by Tony Urban
“What about my parents?”
“You’ll receive nightly briefings.”
The soldier turned away from him and Mitch surveyed the room. A few men occupied bunks, but it was more empty than full. Mitch sat on the edge of his bed and a guy in his 20’s with spiked blonde hair nodded at him. He looked somewhat familiar.
“I’m Thad Winebruner. You’re Chapman’s kid, right?”
Mitch vaguely remembered that Winebruner had been in trouble a few months earlier. Drinking and driving or maybe it was public intoxication. Mitch’s father had informed him of the situation and added, “His father probably won’t win his next election because of him,” and gave Mitch a look that said, ‘Don’t you dare ruin my career, boy.’
“Mitch,” he said and extended his hand and Winebruner shook it. The blond’s palm was moist and his grip weak. “Is your dad here?” Mitch asked.
“Yeah. They have a huge room where they can hold a joint session of congress. The show must go on and all that shit.”
“Do you know what’s going on?”
Winebruner shook his head. “Not really. I’ve heard rumors. Mostly about some crazy bad flu that’s killing everybody who gets it. But some other shit too.”
“Like what?”
Winebruner motioned Mitch toward him. Mitch stepped to his bunk and Winebruner glanced around the room to make sure they weren’t being watched. He leaned in close to Mitch and spoke in a hissing whisper.
“Zombie shit!”
Mitch flinched backward. “You’re screwing with me.”
Winebruner shrugged his shoulders. “Believe me or don’t. No skin off my nose.”
The young man flopped back on his mattress and thumbed through a 70s edition of Hustler leaving Mitch alone with his thoughts.
He’d always hated being a senator’s son, but apparently it had benefits after all. It didn’t seem fair they got to hole up in some mega complex, safe from whatever bug was killing people, but there was an old saying about gift horses and Mitch wasn’t about to turn down a safe haven.
He heard someone a few bunks down sneeze. Has to be a coincidence that’s all. Nevertheless, when he looked down at his arms he saw the fine, dark hairs all standing at attention.
19
Blood leaked from her ear canal, trickled over the tragus and down the earlobe where it formed fat, wet drops that plunged onto the white floor. The way the puddle grew reminded Solomon of that old monster movie, The Blob, and he half thought it might rise off the floor and attack him. Wendy’s vengeance, come to life.
He knew as long as his wife kept bleeding; she was alive, but it had been almost four hours since he welcomed her home by slamming the crescent wrench into the back of her head. He dragged her limp body from the foyer to the kitchen, then sat her upright in a chair and waited for her to come too. Doubts about whether that was going to happen filled his mind with worry. Not because he was afraid she would die. She had that coming. But first Wendy needed to know what she’d done to him.
He’d loved the bitch since he was 17-years-old and she was 14. She the was daughter of a local barrister and he a street thug more likely to end up in prison than attend university. It took him a good four months to convince her to go out with him but when she did, he refused to let go. Despite what many would have thought from looking at him, Solomon could be a charmer when he wanted. Sometimes it was that charm that kept Wendy at his side. Other times, she stayed out of fear. He didn’t care why she stayed as long as she did.
He knew she’d whored around on him in the past. Once, he caught her drawers down in their Birmingham loft, riding a university lad like he was a polo pony. After he beat the boy into a coma in front of her, he packed her a bag and they were on a jet to the U.S. She promised to never do it again. He believed her. And if there was one thing Solomon Baldwin hated more than a lying slag, it was being wrong.
Remembering her lies and whoring brought the anger flooding through him like water through a broken dam. He grabbed a fistful of her bloody hair and jerked her head up. Her eyes remained closed and her mouth fell ajar allowing pink-tinged drool to dribble out in a slimy rope. He recalled that she’d had a cold the last few days, blowing her nose nonstop and sounding like a goose with the plague.
“Wakey wakey, love. Time to come around and take your medicine.”
She didn’t react. He released her head and let it drop down. Her chin hit her chest and her mouth snapped shut so hard the sound of it made Solomon’s teeth hurt. The sound also gave him an idea.
He leaned in close to her ear, his lips drawn back in a skeletal grin. “If you’re faking, love, best to stop right quick.”
Solomon waited a moment and got no reaction. Then, he pressed his face against the side of her head and took her earlobe between his teeth. He bit down fast and hard. Her blood gushed into his mouth. Hot, wet pennies. He swallowed a mouthful, then clenched his jaws tight as a vise and felt her skin give away as the bottom part of her ear separated from her body. The nickle-sized lump of flesh fell into his mouth and laid on his tongue like a wad of used up chewing gum. He spit it free and it bounced twice when it hit the tile.
Through it all, Wendy didn’t move.
Christ, I must have really scrambled her eggs.
He took his thumb and forefinger and opened her right eyelid. The white sclera had gone red. Not the roadmap of red veins like he’d seen in his drunk of a father’s eyes growing up either, completely crimson, like her entire eyeball was filled with blood instead of whatever goo was supposed to be inside. Solomon screwed up his mouth in shock and disgust, then checked her other eye and found the same.
Solomon crossed to the cabinet under the sink, opened it and removed a bottle ammonia. He wished he had smelling salts, but if the was any chance coming back around, this would do just as well. He popped off the plastic cap and stepped back to his wife.
Solomon held the bottle a few inches away from her face and waited. Nothing. He raised it up, so it touched her nose. She groaned.
This was what he’d been waiting for. “There we go, love. Come back now to the land of the living.”
Wendy groaned again. It didn’t sound like pain. The sound came from deeper inside, from somewhere far down in her diaphragm. It sounded almost inhuman. Solomon didn’t realize it, but he took a step back.
Wendy raised her head up and as she did more of the pink ooze dripped from her mouth. Her eyelids fluttered. Solomon could see her eyeballs darting back and forth beneath the thin layer of tissue. Another groan reverberated from her mouth and when it faded to an end, her eyes opened.
Solomon studied her as she looked around the room. Confused? No, vacant. He took a step toward her, back in arm’s reach and when he did so, her eyes locked on him. You see me now, don’t you?
Almost as if she’d read his thoughts, Wendy unleashed a pained cough that sent red spittle flying from her mouth. It splashed against his face and for a moment he stood there, too surprised to react. And in that half-second pause, Wendy was on her feet.
Solomon snapped out of his momentary daze when he saw her diving at him, her crazed face closing in on his own. He realized he still clutched the ammonia bottle, and he smashed the jug across her face. She stumbled backward and he squeezed the plastic, sending a geyser of ammonia into her face.
Wendy shrieked and clawed at her eyes. Her perfectly manicured nails ripped streaks of flesh from her cheeks. Solomon thought they looked like unrolled streamers dangling from her face. Soon enough she stopped digging at her eyes and her attention turned back to him. He didn’t see his wife when she looked at him, he saw a monster.
Bugger me.
She sprinted at him, crossing the kitchen in an instant. Solomon threw the empty jug and it bounced off her head harmlessly. She dove at him, growling as she did, and hit him in the chest. He stumbled back, tripping over a chair and crashing to the floor.
His head smacked off the tile and everything went black for a moment. When his vision returned,
he saw a galaxy of stars but amid the constellations was Wendy’s snarling, crazed face.
She was on all fours, crouching on top of him like a wild dog. When he saw the bloody saliva frothing from her lips, he realized she was not a pissed off housewife.
The bird’s gone rabid.
Almost on cue, she tried to bite him. Her mouth was on a collision course with his nose, but he swung his right fist upward and nailed her square in the throat. He felt something crunch as his hand connected with her flesh and drove deep into her neck. The Wendy-thing coughed - shrill, whiny whistling noises that puffed out small mists of blood. Solomon rolled onto his side and sent her toppling off of him. He punched her again, this time smashing her nose flat and knocking her onto her back
Solomon jumped up and ran out of the kitchen, dashing through the dining room and into the foyer where an antique buffet stood against the wall. He heard Wendy’s footsteps thundering behind him as he fumbled with the drawer, yanking it sideways and jamming it. Open up, you bastard!
She was close enough he could hear her choking, wheezing coughs. He guessed he had five seconds at the most and jerked the drawer with all his strength. Wood cracked and splintered as the drawer gave way and revealed the object he’d been looking for - a generic black pistol. One thing Solomon loved about America was how damned easy it was to buy guns.
He snatched the pistol and spun on his heels. Wendy was almost on top of him. He raised the gun and fired off a round. It slammed into the center of her chest, just above where the deep gash of her ample cleavage began. A black dot appeared and his wife, or whatever she’d become, stumbled backward a step.
But she didn’t go down.
The gunshot only seemed to enrage her more. She snapped her jaws and moved toward him again.
She’s a fucking zombie!
He aimed the gun at her again and shot a second round. That one punched a hole high on her forehead at her hairline. The bullet tore a channel through the top of her skull, sending bone and hair and blood flying. Wendy crumpled to the ground, the top of her head cleaved in two. Motionless at last.
Solomon took a step toward her and straddled her lifeless body as he stared down on her. He felt energized, almost high. Then he aimed the pistol and fired another bullet through her face.
“Not so pretty anymore, are ya, love?”
Wendy didn’t answer.
He could hear a siren in the far distance but that didn’t alarm him. If his wife had indeed turned into a zombie, the police had much bigger issues to worry about than his dead whore of a wife. So did he.
Solomon returned to the broken buffet, grabbed a handful of bullets and reloaded the pistol. He deposited the remaining ammunition into his pocket. He didn’t bother to take in his reflection in the mirror on the wall. If he had, the fact that he was covered in blood wouldn’t have stopped him from going outside. There was work to be done, and he was more than willing to get his hands dirty.
20
Aben’s lips stuck to his teeth, his tongue to the roof of his mouth. It was like he’d dined on a seven course meal of cotton. A few hours earlier he checked the toilet. Old pubic hair and calcified piss decorated the rim. The bowl was stained brown, and the water carried a strong aroma of iron mixed with stale puke. He decided he’d rather be thirsty.
The beginnings of sunlight brightened the room and Aben could see the clock on the wall showed 10 minutes after six when he heard the door to the building bang open, then close. He assumed it was the relief officer but when the source of the pounding footsteps appeared in the office, he saw it was Dolan.
The officer’s eyes were feverish and bloodshot but also appeared hyper alert. He wore gray sweatpants and a white thermal shirt which had ridden up over his bulbous, vein-streaked belly. A beer drinker’s gut, Aben thought. It was hard to tell for sure in the dim light of dawn, but Aben thought he saw specks of red against the white cotton material. Dolan also held his pistol.
“Is Ken here yet?”
“Who?” Aben asked.
“Ken Irwin. The other officer.”
Aben waved his hand as if displaying the empty room. “No one here but me. And you, now.”
Dolan flopped into the chair behind the desk and grabbed the phone. He listened, tapped the receiver then tossed down the handset. He stood and paced back and forth, still clutching the gun. Aben could see there were in fact red specks on Dolan’s shirt and as he tried to discern whether or not they were blood, Dolan stopped pacing and looked straight at him.
“I just killed my wife.” His voice was flat and matter of fact, like he was describing taking out the garbage. Aben thought he must have heard wrong.
“You what?”
“She was sick. Like everyone else.”
As if on cue, Dolan sneezed. Aben could see the small droplets of spittle propel through the air. The sun back lit them and it looked like a storm of millions of dust particles raining down.
“When I got home last night, she was sick, but okay. We ate leftovers and went to bed. Then I woke up because she was having some kind of fit, shaking all over and foaming at the mouth and her skin was hot as a hot water bottle. And then she just died.”
“I thought you said you killed her.”
Dolan paced again. His voice became more anxious as he continued on. “She died. I tried to call for an ambulance but the phone was dead so I went next door to the neighbor’s for help but no one came to the door.”
Dolan looked out the office’s only window as gazed onto the empty street. “I went back home and sat down on the bed beside her and I held her hand because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Aben looked again to the red on Dolan’s shirt and he knew the story wasn’t over. Soon enough the telling of it recommenced.
“I was still holding her hand when...” He paused, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
Aben had seen the haunted, self-loathing look on Dolan’s face before. After an exceptionally dirty battle or a raid in which women or children were killed. He even wore it himself a time or two.
“Then she came back.”
“She woke up?”
“No. She wasn’t asleep. She was dead. She was dead and then she came back. She turned over in bed and looked at me and… and she grabbed my arm and tried to bite me. I screamed, ‘Helen! What are you doing?’ but it was like she didn’t hear me at all. She just kept trying to bite me.”
Aben saw the horrified sincerity in Dolan’s eyes and it almost convinced him to believe the insane story the cop was telling.
“I pushed her off me and she fell off the bed but right away she got back up and came after me again. I kept screaming, ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ but she didn’t stop.”
“I had my service pistol on the nightstand.” He held up the gun and talked to it instead of Aben. “I told her to stop one more time but she wouldn’t. So I shot her. I shot her right in the chest. But that didn’t stop her either. So I shot her again. And again. And she just kept coming after me. So I shot her in the head.”
He looked back to Aben. “And then she died again.”
Dolan raised the gun and for a split second, Aben thought the cop would shoot him too. Instead Dolan pressed the silver barrel into the soft, pale flesh under his jaw.
“No! Don’t!” Aben shouted, but it was too late.
Dolan squeezed the trigger and the top part of his head blew off like a party popper on New Year’s Eve. Only instead of expelling miniature confetti, this one unleashed blood and brains and bone. The wet mess hit the low ceiling with an audible thwack. Most fell back to the floor but a few bits remained behind clinging to the white tile like gory graffiti.
Dolan crumpled to his knees, then fell backwards in a lifeless heap. From his viewpoint on the toilet, Aben could see the gaping hole in the top of his skull. Pints of blood gushed from the wound and from Dolan’s mouth and it formed abstract patterns over the concrete floor.
Aben had seen men die before. He’d seen the after
math too. So the gruesomeness of the situation wasn’t shocking. What bothered him far more than the gore, was what Dolan said before he cashed in his chips.
Did his wife come back from the dead, then try to attack him? To eat him? The idea was so insane that Aben half believed it. He looked again to the clock on the wall and counted down the minutes until the relief officer was due to arrive.
21
After running for several miles Bolivar’s lungs were on fire and he struggled to keep up with his younger and fitter colleagues. Sawyer was far ahead, shooting every zombie that got too close. The most recent was a city police officer who still wore his navy blue service cap even though his nose had been bitten clean off his face. Sawyer put a bullet in his forehead.
Peduto noticed Jorge falling behind. “Come on. Almost there.”
They had picked up two new arrivals as they weaved around and between buildings. The first was a man who looked about 50 and wore a faded Lenny Dykstra Phillies’ jersey decorated with 25 years’ worth of beer, nacho, and relish stains. The second was a boy who appeared to be no more than 13, yet kept a hand cannon tucked into the waistband of his baggy jeans. In the rush, no one had bothered to get their names.
The five of them were now only a few blocks from the Wells Fargo Center, the former home of the Flyers and 76ers. The military commandeered the arena at the beginning of the outbreak and turned it into their headquarters and residence for more than 15,000 personnel.
Everything was clear as they ran down tree-lined Broad Street but when they came to the intersection of Zinkoff Boulevard, they ran into more than 20 zombies which feasted on six dead soldiers. When the zombies saw the quintet, half broke off and gave chase.
Fresh fear gave Bolivar a second wind and he caught up to the others. As the arena came into view, he saw hundreds of military vehicles filling the acres of parking lot. As far as Bolivar could see, all were empty. They sprinted across the concrete until they reached the entrance at the front of the Center.
