by Tony Urban
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Aben scanned the menu above her head. “I’ll take two slices of pie and a Dr. Pepper.”
She chewed the inside of her lip, her eyes turned down to the counter to avoid his face. “Umm… We don’t got no pie.”
Aben examined her. Her vacant, bovine expression confirmed she wasn’t cracking wise.
“Pizza will be fine. Two slices, please.”
She punched the cash register. “$5.30.”
Aben reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of ones. He peeled off six and extended them to her. She took them with her fingertips and deposited them into the register. She dropped his change on the counter rather than put it in his open palm.
“Be a couple a minutes.”
Aben turned toward the seating area which was free of other patrons. He slid into a grimy booth and stared out at the empty street while he waited. In the time that passed, not a single car drove by. Happening town, that was for certain.
Aben looked around for a jukebox. It seemed like the type of place that would have one, but it did not. The overhead fluorescent lights did little to brighten the restaurant. If the sticky laminate table was any indication, that was for the best. Numerous chips and deep gouges marred the linoleum tile on the floor and the floor itself was long overdue for mopping. Heck, forget mopping, it needed a hazmat team.
Pizza-face brought his slices and soda, then waited until he looked up at her.
“We’re gettin’ ready to close.”
“It’s not even seven o’clock. What time do you close?”
“Soon.”
“Can I at least eat first?”
She spun on her heels and stomped away. Good old small town hospitality.
The slices of pizza were big and greasy, but bland. Not enough sauce and too much generic mozzarella. Aben had to wash down the thick, under-cooked crust with his Dr. Pepper, which itself was watery and flat.
He’d barely choked down the first piece when the girl called out from the counter. “Can you go now?”
Aben ignored her and chomped on piece number two. Before he could finish it, flashing blue lights appeared in the plate-glass window. Of all the shitty towns to get dropped in.
The door opened and a stout, mustachioed cop wearing a generic police uniform and a hat two sizes too large for his tiny head strolled in. Pizza-face pointed at Aben and the cop walked over and sat down across from him.
“Mind if I have a seat?”
“You already did, Chief,” Aben said. Once upon a time he’d had better control of his mouth, especially around authority figures, but that skill had long since dissipated.
“Suppose that’s true.”
The cop flashed a toothy grin revealing teeth so white and perfect they could only be dentures. He didn’t look to be out of his 40’s and Aben wondered if his tooth loss was due to poor dental health or if someone had knocked the real ones out. Please be the latter, he thought.
“I’m Officer Dolan. And we’ve got a complaint against you for loitering.”
“Not loitering. Eating,” Aben said and took another bite of the crappy pizza to prove his point. “And this is a restaurant. Albeit a sad excuse for one.”
“I’m going to need to see some I.D.”
“Don’t have any.”
“You don’t have I.D.?”
“I do not.”
“No driver’s license?”
“Don’t drive.”
“What about a picture I.D. to do your banking? I mean, how do you cash checks?”
Aben looked at the Podunk piece of shit and thought he might be one of the stupidest men he’d ever met. “Do I look like I get a lot of checks, Chief?”
Dolan’s fake smile vanished. “Stand up.”
“I’m just trying to eat the food I paid for. I’m not breaking any damned laws.”
Dolan shoved the paper plate containing the remnants of the cardboard pizza onto the grimy floor.
“Up. Now, Asshole.”
Aben sighed and stood.
“Put your hands behind your back.”
Again he obliged. Officer Dolan slapped a pair of metal handcuffs onto him as tight as they would go. How bush league. They don’t even use zip ties.
Dolan steered Aben past the counter where Pizza-face watched smug and satisfied. “Thank you so much! I’ve never been so scared of no one before.”
“Nothing to worry your pretty, little head over, Susie. I’ve got this under control.”
She smiled for the first time all evening and batted her glued on, fake eyelashes at the officer like he was some kind of matinee idol.
Aben knew better, but he couldn’t help himself. He looked her right in the eyes. “Miss, I highly recommend you take that six dollars I gave you and buy yourself some Noxzema.”
Then Aben laughed and laughed. Until Dolan slammed his face into the metal door frame.
When Aben came to he was sitting on the toilet and the first site he saw was the top of Officer Asshole’s balding head as he sat behind an industrial green metal desk and filled out paperwork. When Aben attempted to stand, his left hand caught on the water pipe going into the bottom of the holding tank and the unexpected snag jerked him back onto the seat.
Dolan looked up with a sneer. “Have yourself a nice nap?”
With his free, right hand Aben rubbed the goose-egg on his forehead.
“Got some aspirin if you want some.”
“I’m good,” Aben said as he glanced around the small room and saw it was just the two of them. The cop was shorter than him and much thicker around the middle but he must be a strong prick if he dragged him around solo.
Dolan tapped his paperwork with his index finger. “You’d be even better if you’d cooperate with me.”
Aben examined Dolan up and down and determined he was most likely a local high school hero 20 years removed and gone to seed. He stayed silent.
“Just tell me your damned name. I’ll run you through the system and so long as you don’t have any warrants we’ll get you out of here with nothing but a fine,” Dolan said.
Aben tilted his head back and stared at the drop tile ceiling. “I have done nothing wrong.”
“That’s what you keep saying, but if that’s so, tell me--” He coughed so hard his torso seemed to spasm. He got out, “who the fuck” before hacking away again.
Dolan bent at the waist and coughed a good half a minute, his face turning scarlet. Maybe he’ll stroke out, Aben thought and his lips turned up in a small smile. But it passed and Dolan caught his breath. He pulled out a handkerchief and hocked a thick wad of mucous into the white folds. He examined the goo for a moment, then returned the cloth to his pocket.
“Whew. That one was intense,” Dolan said.
Aben recalled a truck stop diner he’d stopped at with Jay or Ray earlier that day. Seemed like everyone was coughing or sneezing, even the waitress who served him his turkey on rye. She’d hacked all over his sandwich but at least she didn’t call the cops on him.
Dolan took a few moments to catch his breath. Then he grabbed his keys and flicked off the lamp on his desk.
“Enough of this shit. If you aren’t going to cooperate, you and your smelly ass can sit here alone til the morning.” He stood and headed to the door. “The relief officer comes on at seven. After that one of us’ll take you to the county lockup.”
Aben noticed the clock on the wall showed only a few minutes past eight.
“You can’t leave me handcuffed to the damned toilet for 11 hours.”
“I’ll do whatever the fuck I want as long as you want to remain the man with no name.”
“What if I need a drink?”
Dolan laughed and coughed at the same time. “Toilet’s right under you. Don’t know how clean it is. I’ve never been much for housekeeping, but it’s wet.”
He flicked off the overhead light when he left. Aben waited for his eyes to adjust to the few remnants of daylight that drifted throug
h the room’s only window. He licked his lips and thought they seemed dry all of a sudden. It was going to be a long night.
8
It all happened too fast. We never had a chance, Jorge Bolivar thought as he surveyed the pandemonium on the streets.
It had been only three days since his unit had received reports of the outbreak. The army trucked them from North Carolina to Philadelphia, which everyone was referring to as “the hot zone.” Their orders were to quarantine the city to control an outbreak of a new strain of the flu and maybe that was true in the beginning. When their boots hit the pavement though, it was clear this wasn’t the flu, at least not flu like he, or anyone else, had seen before.
They collected truckloads of dead animals, rats and birds and cats and dogs, and hauled them away to be incinerated. It hit the people soon after. It started with typical cold symptoms, a wet cough and runny nose, then progressed to some type of fever induced delirium. The docs said it was a form of encephalitis that fried the brain and none of the normal drugs had any effect. Once someone was sick, they kept getting worse for a day or two and then they died.
They didn’t stay dead either. Jorge discovered that morbid fact first-hand when, just minutes after praying with a dying woman in the makeshift field hospital that now occupied the Eagles’ football stadium, she awoke from her eternal slumber and tried to bite a nurse who was removing the oxygen mask from her face. The dead woman’s jaws snapped so hard that her dentures shattered. Soldiers quickly strapped her to the bed and the docs in charge examined her but she gave off no vitals. They muzzled her like a vicious dog and shipped away to God knows where.
When the sick died of the disease, they came back like slow and clumsy cannibals. That was bad enough, but Jorge also saw what happened when they managed to bite someone. The first time he saw it happen was when a Private, fresh out of high school, got chomped by one of the zombies.
They had orders not to call them that - zombies - but that’s what they were. Calling them infected or diseased or whatever other words the brass deemed media friendly and less likely to cause a panic didn’t change anything.
The private, his name was Keller, Bolivar thought he recalled, was dragging a lifeless body off the street when out of nowhere it reanimated. It bit down on the boy’s forearm and ripped right through his US flag tattoo. Bright red arterial blood sprayed from the wound and the private moved to cover it and stop the bleeding. Within seconds the life left his eyes. He scrambled about like a crazed animal, every bit as quick as he’d been in life.
The boy made a mad dash toward his fellow soldiers who gunned him down before he could reach them. The first shots in his chest seemed to have little effect, but the bullet that took off the top of his skull sent him to the ground. He didn’t get up.
They stayed ahead of it, for about a day and the outlook was cautiously optimistic. And then it turned. It seemed like all the soldiers got sick at once. Don Rando, a beefy Master Sergeant with a southern accent and a talent for downing liters of beer without getting even a bit drunk, was the first to die. He keeled over in the midst of clearing out a government housing complex. He came back in short order and bit two of the people he’d been sent there to try to save. They turned, attacked, and created others. It spread like a grass fire on a dry afternoon.
That was the morning of the third day. The last 24 hours had been a nightmare of sickness and attacks and running and hiding. Bolivar had spent two years in Iraq and witnessed battles and attacks and bombings, but nothing compared to this. This was Hell on Earth.
He became separated from the other two remaining soldiers in his squad just before dawn when a pack of eight or so of the slow zombies shambled out of a shattered storefront window. Corporal Gwen Peduto and First Sergeant Clint Sawyer zigged while Bolivar zagged and by the time he realized they’d gone a different direction more zombies were in the middle. Reconnecting was not an option. He pulled his pistol, shot at and missed a zombie. The gunshots drew a crowd of 20 more. As he ran, he stumbled over a dead body and his pistol skittered down a sewage grate.
Bolivar sprinted into an alley where he found a rusted, green dumpster and climbed inside. His feet sunk into hot, rotting filth and the wet muck seeped into his boots and filled the crevices between his toes, but at least he felt safe, or as safe as possible under the circumstances. As he settled into a sitting position on some trash, a gray rat the size of a small dog scurried out and ran across his legs. He went to knock it away, then realized it was the first live rat he’d seen since arriving in the city. The first living animal of any kind, actually. I won’t hurt you, Mr. Rat. Just keep a healthy distance.
He cohabitated with the rat for at least two hours, looking out through one of the rust holes to the street beyond. He saw thousands of zombies in that time, but after a while they slowed and it reached a point where he had seen no one, living or dead, for the better part of 40 minutes. The morning was already scorching and conditions in the dumpster were stifling. Sweat poured off his brow and the aroma of hot trash nauseated him.
Bolivar eased the lid of the dumpster open. He grabbed hold of the metal and pulled himself up from the pile of garbage he’d settled into. His feet pulled loose from the grime with a wet smacking sound that for some reason reminded him of a late spring night when he was a horny, inexperienced teenager, kissing Lisa Weiss in the back of his dad’s Honda. He swung his long legs over the edge of the dumpster and dropped to the pavement.
The dead-end alley was vacant and he hugged the wall as he approached the street. To the right, a group of slow moving zombies staggered up the road. To the left was emptiness, at least that’s what he first thought. But then he spotted a wheelchair rocking forward and back, forward and back, a few inches at a time as its occupant tried to maneuver out of a jumble of bicycles, overturned trash cans and the curb of the sidewalk.
Bolivar jogged toward the wheelchair and grabbed the handlebars. From the back, all he could see of the person was a mop of white hair.
“I’ve got you,” he said as he pulled the chair from the debris as gently as possible.
Once it was clear of the rubble, he turned the chair around so he could face its fair haired rider. What he saw was a dead man with his legs amputated at the knees. His head bobbed atop his neck. When his dead eyes caught Bolivar, they locked on him.
Bolivar stood motionless until the zombie dove out of the wheelchair and tumbled on top of him. It clawed at him with its ragged nails and Bolivar stiff-armed it to hold it back. The zombie snapped its jaws, biting at air. The stumps of its thighs kicked up and down in a swimming motion.
As Bolivar held the zombie up and away from him, yellow saliva seeped from its lips and he had to turn his face sideways to keep the slimy drool from landing in his mouth. It hit his cheek instead and dribbled down his skin like warm honey.
He tried to hold the zombie off with one arm and reach for the knife he carried on his belt with the other, but the legless man was too heavy and Bolivar could feel his grip slipping.
The zombie was top heavy and tilted downward, its face coming nearer and nearer to Bolivar’s own. The sour smell of rot emanated from the creature’s mouth which was perilously close his own.
Just as Bolivar’s fingers wrapped around the shaft of his knife, the right side of the zombie’s head blew out in an burst of brains and bone. He pushed the zombie away and looked to his left and saw Gwen Peduto running to him, her pistol still raised.
“That was a close one!” she said.
Bolivar climbed to his feet as she reached him. She was in her late 20’s, over a decade younger than himself. Her brunette hair was pulled back in a bun that bulged from the bottom of her cap and he noticed a fair amount of blood spattered on her uniform.
“I was pretty sure you bit it,” she said and tittered. “Bad choice of words. Sorry.”
Bolivar couldn’t manage a laugh but offered a weak smile. “I thought the same for you. What about Sawyer?”
She glanced back
in the direction from which she came. Clay Sawyer hauled ass up the street and a few dozen quick zombies weren’t far behind. Sawyer was about the same age as Jorge. He was tall and wide with a shaved head and a bushy red beard that Jorge thought made him look like a lumberjack.
“Move! Move!” Sawyer screamed as he ran.
He was still a hundred yards from them and Peduto handed Bolivar a pistol.
“Take this. It’s only a nine but there are six rounds left in the mag.”
Bolivar chambered a round and flicked on the safety.
“I’d let the safety off if I were you.”
Peduto was one of the soldiers that had requested he accompany them on the apartment building debacle even though he should have been tending to casualties in the field hospital. Some of the younger soldiers thought it was good luck to have a medic along because, they believed, bad shit only happened when no one was around to fix it. He’d been happy to humor them, but that superstition had been disproved once and for all.
“What the fuck are you yahoo’s waiting on?” Sawyer said. He was less than 25 yards away now. “Head due south!”
They did as told. Sawyer caught up to them and the horde of zombies wasn’t far behind.
“Where are we going?” Peduto asked.
“Wells Fargo. Orders came over the radio a couple minutes ago. All personnel are to report for immediate evac.”
“And then what?” Bolivar asked.
“Operation Liberty Bell. At 12 hundred Juliet they’re firebombing the city. Everything from Roosevelt Cemetery to the airport.”
At hearing that news, Bolivar slowed a step. “What about all the people? How do they get out?”
Sawyer didn’t look back. “They don’t. That’s the point.”
Peduto slowed to let Bolivar catch up to her. “Come on. Let’s just get there first then we’ll figure it out.”
The zombies were close enough to hear their throaty gasps and growls and Bolivar picked up the pace.
9
It had been three days since Wim had burned his animals. His phone was out, as was the power and he was cut off from the world. The cut off part didn’t particularly bother him, but he found himself with what his mother would have called ‘a bad case of the sulks’ over the animals. That and doubts about what, if any, future remained for the farm.
