over her mouth. The young women were halfway to the ongoing drama when a ten wheeled moving van honked and slammed into the soccer mom as she was standing with her door open in the middle of the road. Gina's eyes followed the woman as she was thrown several car lengths and rebounded off of a bench on the side of the road.

  "Omigod! Omigod!" yelled Nadine, she defied Gina's earlier statement by setting off at a fast run towards the body of the soccer mom. Gina was not far behind, despite being in a wheelchair her upper body was strong and she paced her friend.

  The truck had skidded to a halt in the middle of the four lane street, stopping traffic in both directions.

  "Is she...is she dead?" asked Gina. Nadine was bent over the woman, who was not moving.

  "I don't think she is going to make it. She's bleeding everywhere." Nadine was on her knees, Gina noted with revulsion that one of her legs was sitting in a pool of the woman's blood.

  "Is she dead?" yelled the driver of the truck coming towards them with a heavy blanket. It looked like a dirty sort of blanket used by movers to help keep furniture from being scrapped up. The name embroidered on his company issued shirt indicated that his name was Leo. "I didn't see her, she just got out in front of me..."

  He threw the blanket down on the woman's body, covering her from the shoulders down.

  "Help! Oh, God! Help me!" the jogger, forgotten until now, screamed from behind them.

  Gina wheeled around and started towards the man. He was bleeding from a cut on his head. Gina thought it was from falling on the pavement, the woman was pawing at the man, ripping his shirt into shreds as she grabbed at his tanned stomach. A moment later the jogger let out a scream as the woman lowered her head. Beating her with his hands was ineffectual, so he started punching her and his blows revealed to Gina that the woman was biting him. Each punch threw the old woman's head back for a moment and each time she burrowed back into the man for another bite. These were not the kind of bites that little kids gave each other in pre-school, these were the bites of a ravenous dog.