by Tony Urban
The eeriness of the situation was getting to him and when a thunderous crash exploded outside he jumped a good three inches in the air.
The sound had come from the rear of the building so Wim hopped the counter, rushed through the mail room and out the back door. As soon as he stepped into the daylight, he saw a pickup truck crashed into the back wall, its front end crumpled like an accordion. White smoke billowed from the crushed engine compartment.
Wim approached the driver’s side and saw the door open but the cab was empty. He wondered if everyone in the world had up and disappeared like in one of those Twilight Zone episodes his mother had always watched.
He moved around the truck and looked past it and it was only then he saw Nate Bauer, one of three brothers who owned a local contracting company. Nate was a loud, boisterous man who always had a juicy bit of gossip or an off-color joke to share but today, he wasn’t laughing.
Nate sat on the road and gripped what looked like a red, wet rope. A few yards away from him was another man, an Amish pumpkin farmer who Wim recognized from the produce auctions but whose name he didn’t know. That man clutched the other end of the rope.
“Mr. Bauer?” Wim called out.
Neither of the men reacted and Wim approached them with caution. When he got within a few feet, he could see they weren’t holding a rope. They were holding Nate Bauer’s intestines.
Nate’s plain, white button down was scarlet with blood and his guts protruded from a fist size gash in his belly. Nate held onto his intestines with both hands while the Amishman pulled in the other direction with all his strength. It was like they were in a life and death game of tug of war.
“Christ on the cross,” Wim said. Despite what had happened on the farm he still struggled to believe this was real.
Nate looked to him, his face pained and pale. “He’s stealing my guts, Wim! Help me!”
Wim was frozen in place. He looked to the Amishman and saw his scraggly, gray beard was stained red.
“Kill him! Kill him or I’m gonna die,” Nate said.
Wim broke out of his daze. He ran toward the Amishman.
“Let him go!” Wim said, trying to sound forceful but he could hear the fear in his own voice even as he took out the pistol.
The Amishman ignored him and ripped a few more feet of Nate’s insides to the outside. Nate bellowed in pain. Wim raised the revolver, aimed and fired. The bullet zipped through the air and part of the Amishman’s right ear hopped off his head like a jumping bean.
The man tumbled over sideways and dropped the intestines. Nate pulled them back in, like he was collecting an unraveled extension cord.
The Amishman dove for the guts but missed. Then he turned toward Wim. His eyes were blank and dead and he was missing a chunk of flesh on his cheek.
The man grabbed hold of Wim’s left leg and chomped down on his calf. Even through the heavy denim of his jeans Wim could feel the power of the bite.
Wim kicked out and his heavy boot caught the Amishman in the midsection and knocked him onto his back.
“Kill him!” Nate screamed.
Wim glanced toward Nate and saw that he was trying to push his intestines, which were covered with dirt and shale and grass, back through the hole in his belly.
As he looked away, the Amishman grabbed Wim from behind. He caught his fingers in Wim’s belt and pulled him down. Wim fell on top of him, his back against the zombie’s front.
He heard the dead man’s jaws snapping and tried to keep his head raised up. With every attempted bite the zombie was closer to getting him and Wim could feel spittle hitting the exposed nape of his neck.
Wim threw his elbow back once and then again, both times catching the zombie in the stomach. He did it a third time, heard a rib break, and the zombie released him.
He rolled free of it and onto his knees. As the zombie sat up, Wim was ready and he shot it in the face. A dime sized hole appeared under his left eye and he fell backward.
Wim quickly crawled away from it, horrified by the situation. He caught his breath, then checked his leg where he’d been bitten. There was a white outline in his skin but the zombie’s teeth hadn’t penetrated his jeans or his flesh. Then Wim looked to Nate Bauer who was lying motionless on his side. He’d managed to get about half his guts back into his stomach, but nonetheless, Nate was dead.
Wim sat down in the street and ran his fingers through his black hair and wondered again how this could be real. There were no such things as zombies. That’s just made up movie nonsense meant to scare kids and sell popcorn. But if it was made up, then what in the world had just happened?
And then Nate Bauer groaned.
Wim looked and saw the man’s eyes were open but, like the Amishman and the mailman before him, they were blank. Slowly Nate’s head turned, first looking left and then to the right where Wim sat.
When he saw Wim, the zombie rolled onto his stomach and crawled to his knees. His guts fell back out the gash and when he made it to his feet and staggered toward Wim, his intestines dragged on the ground behind him.
Wim jumped to his feet and backed away. Nate kept coming toward him. He growled and bared his teeth like a rabid animal.
Wim raised the gun but just as he pulled the trigger the zombie stepped on his own intestines and fell forward. His face hit the pavement with a crushing thud. Before it could get up, Wim put a round in the back of its skull.
When Wim looked up from the lifeless body, he saw that the gunfire had drawn a small crowd. Seven zombies, all people he knew, staggered toward him. He retraced his path through the post office and returned to his truck. More zombies had arrived on Main Street too.
The world is cursed, Wim thought. He couldn’t understand why this had happened and, even more confusingly, why he was left alive. Maybe he was the cursed one. Why was he more worthy of life than all of these good people? Why was he spared? Why was he the one left to clean up? He almost wished he would have just died right along with his pigs and chickens.
He removed the guns from the Bronco and lined them up on the hood. Once he’d laid them all out for easy access, he took the Marlin 336 that he used for hunting deer and leaned against the side of the Bronco for stability.
One of the zombies was Dale Yoder, who owned the greenhouse where Wim bought his tomato plants every spring. Wim lined up the peep sights of the Marlin with Dale’s head and pulled the trigger. This was going to be a long day.
17
Ramey’s texts and calls to Loretta had gone unanswered for almost five hours. Most days that wouldn’t be enough to garner a raised eyebrow, but the world had gone to hell and that changed everything.
It seemed like the entire town was sick. Well, almost everyone. Ramey was fine, but the way Loretta was hacking and coughing around, never bothering to cover her mouth or wash her hands, the girl knew it was only a matter of time before she caught whatever germs had taken up residence in their crummy trailer.
Since the power went out, most of the trailer park residents had moved outside where they grilled whatever meat they had before it could spoil. Through the thin walls of the mobile home Ramey could hear the steady drone of country music accompanied by a chorus of coughing and sneezing. It was like the Fourth of July in a tuberculosis hospital.
While the rest of the park celebrated, Ramey retreated to her room and tried to ignore everything. Today she sat on her bed and unfolded the last letter her father had sent. It had arrived in the mail over a year ago. His words, in his neat, blocky print, were few.
Ramey,
Please join me.
It’s safe here.
I promise.
Dad
He included a map and a phone number. Ramey never called the number or responded to the letter. Now the phones were all out of service and it was too late. Not that it mattered. Whatever was happening here in northern New York was probably happening wherever he was too.
She heard the trailer door bang open.
“Ramey!” Lore
tta called out in a gravely rumble.
Ramey absent-mindedly shoved the letter into her pocket as she left her bedroom. By the time she got to the living room (and in a 40-foot-long trailer, that was a short trip) Loretta had already crashed on the couch.
Loretta’s eyes were sleepy and so bloodshot they looked like she’d been crying blood. She turned her head when she heard Ramey’s footsteps.
“Isss terrible ou’ there.”
Ramey sat down at the computer desk and stared at her mother. “I know. And you disappear for half a day. Thanks, mom.”
“Had to get something.”
Loretta squeezed a plastic baggie which she held in her hand. Ramey noticed. She wanted to scream, to tell her mother she was a waste of a life. To tell her she was an awful mother. To tell her she should have left with her dad. But she didn’t. She’d yelled and cried and tried to reason with Loretta thousands of times but the way the drugs made her feel was more important than anything Ramey had to say so she said nothing.
“This is for us.” Loretta held out the bag which included crystal meth and a chunk of black tar heroin.
Ramey stared in disbelief. “Have you lost your mind?”
Loretta tried to sit up but only managed to half slump against the armrest. “You don’t understand. Isss the end of the world.”
Loretta coughed up a mouthful of blood. She looked at the red spittle in her palm, then to her daughter. “I’m dying, Ramey. Everyone out there’s dying but they don’t stay dead.”
Ramey wondered what hallucinogens her mother had ingested prior to returning home with this buffet of dope. Loretta was at the stage in her addiction where she would take anything if it was cheap or free.
“What are you talking about?”
“You remember Henry Geary?”
Ramey did. Mr. Geary owned Hank’s, a local pizza joint which everyone in town knew was a front for his real business of selling drugs. It was the same restaurant where Bobby Mack bought the marijuana they smoked before their two minutes of passion.
“He died last night. Everyone knows it. But this morning I seen him walking around inside the restaurant so I went up to that big glass window and looked inside and, Ramey, he was eating his wife. Eating her!”
Loretta went through another painful coughing fit and Ramey thought she might pass out. She moved to get up, but Loretta recovered and waved at her to stay seated.
“He snot the only one either. I saw it happening in the alley behind the drug store too. I tried to tell people, but no one believed me. Isss like it says in the bible. ‘When Hell’s full, the dead will walk the Earth’.”
“That’s not from the bible, mom.”
Loretta ignored her and opened her bag o’ drugs. “I got this so we can just go to sleep. We can go to sleep and not have to hurt no more. There’s been too mush hurtin’ a’ready.”
Ramey saw the sincerity in Loretta’s eyes. This might have been the first honest thing her mother had said to her in years. The irony that Loretta’s best mothering came in suggesting they commit double suicide wasn’t lost on her. She moved to her mother and laid her hand over Loretta’s drug filled fist.
“You don’t have to do this. I’ll throw this out. Then, I’ll go to the hospital and get you actual medicine and you’ll be okay.”
Loretta’s eyes blazed fierce, and she jerked her hand free of Ramey’s. She clutched the drugs against her deflated bosom like they were the golden ring and she was Gollum.
“You ain’t taking ‘em from me! Don’t you dare!”
Ramey’s temporary compassion vanished. This cold, shrewish woman huddled on the couch wasn’t a mother. She was barely a human being.
“Okay. Do what you want but leave me alone.”
Ramey retreated to her room and locked the door behind her. She didn’t know if Loretta would actually overdose and, much to her own relief, she no longer cared.
18
The chopper soared through the air for over an hour and the whole time Miller hadn’t spoken another word. Mitch stared out the window as they flew. They passed over cities and suburbs but, for the most recent leg of the voyage, he’d seen nothing but trees and mountains. He’d never had much of a sense of direction and could get disoriented in shopping malls, so he didn’t know if they were heading north, south, east, or west. He wondered if they might have flown to Canada. Wasn’t Canada just a bunch of trees and nothingness?
As the helicopter dropped in elevation, Mitch noticed a small town coming in to view below them. Town wasn’t even the right word for it. Maybe village would do. It looked to consist of a single street and some buildings.
“Where are we?” he dared ask.
Miller looked back at him for the first time since they departed the Marsten Academy. He removed his sunglasses and yellow-green pus seeped from the corners of the soldier’s eyes. It reminded Mitch of the time he had pinkeye in third grade, but about a thousand times worse.
“The Greenbriar,” Miller said.
“What’s that?”
Miller coughed into his elbow and smiled. It was the most horrible smile Mitch had ever seen in his life. He imagined that’s how the Grim Reaper would look when he came time to collect your soul and snuff out your candle.
“That’s your safe zone, kid. Where all the little rich pricks like you get to hide out until hell blows over.”
Mitch couldn’t look at him anymore and returned his attention to the ground below. A sprawling white building came into view. A bizarre marriage of limousines and Humvees filled the parking lot. He noticed more helicopters both coming in for landings and taking off.
The chopper touched down on the roof. Mitch unbuckled and waited for Miller to give him the go ahead. When the copter settled, the soldier cocked his thumb toward the exit.
Mitch moved to the door. The step down was a big one and Miller emoted something that sounded like a wet, thick laugh. “Need a hand?”
He extended his palm but Mitch shook his head and jumped out.
The whirling propeller turned his long, brown hair into a bird’s nest. He took a step away but a hot hand caught the back of his jacket.
Miller hissed into his ear. “I hope every one of you rot.”
Mitch pulled himself free, and the chopper flew up and away. He thought he could still feel Miller’s sticky breath on his neck and was desperate for a shower. As he tried to shake off the willies, a fit man in a black suit and sunglasses jogged toward him. Secret Service, Mitch could tell with barely a glance.
“Chapman?” His voice was tight and controlled. Mitch nodded. “Come with me. And welcome to the Greenbrier.”
They took an elevator ride down from the roof and Mitch thought the plunge would last forever. The agent never tendered his name and made no attempt at small talk. When the elevator stopped, the doors opened to reveal a long corridor which looked straight out of the seventies with bright, orange and red seizure inducing wallpaper.
“This way.” The Agent led him down the hall, the walk so long and brisk that Mitch struggled to catch his breath. He wished he hadn’t taken the Valium. Or that he had more coke. Or, better yet, both.
At the end of the corridor, it seemed they’d reached a dead end, but the agent grabbed onto the wall and the next thing Mitch knew it unfolded like an accordion and behind it stood a massive stainless steel door. The man then tapped a series of numbers into a keypad. Unseen gears whirled and rotated and the silver door popped open.
The agent swung it outward and Mitch saw the reverse side had a round handle that you could turn to open and close it from the inside, the kind of mechanisms they had on submarines, or bank vaults. Inside was a second, identical door. The agent repeated his keypad trick and opened it. This one was even thicker, two feet deep and even the fit agent seemed to struggle against the weight of it.
Once opened, it revealed a room decorated with red checked wallpaper and black and white floor tiles. Dozens of people in suits and dresses filled the space. To Mitch, it loo
ked like something out of the party scene in The Shining, but he had no time to take in the surroundings before his mother burst from the crowd and wrapped him up in a stifling embrace. Mitch couldn’t remember for sure the last time she’d hugged him like that, but was certain he could still count out his age on one hand when it happened.
“Mitchell, thank God. Thank God you made it.” A statuesque, lithe woman, Margaret Chapmen was taller than Mitch and her breasts pressed awkwardly into his face as she held him. He didn’t pull away. He found comfort in her grip and felt much younger than his 16 years.
“You’re smothering the boy, Margaret.” It was his father’s curt voice and at the sound of it, his mother let loose. Mitchell looked over to see his father, clad in his trademark navy blue suit, examining him. The man was pushing 60 now, but his hair was still black with only hints of gray speckled throughout. His emotionless face was mostly void of wrinkles — certainly no laugh lines — with only a deep cut between his brows to make him look more like a man than a mannequin.
“You look well, Mitchell.”
They hadn’t seen each other in several months and Mitch knew his haircut would have garnered a lecture under normal circumstances, but this was not normal. “So do you.”
His father put his hand on his shoulder. “We need to take you to admissions.”
“What’s that?”
His father didn’t answer.
The first stop was an examination by a team of doctors. They took his temperature (98.1 degrees) and blood pressure (115 over 74). They shined lights into his eyes, ears and up his nose. And at the end, a beefy male nurse with a rose tattoo on his forearm stuck a fat, gloved index finger up Mitch’s tight asshole without bothering to lube up first. Even Rochelle had never gone there. Afterward, someone took his photo and a few moments later he had a new ID badge.
Soldiers led Mitch to a room that was mercifully void of wallpaper. Double-decker bunk beds filled the cavernous space.
A soldier posted at the door pointed at one of the bunks. “That’s yours.”
