“What the fuck, dude?” the guy said, glaring at Dabney. No one was in his right mind. No one. Dabney checked his door locks.
As the guy neared, another blood-drenched cannibal scrambled over a motionless car and sank his teeth into the Maglite guy’s throat. Dabney’s mind raced even as all around him remained stationary. His thoughts came rapid fire: Okay, now that asshole’s definitely not moving. His car is stuck in my way. Can’t reverse. Can’t move forward. He was gonna kill me. In all this, he was gonna kill me. I gotta get home. Look at this shit. On the sidewalk it’s more spread out. I’m near a hydrant. There’s a gap. I’m near a hydrant. That guy was gonna kill me. But now he’s dead. I gotta get home.
Dabney bit his lip hard, then yanked the steering wheel hard to the right and bulled his van past the hydrant onto the sidewalk. Fuck it, he thought. Everyone out here is gonna die, anyway. There was little to contradict that thought, but even as he rationalized his decision to mount the sidewalk and plow through the pedestrian pandemonium he couldn’t help but vacillate between I’m committing vehicular manslaughter big time, and I’m performing euthanasia on an epic scale. There really was a fine line between mercy killing and mass murder. And did it count as murder if they came back to life? Dabney could lose sleep over that ethical conundrum later, if he lived that long.
Bumps, thumps, screams, and percussive squelchy crunching sounds were the soundtrack to his trek north, his shallow hood being battered and spattered. As his windshield wipers strained against the profusion of blood and viscera, a stream began to leak through the small aperture. Bodies bounced off the front grille. After fifteen protracted minutes he ran out of wiper fluid and the blood began to congeal, even as it was slicked back and forth. Visibility was nearly nil.
“God dammit,” Dabney keened. “God dammit.”
Tears flowed down his round cheeks. This was wrong. Everything about this was wrong and fucked-up. What was he thinking? He’d left the house to install locks and window gates. Panic was good for sales and of late sales had been slow. He needed the year-end business. He shook his head. How had he let this happen? All kinds of folks—mostly white and willing to pay extra for rapid emergency service—had phoned. He smelled cash. But for what? Greed was a sin, sure, but stupidity should be the eighth deadly sin, because it was going to get him killed.
Traffic ahead actually eased a bit. He could see patches of gray-black asphalt through the havoc. He hit the accelerator and surged forward for a few glorious, optimistic seconds and then WHAM! A westbound Volvo sprang forth from the side street and spun Dabney’s van. His blood-caked windshield imploded, covering him in wet fragments of safety glass. Unseeing and startled, his foot slammed down on the gas and his truck plowed into the front of a building, the engine sputtering and then silent.
With both ears ringing, Dabney wiped the blood, sweat, and tears from his eyes and saw a large confederacy of cannibals coming at his vehicle. The accident had smeared several all over the pavement, but there were so many. More than he’d seen anywhere else. These weren’t cannibals. These things weren’t human. They looked human, but they weren’t. Not any more. Some had been gutted and dismembered but here they came nonetheless, dripping gore and spilled innards. People didn’t do that. The news was right.
These things were dead but still moving around.
And hungry.
He tried starting the engine again. No use. He looked at his crumpled hood and saw steam jetting out. He had moments before the ravenous mass outside reached his van. He clambered out onto the hood and climbed onto his roof.
Over the tinny roar in his ears he heard voices. Though the front of the building he’d crashed into was boarded up, there were people calling out from the windows above.
Hands reached down.
He was saved.
And getting home was no longer an option.
16
July, Now
“Hey, where’s Eddie?” Dave asked.
Ellen was flabbergasted. “You don’t know where he is?”
“No. I haven’t seen him today. I can’t believe he missed the rain.”
“That is pretty odd,” Alan said, glad the ape hadn’t been there to ruin it.
“Now I’m worried,” Dave said, looking it. “I knocked on his door on the way up. I just assumed he’d follow and once I got up here I got all jazzed and forgot about him.”
Without dressing, Dave went back into the building and ran down to Eddie’s door, which was unlocked. He stepped into the apartment and called out a couple of times, going from room to room, leaving puddles. Eddie wasn’t there. He then tried his place with the same result. On each landing he pounded doors and called Eddie’s name to no avail. He wasn’t around. The elation from the rain dance burned off quickly as worry set in.
“He’s not in the building,” Dave said as he stepped back onto the roof. The others were all there, except Ruth who’d hobbled back to her apartment in disgust. Abe still sat naked on a low wall, basking in the waning precipitation. After being distracted for a moment by how long and low the old man’s testicles hung, Dave stalked off in search of his comrade, unsurprised that no one offered to help.
Working his way north, the first building Dave tried was the one directly next door. Dave gave the stairwell door a few yanks but it remained locked tight, the norm since they’d thrown together this tattered kibbutz. The next building the stairwell door was unlocked and blackness waited within. Dave poked his head in, reticent to venture into the strange building. Maybe it wasn’t as secure as theirs. Who knew? It all depended on how well the slapdash exterior fortifications had held up and if the former occupants of the building had bolstered them from within. No, if the zombies had gotten in they’d have made their way to the roof by now. In the back of his mind Dave remembered the front door was secure, but that gloom yawned like a hungry mouth. Maybe just Gerri lurked down in the dark. The Wandering Jewess’s absence at the rain party didn’t disturb Dave at all. She was a ghost; what did ghosts need with rain?
“Hello?” Dave called. “Eddie? You there?”
No answer.
“Eddie?” Dave shouted. The sound reverberated off the walls. Dave was in no mood to go spelunking in an unfamiliar building. Not naked. He wondered if he should go back for his clothes. It had stopped raining and like the moisture on his body, his jollity was evaporating. Any dampness now was fresh perspiration. After a few more tries, Dave gave up and moved on to the next building, which was the one he and Eddie had resided in previously. Maybe Eddie had gotten homesick or something. Maybe he needed something they’d left behind. Eddie did periodically make trips over there to mine their old digs for abandoned artifacts. The stairwell door was blocked, as ever, but he pounded on it a few times anyway, to no avail.
Holding the handrail because of the wetness, Dave stepped onto the fire escape and carefully walked down to the top floor. Both windows were closed and locked, gated inside. He went down to the next landing and tried the left window. It had no gate but was locked. The right one was locked and gated. According to Eddie, gates were for pussies. “I’m not paying to live in a cage,” he’d declared. “Faggots wanna live like zoo animals, that’s their problem. I’d like to see some nigger come through our window and try to steal our stuff. I’d Luima the shit out of him. Literally!” Then he’d laugh and glare at their unprotected window as if willing someone to breach it. That was then, of course. With the zombies, everyone kept their gates locked, even though the likelihood of one getting up a fire escape was pretty negligible.
On the next landing the right window was gated, but the left—theirs—slid open, vulnerable as ever. About a year earlier he and Eddie had crouched in silence out here, stifling giggles as Eddie videoed the couple next door doing it. It wasn’t that they were that great looking, but it was still exciting. Eddie would play that tape often; he called it his “hunting trophy.” Dave stepped into the dark apartment. The sky had turned colorless but was bright, so his eyes adjusted qui
ckly.
“Eddie?” Dave called again.
“Don’t come in here,” a husky voice responded.
“Eddie?” Dave ignored the admonition and raced into the apartment, tripping over a pile on the floor. His knees hit the bare floorboards hard and he yelped in pain, then rolled onto his side to massage the injured joints. Both were abraded and wet with blood. He clenched his eyes shut as he rubbed them, stars swimming inside his closed lids. “Ouch, Jesus.”
“I told you not to come in here.” It was Eddie’s voice, but he sounded different.
When Dave opened his eyes he looked directly into another pair, only these looked glassy with indifference. He blinked a few times, then jerked bolt upright and scooted backward away from the unblinking visage.
“Gerri!” he yawped.
Though dim, there was sufficient light to see that Gerri was dead, yet still she clutched the husk of her late Yorkie.
“What happened to Gerri?” Dave whispered.
“I did.”
“Whattaya mean, Eddie? What happened here?” Dave stood up and looked down at Gerri’s body. It was folded in half at the waist and pearly gelatinous spume speckled her rangy bare buttocks. One of her flaplike teats spilled out of her torn housecoat. Her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle and blood leaked from both nostrils and the corner of her mouth. Purple hand-shaped bruises clasped her shoulders. Dave looked up from the cadaver at Eddie, who from the waist down was bare, blood smeared on his hands and across his groin.
“Why don’t you have your pants on, Eddie?”
“You’re one to talk.” Eddie said.
“What did you do, Eddie?” Dave asked. It was a formality. It was obvious what he’d done.
“I was wandering around, y’know, burnin’ off some rage. I decided to visit the old crib, grab some copies of Sports Illustrated—like that one with the chick with the seashells on her boobs—and anyhow, who’s sittin’ on our old couch but the Wandering Jewess. Some rat was bitin’ on her ankle and she’s just sittin’ there, so I stomped the little fucker. See?” He pointed at its furry remains. “So I ask her if she’s okay, right? I tried a little, what was your special word? Tenderness. Anyway, one thing led to another. Listen, with a harpoon of cum built up you don’t think so straight, bro. Pussy is pussy. I needed to get it in there and this bitch was all there was. Zotz is bonin’ the merry widow, D. Doesn’t leave much for the rest of us swingin’ dicks.”
“Was it consensual?”
“Guy does one year prelaw and he thinks he’s Alan Dershowitz.”
“Jesus Christ, Eddie.”
“Hey, least she died with a smile on her face.”
On Gerri’s dead face was a rictus grin nobody in his or her right mind would describe as a smile.
“Oh, Eddie.”
“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t take that tone with me. The Comet needed to get his freak on with some genuine la fica, okay? You jealous? That what this is? You know, fuck this bitch, all right? I put it to her good and she didn’t make a peep. No struggle, nothing. So, yeah, I guess it was consensual. She didn’t complain a bit. Least she could’ve done was moan or something. Shown some appreciation. Like anyone ever paid her any mind. She should be fuckin’ flattered The Comet paid her withered snatch a visit.”
Dave was about to say something when Gerri sat up and let out a noise that shrank his balls—something between a hiss, a growl, and the toilet backing up. Her head jerked on its shattered neck, the jaw opening and closing, tongue lolling. A small amount of blood and bile spurted out and she was up on her feet.
“Fuck, that was quick!” Eddie shouted. “Oh fuck man, fuck!”
Nude or not, Dave knew something had to be done before she got her bearings—fresh ones moved fast. He grabbed an elephant-foot umbrella stand near the doorway and smashed Gerri in the face, snapping her head backwards. The sickening sound of her top vertebrae shattering lurched the meager contents of Dave’s stomach into his mouth, but he tamped it down and swallowed, hammering her back. Even with her head resting against her upper back and hanging upside down she kept uttering foul bestial grunts, blood-thickened saliva oozing down into her flaring nostrils. With her head on the wrong way Gerri groped blindly and Dave pummeled her with the stand, which spilled umbrellas with each blow. How many umbrellas were in the damned thing? Big ones and small ones fell to the floor, which was also now drenched in Gerri’s various leaking fluids.
Finally he drew back the elephant foot and rammed her in the chest, sending her toppling back toward the rear windows. Steering her spastic body wasn’t easy, but after several more strategically aimed blows she crashed through the window and plummeted to the ground in the alley that had claimed Mike Swenson. Dave looked out the window and saw Gerri twitch a few times, then stand and limp off to merge with the other brainless things shuffling around down there. Satisfied she wouldn’t be joining them again, Dave dropped the battering ram and slumped to the floor.
“Wish you’d been that hardcore on the ice, bro,” Eddie said.
“Yeah, thanks for all your help.”
“Hey, The Comet’s impressed, buddy. I’m giving you props. That was awesome.”
“Yeah. Just leave me alone, okay?”
“Fine. Whatever. Just tryin’ to give a compliment is all, bro. No need to get all menstrual and shit. The Comet’s outta here.”
Eddie pulled on his shorts and left through the front door as Dave retched onto the floor, his spew mixing with Gerri’s congealing blood.
The Comet.
The Rapist.
The Murderer.
Dave felt like one of those battered wives on COPS. The ones who kept telling the arresting officers—often through split lips and sporting impressive shiners—how their men were really good men. “He’s a good man, officer! He’s a good father, officer! I love him, officer!” On went the cuffs and these scumbag deadbeat drunken pieces of white trash would get thrown in the backs of the cruisers looking glad for the vacation away from the wife and kids. The patrol car would drift away from the double-wide and poor beaten wifey, with her missing front teeth and eye swollen shut, would bawl at the absence of her man.
Dave knew just how those dopey broads felt.
17
“God dammit, stop bitin’ on me.”
Two days after the rain the mosquitoes came, spawned in pools of still water. The tenacity of some life-forms was incredible. Dabney refused to leave his spot, but the bites were a stiff price to pay for the hour or so of jubilation. He sat in his lean-to and swatted at the pesky bloodsuckers, swearing under his breath. After a while he couldn’t bear to sit still any more and got up and walked to his perch. Though the sun hadn’t fully set—and when it had the skeeters would really get to their deviltry—it was too dark to see whether the undead were being fed upon, too. The thought made Dabney’s mind race. If fleas and such could spread plague, if bugs bit on the zombies, then bit on a human, could that spread the contagion or whatever it was? Dabney thought about the West Nile virus and how the city had trucks drive around spraying poison through areas beset with mosquitoes. The only result he could recall was lowered birth weights in the areas the insecticide had been deployed.
West Nile was another so-called medical emergency that the local media had blown all out of proportion. Fear was always a powerful ally to keep people tuned in. Look out, West Nile will get you, like it was some kind of microscopic boogeyman. A few old folks got ushered into the afterlife minutes before their time by West Nile, but that was about all. Still it panicked the city and suburbs several seasons in a row.
Malaria.
That was another story. Dabney had done some time working freighters in his youth and had traveled through some places rife with malaria—Haiti, Panama, and bits of Southeast Asia. He’d seen locals, but more frighteningly shipmates come down with it. One by one the crew of his last ship was afflicted. Fever, the shakes, head and muscle aches, tiredness. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Anemia and jaundice. In the mos
t extreme cases kidney failure, seizures, mental confusion, coma, and death. The skeeters spread malaria around like a whore spreads ass—amongst other things.
Maybe, unlike yellow fever and malaria, zombification wasn’t transmitted through mosquito saliva. Studies had disproved that AIDS could be spread through mosquitoes, so that was of some comfort. It was bad enough to get turned into one of those shambling sacks of meat from getting attacked by one, but to have it happen through a bug bite seemed so wrong. Here’s hoping zombie fever is more like AIDS, Dabney thought.
“Jesus God,” he sighed. “This is what passes for optimism these days.”
Dabney stepped over to his smoker and retrieved a small sliver of whatever-it-was jerky. There wasn’t much left. Dabney hadn’t eaten anything but his homemade charqui and the occasional can of okra or peas in weeks. Wasn’t this that Atkins diet? It was funny how the white folks in the building had donated their okra and black-eyed peas to him, kind of like a canned goods drive consisting purely of donated Purina Nigger Chow—well intentioned, but racist all the same. Why’d they have this stuff in the first place? Martha Stewart or someone on the cooking channel must’ve inspired them to buy these “exotic” ingredients, but then they chickened out when it came to actually eating them. Give ’em to the darkie; they eat anything. Dabney smirked because there was some truth to that. He recalled holiday trips to rural Tennessee, eating his Aunt Zena’s chitlins and bear-liver loaf. That was some crazy shit. Or chitlins with hog maws. Shit, anything with chitlins was pretty fierce, especially drowned in hot sauce. Neck bones, backbones. Black folks had to be resourceful in their cooking; recipes formulated by dirt-poor bastards making do with what the white folks considered garbage.
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