The World Itself (Book 1): The World Itself Departed

by Beatty, J. B.

  I have always been weak.

  “Where are you? We need to get together!”

  I hesitate. “I don’t know if tonight’s such a good night.”

  “You sound like you have homework, you loser. News flash: you don’t. School’s out forever.”

  “I’m not going to school this year. Gap year.”

  She laughs. A mean laugh. “Yeah, whatever. I was having a gap life before my dad ate the rest of the fam.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “So where are you? I need to get someplace safe. I am trapped on a dirt road in the middle of a swamp.”

  “Why?”

  “Long story. Where the fuck are you?”

  “I’m at my house.”

  “Where the fuck, pray tell, would that be?”

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to come here. I don’t want to draw attention to the house. The zombies might come.”

  “Listen, asshole. I have an AK-47 that’s fully automatic, and I have 17 30-round magazines. I have a shit-kicking Chevy pick-up that’s ready to go mud-bogging, and I’ve already killed about 25 of my mother fucking friends. You need me. You need me to help you stay alive. And I need a wall to sleep behind tonight, because it’s hard to sleep in pick-up with these crazies checking it out every 15 minutes. That’s why I’m on a dirt road in the middle of a fucking swamp. Now, where the hell do you live?”

  “Why do I need you to help me stay alive?”

  Maggie is silent for a second, and then slowly says, as if she’s explaining the obvious to a child: “Because you’re the type of person that got A’s on group projects even if you had to do all the work yourself.”

  I digest that for a moment and then say, “Okay. We live on Lexington Circle, 5433, that neighborhood just south of M-26, past the Kroger on Stuart Road.”

  “I’ll be there in 10 minutes,” she says. “Have the garage door ready to open for me, and then close it quick.” She hangs up.

  Maggie is beautiful. She has a machine gun. I’m scared of everything, especially beauty. We may be the last two people on earth who haven’t turned cannibal. Finally, we have something in common! I try to check my hair in the mirror, but it’s too dark for that. Should I throw a frozen pizza in the oven? She wants to use the garage. I check. Mom’s van is parked in the middle of the garage, because she always liked to use the whole thing, and Dad was fine parking on the side of the driveway. I have to get the van out of there. Without getting eaten.

  I find the keys on the rack in the kitchen. I start looking for my wallet. I stop when I remember that the cops probably don’t care if I have my license on me tonight. A gun, I decide, would be useful. I find the handgun on the kitchen counter, and walk out into the garage. The door will open when I push the button inside the van. Then I will have to back out, park without blocking the driveway, and run back into the garage. The button to close the garage is by the door into the kitchen. The door will close, very noisily and slowly. Every zombie in the neighborhood will know there’s something going on here. If I have anything left in me, I will probably be throwing up again.

  I start the engine, check the mirror, and shift the van into reverse with the gun on my lap. I hit the door button, watching the mirrors very closely. As soon as the van can clear, I go fast. A little too fast, as I snap the mirror off the passenger side by scraping too close to Dad’s truck. I bring the van to a stop at the end of the driveway and look around. I see people running in the street, about 150 yards away. I gun the van and stop it right on the front lawn. With gun in hand, I leap out and dash into the garage, throwing myself against the button by the kitchen door.

  Then I wait, with the gun extended, praying that the closing garage door is faster than the zombies. When it is a few feet from the ground, I hear them start to hit the door. They are screaming in rage. I see their feet dancing as they pound. The door finally closes, and the pounding remains. So how is this a good plan, opening it again for Maggie in a few minutes?

  I blame her for it all before I realize that she didn’t plan the part about me getting the van out of the garage.

  I go back into the house so I can peek out the front window and watch for Maggie’s truck. The zombies are still agitated, pounding on the garage. I’m starting to think they’re not as smart as they were before they got sick, since no one has even tried the front door of the house.

  A heavy rumbling grows as a Chevy pick-up rolls down the street. It slows several houses away, and then advances a house at a time, as if she’s reading the addresses off the mailboxes. She stops in front of my house, and flashes her lights. I slowly get up to open the door again, and she accelerates away down the street. She comes to a stop about five houses away. The zombies cease their pounding and start heading her way. Then I hear gunfire, or what I think is gunfire. I see the flashes next to her truck. It jets away, and my phone rings.

  “Distraction. Fireworks. I’m driving around the block. Have the door open in one minute.”

  “Yup,” I say after she hangs up.

  I stand by the kitchen door and wait until I hear the rumble of the truck. After pushing the door opener, I stand at alert with the gun pointed at the door. No sign of the zombie pack. Maggie pulls into the driveway and has to wait a few seconds for the door to pull all the way up. The truck rolls in, its rumble becoming a loud roar in the confined space of the garage. As soon as she stops, I hit the button and keep my gun trained on the outside.

  Maggie gets out and does the same with her AK-47. When the garage door finally hits bottom, she turns to me and says, “Let’s get in and get safe. They’ll be back in a minute.”

  Inside, she turns and says, “Holy shit, I never thought I’d be this glad to see you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m glad you’re here.” I decide to take her greeting as a compliment.

  “How secure is this house?” she says, walking into the living room and looking around. Her gaze lands on the spot where Shannon got eaten. “It looks like you’ve seen some action here.”

  “A little.” I stand there, tangled in a decision about where to put my hands. They end up in my pockets. “As for the house, I don’t know. I guess it’s as safe as any. But it’s a walkout. There’s big glass doors and plenty of windows. The one in the bedroom is broken.”

  Maggie looks up, alarmed.

  “I moved a dresser in front of it.”

  The pounding on the garage door resumes. It seems more frenzied than before. Perhaps the firecracker diversion warmed up the local zombie pack.

  “Best thing we can do now,” Maggie says, “is stay near this kitchen door. That and my truck are the best escape route we have. But we need to keep the noise down, and absolutely keep the lights off.”

  “Do they notice lights?”

  “Don’t know. It’s my first day on the job.”

  “What’s it like out there?” I ask her.

  “You haven’t been out?” She seems incredulous.

  “Just a bit. I had to jump off the roof and run back into the house.”

  Maggie looks at me oddly, and then tilts her head to the garage, where it sounds like the mob may soon destroy the door itself.

  Hesitantly, I add, “When my sister was chasing me. I ended up… I had to kill her.”

  She tilts her head at me, almost looking sympathetic. Then her eyebrows rise in an expression of “that’s all you got?”

  The fury of the night is suddenly punctuated by a steady beat of gunshots, and with each one, the situation outside the garage grows quieter. Finally, all is silence.

  “I think we might have a friend out there,” she says.

  I move to the door. “Should we let them…”

  “It can wait. They might be friendly. They can take care of themselves, though. Let’s just sit tight unless they knock.” We hear nothing else and no knock ever comes.

  Maggie lays her gun down on the floor, and then sits down next to it, leaning her back against the wall. She rubs her eyes, saying, �
�Fuck, I’m tired.” Her hair runs wild, something I never saw in school, and in the darkness it looks like whatever make-up she might have had on has been wiped away. “So, you killed your own sister. How?”

  “Gunshot.”

  “Hmm,” she says, running her fingers through her thick brown hair. “You know, Arvy, no offense intended, but your sister was kind of a bitch.”

  “This really isn’t the best time…” I counter.

  “True, but I think we’re all out of best times. Now, it’s just kind of end times. Bad times. Crazy times. From this moment to our last breath, I think that we can forget about happily ever after. I think we can forget about ever after itself.”

  I sit down across from her, my back to the refrigerator. I realize if the room were well-lit, she would be able to see the long bruise on my neck. “What did you see today?” I ask.

  Maggie lets out a little laugh. “Well, it’s been interesting. Really fucking interesting. I mean, all I wanted out of today was to go to a bonfire out at Wanzetti’s. I’ve been cooped up forever being sick, and I had to go back to the doctor this morning, and they said I was fine to go out, as long as I didn’t drink or stay up too late. So I was looking forward to it.”

  “And…?”

  “And my mom brings Jimmy back from a corn maze sort of thing they went to. She had pumpkins to carry in from the car, but she dropped one and it smashed. That got Jimmy setting off one of his tantrums. I came out to kick his butt and I noticed that Mom was really sick. Her eyes were red and her nose was running and she could barely stand up. I helped her into the house and went to find Dad in the barn.

  “Then I started making some soup—opening the cans, at least. About a half hour later, Dad started saying that he was coming down with something, too. I mean, like, this thing is fast. So they both went to lie down, and Jimmy and I had the soup. He wasn’t sick at all. He was just being stupid about Mom not letting him get a toy drone like they had at the corn maze, and then Mom dropping his frickin’ pumpkin.”

  Maggie puts her face in her hands. “I figured I’d be the one to get sick. I seem to get everything else these days,” she says through her fingers. “Then World War Three breaks out in my parents’ bedroom. Screaming, crashing. Jimmy goes to see what’s going on, and it gets worse, and I hear him screaming. Movie screaming, I mean loud. I never heard anything like it in real life. Suddenly it all seemed too quiet and too real. I grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen. And I walked down the hallway, and the noise got even quieter.

  “When I looked in their room, I saw my dad, all crouched in the corner, his eyes wide, panting like he’s an animal. His arm was all torn up. And then I saw my mom on the other side of the bed, looking at her bloody hands. Jimmy was on the floor next to her. She had torn open his throat.” Maggie pauses, and for a moment I think she’s going to cry. Instead, her voice continues in a monotone. “Mom looks up at me, and her eyes aren’t right. She looks like a mad dog. Then she jumps at me. I stabbed her. In the chest. Over and over. She fell against me and I kept stabbing, and finally I pushed her off.

  “Then Dad stood up. He slowly walked toward me, and I said, ‘Are you okay? Dad? Dad?’ But instead of answering, he just kept walking toward me, and when I looked at his eyes, he had that same look. He was moving slow, though. I warned him to stop. I told him to stop. I told him that I would have to defend myself if he came any closer. I told him.” Maggie stops talking.

  Outside, the night smothers the house in silence. This is one of those situations where I feel like I need to say something, I’m just not sure what. Finally, I tell her, “You had to. You had no choice.” Not very original, but they say it in every zombie movie, and it has a solid effectiveness rate.

  It works. Maggie blinks and says, “I know. But nothing brings you down like having to kill your own parents with a knife.”

  “Yeah… Yeah, I get that.” I try to sound supportive. Certainly, I can be more supportive of a statement like that today than I could have yesterday. Maybe it’s my fatalistic attitude. Or maybe it’s just that conditions on the ground have changed. “So how did you end up on the middle of a dirt road in a swamp?”

  “I tried calling 911, but that was a joke. I called the neighbors, but they didn’t answer. I could hear screams and gunshots, and occasionally a car would blast down our road at about 100 miles per hour. I couldn’t stay in that house anymore. I knew that a lot of my friends would be at the bonfire, even though it was still early. At least I could find help there.

  “I had to get out. I packed up some clothes and supplies and threw them in the pick-up. And then I grabbed all our guns and knives. My dad had a serious collection going. And then I left.”

  “Any trouble on the road?”

  “Just like, end-of-the-world kind of stuff, you know. A few people driving like maniacs. Cop cars racing past but not stopping for anyone or anything. I saw a house on fire—no one putting it out. I saw some little kids running away from a house, and I stopped and tried to wave them to my truck, but they acted like they were scared of me, and they just ran into the woods. Finally, I got to Wanzetti’s. I see a bunch of trucks out front, and I figured that everyone else had the same idea I did. We’d be fine here, safety in numbers and all that crap. I mean, we all had guns, right?”

  5→SMELLING IN THE DARK FOR THE BLOOD

  “I

  grabbed the AK and headed around the house. They were playing some decent country, Jason Aldean, and when the song ended it went to metal. It sounded like a good time. I saw Tommy Wanzetti first. He looked fine and I was still hoping it was all a bad dream that I had just escaped from, so I yell, ‘Hey asshole, where’s the keg?’ And he does this crazy kind of scream just like my mom did. And everyone else there just turns around to look at me. A few of them had blood on them, and there were dead bodies on the ground. Tommy’s mom was there, all torn up, and Billy Collins had his head in her gut. These were my best friends in the world. I mean, they could be total assholes, but I never thought they’d be wacked-out cannibals.

  “I couldn’t freakin’ believe it. I started walking backwards. I yelled, ‘Are you all messed up? Is there anyone here who’s still normal?’ That must have hit them in their sensitive spot, because then they started chasing me. I ran around the house back toward my truck, but some of those guys were faster. Tommy tackled me and grabbed onto my legs. I rolled away but I dropped my gun. Then I hauled ass back to my truck and grabbed the .45. I just started shooting, and they kept coming at me. I mean, the ones I hit would fall. These aren’t like TV zombies. You don’t need a head shot. I was shooting them in the chest and stomach, and that worked fine. By the time the clip was empty, the crowd had thinned. I was able to take the time to pick up the AK. Honestly, that fucker makes the killing go way easier. I just took my time then. I hate having to hurry. It’s like timed tests. I hated those in school. Fucking SAT.”

  Maggie catches her breath and says, “Do you have anything to drink?”

  “Uh, water, I guess. And milk.”

  “Beer? I never got any at the bonfire.”

  “In the fridge. Be careful of the light.”

  Maggie goes and opens the fridge just a little, snaking her arm in there and pulling out one of my dad’s cans of beer. “So,” she says, and sits down again. “So, I walk around the house, and I kill everyone that’s left. I even had to kill Tommy’s dog. It was on the ground whining, and someone had chewed into his leg. I probably should have taken him to the vet, but I’m sure the vet’s a goner by now. And then…” She pauses for effect. “Then Tommy’s brother comes out of the house. And he might not be a crazy. Because he comes out and says, ‘Thank God you’re here. This was wild. I was smoking in the basement, and everyone got super hostile. I had to lock myself in the bathroom.’

  “I look at him carefully and say, ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ And he says, ‘I’m fine. Either I’ve got the worst cold in the world all of a sudden, or this dope is bad.’ And he starts coughing and hackin
g like he’s got tuberculosis. His eyes are all red. So I pull the trigger on him. A short burst to the chest. Probably a waste of bullets. One would have worked just fine.”

  “You killed him?”

  “Well, no one else was there to do it.”

  “But he was talking to you! He might have just had a cold!”

  “He doesn’t anymore. It’s like I’m an extra-strength cold medicine.” She stares at her beer can. “And maybe it’s just my family, but you get sick, you go zombie. That seems to be how it plays out.”

  “Yeah, here too, but… I don’t know. It just seems wrong.”

  “What do right and wrong even mean anymore?” she says. “I’m hungry, by the way. What do you have?”

  “I can throw a frozen pizza in the oven.”

  “Do it. Five minutes ago.”

  I get up to make dinner; I really hadn’t thought that I’d be eating any more meals after this afternoon, but I feel hungry too. Maggie says, “Can you throw me another beer?”

  “Sure, dear,” I say, tossing her a can.

  She opens it quickly, spilling some on her shirt. “Damn,” she says, standing up, swiping the beer off with her hand. “Do you think the dry cleaner is still alive?”

  “Lord knows,” I say. She leans against the counter, damp shirt and all. I try to look at the ceiling. “So what did you do after you killed all your friends?” I ask her.

  “That almost sounded judgmental the way you said that.”

  “Yeah, almost. I’m not sure I could kill all my friends.”

  “I’m not sure that you have any friends.”

  “Ouch. You know, if I wasn’t already suicidal, that would make me want to be.”

  “I’m just kidding,” Maggie says. “I’m feeling more prickly than usual tonight, and that’s saying a lot for me. Are you really suicidal?”